Backpacking Food

I have a fair bit of experience backpacking. My basic rule is carry only one of things that don't normally come in pairs (socks), rather than lots of spares. You can wash stuff and let it dry in the usually quite dry air of the the high Sierras. As much as I like cotton, its the wrong fabric for backpacking. Go with poly or other synthetic fibers. They aren't as comfy and they'll stink when worn too much, but you don't get as cold when it gets wet, and serious hiking makes you sweaty. And if it rains or a snow storm comes in, you could live or die based on whether you're warm enough after getting wet.

Then it comes to food. That powdered stuff? Its food, but it doesn't taste very good. My biggest rule in backpacking is that dried is light, which means you can carry more of it. And you go through a lot of salt while hiking, and massive amounts of electrolytes and sugar. If you carry gatorade? Good. If you carry powdered hot chocolate? Good. Raisins? Excellent. And always drink lots of water. Carry mint tea because it kills the nasty taste of iodine you're using to kill nasty bacteria in your water. In a perfect world, you could carry a bottle of hydrogen peroxide too, since it cancels out the active ingredients in iodine, but you need to wait 6 hours for iodine to work, and what backpacker can wait that long unless the water is for next morning, in which case you're using what you can to fill canteens for the day, then wash your morning dishes and hit the trail. Most backpackers like to hit the trail around dawn, having discovered its effing cold at Dawn and you can't feel your feet or fingers till you start hiking enough to warm up again. That's just how things are. Sleeping in a tent is COLD. Getting up is a real struggle, of courage to face that cold. Tiny comforts are huge in those conditions. Ergo hot sweet caffeinated drinks are a good and important start of your day. High Sierra Air is often very dry in the morning, summer or winter, unless you camped next to a creek in which case you're now even colder and everything you own is soaking wet. Don't ask me how I know that.

When I backpack, I am particularly fond of things like dried tortellini with cheese inside, as that makes it taste wonderful once boiled and swollen. All the salt really helps. I don't recommend chili. Its heavy. It has plenty of salt and beans, but weighs a lot per can. Save that for car camping. Not backpacking. Textured Vegetable Protein, aka fake meat made from tofu is bad for you long term, but is an easy source of protein while backpacking and very light weight. You start burning protein if you don't get enough glucose as you hike. Your body starts eating itself to stay alive under the very high stress of backpacking. Its important to eat way more than you think you need, because your body is suppressing your appetite due to stress. This is well know in the military, when troops go into the field they start losing muscle and two weeks out will strip off 15 pounds of muscle. That takes a month to recover and impact their ability to do their jobs. They started adding appetite enhancers to MREs and trained sergeants to push their men to eat more. Exercise means your body absorbs sugar more easily, even without insulin. Low blood sugar can happen easily while back packing, even for normal people. For most this is the hardest they've ever pushed themselves physically, ever. People who stay on the trail when they should be taking time off, like those hiking the whole Pacific Crest trail, end up pretty haggard and it affects their judgement, such as getting off the trail to recuperate.

Rich foods, including ones with sugar and fat and extra protein, think 5000 calories a day, are necessary. Getting off the trail and down to an IHOP with a combo platter... you'd demolish it all and not understand why. Pancakes, syrup, butter, sausage, eggs, toast, hash browns, orange juice, coffee... it all goes down. Your body needs it. Hiking up a 1000 foot higher climb is a lot of calories. Its a lot of electrolytes. Its a lot of protein to help build more muscles. Its a lot of water to fuel all these biochemical processes. Always have lots of water and drink even when you aren't thirsty. Thirst gets suppressed under stress and dehydration can get you into real trouble, even die. I want to track down a good water purifier pump, one I can clean properly myself instead of carrying around filters.

The other thing you need for overnight camping is a small stove. A whisperlite, a hand pump stove with fuel, even a blow-torch equivalent stove, those all work great. The propane powered whisperlites are the easiest to pack, but carrying the spare can of fuel can be annoying and those kind of cannisters can leak, leaving you with no way to heat dinner unless you're an expert at making cooking fires. And I am. Its NOT an easy skill to learn, btw. There are also Rocket Stoves, which use slivers of wood or bark and extra air to heat water fast, which is the primary thing you do with a stove. Boiled water is safe to drink. Iodine isn't necessarily safe. All water sources in California contain giardia. I have had it. Took 6 months to beat. It was horrible. If you don't have to cut up your food, you don't need a cutting board or a big knife. That's weight saved. If you use a big camp cup, you can put your dinner in there, then you don't need a "plate" which in backpacking is actually a flat bottomed bowl with high curved sides. Its true they don't weigh much, but you have to wash them. If you eat out of the big cup, you can chase your dinner with a hot drink, ignore the chunky bits and cleanup is a lot easier. Because cleaning up with scalding hot water in darkness and rapidly dropping temperatures with mosquitoes swarming around? Not fun. The best reason for the tent is keeping the mosquitoes off so you can sleep at night.

To cook your food on the stove you need a decent sized pot, around 8 inches across, with a fitting lid, big enough to hold the camp stove inside it. This both saves space and keeps a spill out of your clothes. Have a plastic bag to store this pot since you'll want to coat the bottom in black soot, on purpose, because the soot absorbs heat 2-3 times faster than reflective aluminum. This means your water boils faster and you don't want days of fuel cooking dinner. If you do this right, you can boil that pot full of water in less than 10 minutes. Throw in your pasta and boil it, drain off most of the water for hot chocolate (the pasta runoff usually makes this taste better), then use the remaining water in the pot for the sauce to add calories and flavor. There are many kinds of powdered sauces, including those used of salad dressing mix or tuna helper or whatever. Canned tuna is often a good idea too, for extra protein. Cream sauces are great because they help you eat and while a fork is only really needed if you have meat to eat, a spoon is usually plenty of utensil. Remember: when backpacking there is no picnic table. You need one hand to hold your plate and the other hand for the spoon. You don't have a third hand for a knife or fork unless you spent a lot of time near Chernobyl. Normal people rarely figure this out until it happens to them. The fork and knife are a waste, extra weight. A spoon is best. A big soup spoon. Also be sure to have the necessary hot pads to pick up the pot or a pot gripper tool which looks kinda like a can opener. The aluminum transfers heat really well so getting burned by the pot happens. Most of the time, the pot also doubles as your wash basin so make sure what you're using will fit inside it. The less you carry, the less tired you are from the hike.

I will also note that minimalist motorcycle camping rules, such as on a 250 cc dirt bike, are also the same as for backpacking. A light motorcycle is not meant to carry lots of weight. If Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman had carried 60 pounds of gear instead of 200, and used 600 cc thumpers instead of 1100 cc BMW twins, they would have had a better time crossing Mongolia. A lighter bike would have made the trip far easier. Their Cameraman went over the mud where they plowed through it like angry tractors, and they kept falling over, again and again. I've seen many videos of motorcycle offroaders and the light bikes have it easier. You need enough torque to lift the front wheel over a downed tree or boulder, and enough to pull the back tire and all its carrying too. But that's all. Those monster bikes weren't right. A little Yamaha WR250X? Great for this sort of thing. And if you setup your rides to take you to motels and diners? Much better and more comfortable fun.

But backpacking is best done solo, and absorbing nature in silence. I don't even like bear bells. They're noisy all the time you're moving, which gets very tiresome, and attract bears to see what's for dinner. Bear bells are a sign of amateur packers.

The most important thing to remember when backpacking is you don't always have to carry all the food you need for the whole trip. If your journey takes you near towns, go there. Get a hot meal, a shower, and restock. You'll carry less at any given time and be healthier, less worn out, and have more fun on the journey. And that's kind of the point.