groceries for ten days in the Pasayten

[David Bonn]

Oh, and the butter dish isn’t going… The butter might, though.

[kevin davidson]

Cliff bars are our friend. Have you considered olive oil in lieu of butter?

Oh, yes–that looks pretty compact for 10 days. Good for you. What size pack are you using for the trip and what’s your anticipated base weight?

The Paseyten rocks.

[Jim Colten]

Very compact, two questions:
1) what’ll be the distance hiked? (or other physical activity)
2) what’s the daily calorie budget?

[Eric Noble]

Love the picture but, I’m having a hard time making out what food you’re taking. Could you make a list? Nothing fancy. No need to break it out by meal, etc.

[David Bonn]

Some answers…

The trip plan is to go from Thirtymile trailhead (near where four firefighters made national news in the worst possible way in 2001) and traverse the headwaters of the Chewuch River to Horseshoe Basin and connecting on the Boundary Trail across the Pasayten to Ross Lake and then south along Ross and Diablo Lakes (on the new Happy Panther Trail) to Diablo, where hopefully a ride will be waiting to take me home. Total distance is about 140 miles.

My base pack weight is around 12.5lbs, but I’ll be carrying a rather heavy camera kit and an ice axe which will likely put the weight around 15lbs. The pack is a green ULA P-1.

I’m figuring about 1.75lbs and around 3000 calories per day.

Sometimes I use olive oil, but butter is better in cereal, hot drinks, and instant pudding.

The food story…

Breakfasts are all built around cereal. There is a big ziploc filled with a mixture of granola, grape nuts, and dried fruit (actually the granola+grape nuts thing is pretty good). There’s lots of powdered milk and maybe some of that butter. Coffee is more a comfort food but there is an adequate quantity along.

Dinners are mostly quick and simple and fairly modest. Most of the meals are “add boiling water and stir and let sit for a few minutes”. Two dinners are centered around tabouli, which is plausibly a no-cook deal if you have time. Two dinners are centered around instant black beans (plus powdered salsa and a little bit of minute rice) in a tortilla with a bunch of cheese and a bit of vegetables. There are some ramen noodles, quick pasta meals, and instant potatoes in that pile too. It works out to ten modest dinners.

A little over half of the food weight is “lunch”. I define lunch as anything eaten between breakfast and dinner. Generally, lunch is: 2 clif bars, a clif gel or packet of clif blocks, a generous handful of trail mix, and a couple of tortillas with hummus or cheese. As this is a long trip with a small pack there are lots of tortillas (28). On shorter trips I like to have about a bagel per day.

There are some “comfort foods” too, the aforementioned coffee, some instant pudding, a few packets of tea, and a few instant miso soup packets too.

Food and fuel weight is nineteen pounds, including packaging and all those ziplocs, which unfortunately aren’t edible.

[Curt Peterson]

I love pics like this. Thanks for sharing.

One question: it all looks ready to go right now – when are you heading up there? It’s pretty much still snowed under isn’t it? I’m guessing it will be for a good month or so yet.

[Casey Bowden]

My wife and I managed to fit 10 days worth of food (2 people x 5 days) into 1 bear canister when we did the Rae Lakes loop last year. Alas, our extreme packing was not required as we completed the loop in only 2.5 days.

The food we brought is as follows:
Breakfast: oatmeal premixed with powdered milk, brown sugar, 25 raisins, and salt
Lunch: flatbread with peanut butter/jam and Ovaltine premixed with powdered milk
Dinner: chili mac (pasta, vegi chili mix, refried bean mix, olive oil, salt, Tabasco)
Snacks: peanut M&M’s, honey sesame sticks, Good & Plenty, pepperoni sticks, & Gatorade
According to my food spreadsheet this would provide 2626 calories per day and weigh 1.4 pounds per person per day. The actual weight was closer to 1.7 pounds per day.

And here is all that food in the canister, less the stuff we would eat the first day.

[David Bonn]

I’m getting my ride (only about twenty miles) tomorrow afternoon.

There will definitely be snow. That’s one reason the pace isn’t all that aggro. But I’ve done similar trips in the past in early summer (which it just barely technically is) and the hiking, at least east of the crest, has been just fine. The snow has been melting with incredible speed lately, and it looks like the next few days will also be pretty warm, so it seems like a reasonable bet to launch now.

The attached picture here was taken on Quartz Mountain (looking east towards Sand Ridge) on June 14, 2004 after a spring blizzard.

[kevin davidson]

What? No lay over days in such wonderful country?

Nice pictures.

[Dylan Skola]

Do you clarify the butter (make ghee) for better shelf life?

[Casey Bowden]

We planned on a layover day at the Rae Lakes. After arriving there early on the second day we pitched our tent, went over to 60 lakes basin and swam in Rae Lakes. My wife was worried about making it over Glenn Pass so instead of subjecting her to a restless night we struck camp and went on over the same day

.

This shot was taken at the first lake we encountered when coming down the southern side of Glenn Pass.

[David Bonn]

Clarified butter?

Nope. I just take a chunk and it gets used up long before it can go bad. The temperatures aren’t going to be *that* warm.

This was taken last year maybe a few miles south of the previous picture…

[R K]

Casey,

Were you or your wife by any chance using a Golite Breeze pack?

Roy

[Casey Bowden]

Roy,

I had Mariposa (with the bear canister and 5 days of food we didn’t eat) and my wife had a G4.

Casey

[R K]

Casey,

I thought I might have past you on the trail. My GF and I walked past a couple carrying lightweight gear on the JMT near the Rae Lakes area. I pretty sure they were carrying Breeze packs though, I could be mistaken. It was in early august time frame.

Roy

[Joshua Mitchell]

You and your wife look REALLY familiar (like as a couple) from my days at the Chemical Engineering Program at KU.

[Casey Bowden]

Josh,

CE yes, but civil not chemical, and Berkeley, not Kansas. And I thought my wife and I were a pretty unique pair…

[Joshua Mitchell]

I had a project partner at KU that looked like your wife (at least to my memory), and she was dating (at the time) a slim white guy (don’t remember exactly what he looked like)…

That’s really funny…

[David Bonn]

Well, it turned out to be only eight days…

THe weather was great, and what snow there is is melting very quickly.

Unfortunately, the bridge over the Pasayten River was removed last year and hasn’t been replaced. The ford was much too fat for a solo hiker with all that snow melting. Oh well, it was still fun.

I didn’t have quite enough cereal and a little too much trail mix and hummus. Other than that the eating was good.

[David Bonn]

Looking towards Horseshoe Basin…

Two days later, from between Spanish Camp and Upper Cathedral Lake…

[Sam Haraldson]

I realize this was a food-based thread but seeing all these references to the Paysaten I just HAD to comment.

I’m less than a year away from starting my thru-hike of the PNT and I just happened to reach the Paysaten section of the trail -guide yesterday so seeing these images and hearing this talk of it while in the midst of reading trail descriptions through it is great.

I’m getting very excited to hike such lovely country.

[Author]

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