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food lbs/day – for a nine-year old and a grown-up on a low-mileage trip?


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Home Forums General Forums Food, Hydration, and Nutrition food lbs/day – for a nine-year old and a grown-up on a low-mileage trip?

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • #3475494
    Katherine .
    BPL Member

    @katherine

    Locale: pdx

    For my last trip with my son, I packed waaaay to much food. We do about 3 miles a day, 6 tops (though I carry most of the gear, so I am burning more calories for that..). He’s not currently in a growth spurt.

    How much for him?

    How much for me? For my solo trips 1.5 lbs/day for me works great. But those are 15+ miles/ per day trips, so how much might I ratchet that down?

    #3475497
    Lester Moore
    BPL Member

    @satori

    Locale: Olympic Peninsula, WA

    How much extra food did you have per day? That would give you a good idea how much food per day you’ll use next trip. If you want to run some numbers, then you could assume about 1000 cal/day is enough to sit and do nothing all day, and roughly 3500 cal/day is a fairly typical backpacking daily food allotment. So, that split out to 2500 cal/day for the hiking, and 1000 cal/day for being awake basically. If you’re hiking 3 mi/day (20% of your typical 15 mile day solo trip), then that works out to 500 cal for the hiking, plus 1000 cal/day for base needs, or 1500 total cal per day. Seem a little low IMHO, so you might error on the plus side and shoot for 2000 cal/day, which would be approximately 14 ounces (0.86 lbs) of food per day.

    #3475502
    Katherine .
    BPL Member

    @katherine

    Locale: pdx

    @satori – thanks for that calculation. Maybe 2 lb /day for both of us would be conservative/generous?

    unfortunately I eyeballed our food quantity last time when we set out, and came back with 3 lbs (after 3 day). Usually I’m more methodical. we have two more trips lined up, so I can use the soon one to fine tune for the late-summer one.

    #3475718
    MJ H
    BPL Member

    @mjh

    In my experience, kids that age vary widely from day to day in how much they eat and this variation happens for no reason that I was able to discern. And being stuck on a multi-day trip with a hungry boy sounds very unpleasant.

    #3475751
    Ben H.
    BPL Member

    @bzhayes

    Locale: No. Alabama

    Yup, my experience aligns with MJ.  Usually my kids don’t eat very much, but one trip (1.5 miles in, two nights hanging around the campfire, and a 1.5 miles out) we walked out with 5 M&M’s.  I am not sure which stars aligned, but I bring the extra food now to keep them happy.  It’s not too hard to hike with kids so the heavy pack isn’t a problem.

    #3475755
    Katherine .
    BPL Member

    @katherine

    Locale: pdx

    Yeah, he hasn’t recently, but he can get really hangry. I’ll accept the overpacking. And this trip is going to be twice as long as the previous.

    #3475762
    BlackHatGuy
    Spectator

    @sleeping

    Locale: The Cascades

    hangry – adjective – when someone is hungry and angry at the same time, usually the hunger causing the anger…

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