8 pound base weight

""negate ALL the advantage of tarping over tenting…"

Yes and no. With using a tent in place of a tarp the weight gain remains constant the entire five day trip. With added food weight the difference starts to drop with the first meal."

Of course you are right. It was a bit of hyperbole on my part to illustrate a point (although on a longer trip, say 10 days, the weight differential is that much greater). Most all of us have tendencies to be extremely orthodox re. certain weights — and almost nonchalant with others. Good gawd, some even like to carry books with them! It's personal style and preference. Methinks these factors make the selling of any single approach near impossible.

Miguel — not that Mike is asking any of us… but methinks the Middle Way is best. We don't want a book that just says "go buy a tent" — we want something "meaty" to introduce the various different UL choices and techniques out there and HOW one can go about deciding — versus THIS is the way everyone should approach UL. Again, my totally unsolicited two cents.

Jerrod — thanks — "great minds" think alike. :)

Jamie, thank you for the link. Photographing your gear list makes information so much more accessible and interesting. I hope Mike will spice his gear list up with some of his excellent cartoons.

" …backpacking 8 or 10 hours per day in varying conditions must burn more than 2,500 calories per day. Heck it might be 5,000 or more per day. Have any studies been done on this?"

Nick, pretty much every army on Earth will have investigated this. The results will be in MRE packs. Does anyone know how many kcals a day they supply?

By the way, over here, 2500 kcals has traditionally been quoted as the requirement of a male office worker. Some nutritionists are saying 2250 kcals because British men are now very reluctant to give up on a seated position.

"On 8-day trips (+/-), of 15 to 20 miles a day, consuming about 2700 calories per day, I find I have plenty of energy during the day…
I typically lose about 3/4 pound of body weight a day."

Greg, you are lucky because my performance tails off rapidly after 3 days with inadequate food. I may very well have the food with me, but fail to stop often enough to eat because of foul weather. By the way, my most recent trip included 12 days of climbing hills with camping gear on my back. I don't have 9 lbs I can healthily lose in 12 days (which may be a key factor in the varying opinions expressed in this thread).

This, from Erin McKittrick, is relevant – http://www.aktrekking.com/food.html

Has anyone tried scrupulously following the advice in Beyond Backpacking? Way-of-Life grains don't sound that enticing but, if they work for backpackers other than Ray and Jenny, I will have to give them a go.

Thank you to everyone who has commented on food. This is an area where I really need to improve.

OFF TOPIC:

"Has anyone tried scrupulously following the advice in Beyond Backpacking? Way-of-Life grains don't sound that enticing but, if they work for backpackers other than Ray and Jenny, I will have to give them a go."

I've got 'Trail Life' which I believe is the latest version of Beyond Backpacking. There's lot of interesting and good information in the book but I get the feeling that so much of the stuff in there is exaggerated. A lot of stuff had me saying 'really??'. Some examples:

1) Claiming to never miss the yummy meals from home since they eat 'real food' on the trail, yet at the same time saying he eats the exact same corn spaghetti every single day for months at a time. It's hard to believe he doesn't wish for a burger after 90 days of corn spaghetti.

2) Claiming once he stopped filtering his water he drank triple the water. More water?? Sure…but triple???

3) Claiming he got sick often so he stopped filtering the water and then he never got sick since he was more careful where he took it from. Maybe, but I don't think the general argument holds (water source selection is more important that treatment). Obviously both are important. I think you have to get pretty lucky to hike for 3-4 months without treating the water and not get sick. Especially at 20 liters a day or whatever triple his old intake was.

etc….there's lots of good info but tons of stuff that doesn't seem like it can be entirely true as well.

"I show what a 20oz/day food setup looks like on my website…"

Breakfast seems pretty light at just one pouch of instant oatmeal. I personally get hungry pretty quickly if I only have 2 pouches. 3 is a good breakfast. Maybe you're just not as much of a breakfast guy as I am though.

Dan, I use to take 2 packs of oatmeal or 2 packs of instant grits for each morning. I found that I had to literally force them down. I enjoy oatmeal I just can't eat too much at once so recently started eating just one pack and it works for me. Here is what my day looks like…

6:00 Wake up
6:30 Breakfast – eat oatmeal and drink coffee
7:00 hit trail
8:30 eat powerbar
10:30 chow on trail mix
12:00 Lunch – sausage stick and cheese, trail mix, twizzlers with lemonade crystal light
2:30 eat powerbar
4:30 chow on trail mix and a couple of twizzlers
7:00 find campsite
7:30 Dinner – Freezer Bag meal of rice, beans, hamburger, eat twizzlers for dessert with lemonade cyrstal light
9:00 Drink some tea
9:30 hit the sack

This is fairly close to 20 oz. which was my number not Mike's. He is the porker with the extra powerbar tossed in somewhere. As I said I am hardly ever hungry and at times force myself to eat.

I don't carry exactly the same thing all the time. I try to mix it up. Maybe replace a trail mix with some pringle packs, toss is some jerky, or peanut butter pretzels. Sometimes just a stick of gum can be a nice treat. Dinner can be rice one night, then noodles another night.

I'm looking forward to the book Mike. Again your drawings are fantastic. I really think your cartons have stuck with me way beyond many words.

Jamie

Fair enough….eating again at 8:30am is reasonable. It's weird how good food can sometimes be so hard to eat while hiking. Yesterday I started hiking at 11am (leaving from my house), I had 2 powerbars at 1pm and then dinner at 6pm after hiking 17 miles total. You'd think I would be hungry, especially having a pot of couscous with shrimp, current, spices etc. I ate maybe 1 cup of it and just couldn't ram it down anymore. I ended up just tossing it all in a ziplock bag and letting it go to waste….weird. I just couldn't ram it down because I totally lost my appetite even though I felt great.

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