Freezing Snacks and Food

[David R.]

I was reading a snow camping trip report where frozen lunch snacks seemed to be a problem. Evidently the power bars were too hard to be eaten. Any thoughts on this problem and on managing freazing food in general.

[Stephen M]

I was thought on a Winter Mountaineering course years ago to bring snacks that where soft centered, this was in the UK and they recommend Mars Milky Ways (have not seen these in the US)

Also putting your snacks in to inside pocket as soon as you stop helps warm them up.

 

[Paul McLaughlin]

Yeah, can be an issue. Power Bars – if not kept in a pocket close to the body, like a rock. Clif bars are better but still get pretty hard, so best in a pocket. Balance bars and Tigers milk do pretty well but they all get harder when cold.

Nuts I’ve had no issues with; mostly the same with the dried fruit I take, but I tend to bring the driest dried fruit I can get, which is generally the unsulphured stuff. Jerky I have had no problems with.

Really the key is to think ahead, and if you have something with you that you know you can’t eat when it’s hard, then stick that in an inside pocket a hour before you’re going to want it. Some items require a careful balance – a Snickers bar is a rack if totally frozen, but the chocolate melts if kept too close to the body. Of course that can be quickly corrected by a brief insertion in the snow.

[David Thomas]

In my caving days, Power bars had the advantage that there isn’t anything you can do it – sit on it, immerse it, use it as an elbow pad, etc – that changed it.  It is a food-like substance in the store and it is still a food-like substance after hours in a cave.  However, they get VERY stiff and hard to chew around 45F to the point that it seems you expand more calories in chewing it then your gut could possibly extract in food value <sarcasm>.  Sure, if you leave a chunk in your mouth for a while, it softens, but you still have to gnaw / worry / saw that chunk off the larger bar.

Putting them close to your body helps a lot.  Having them in a pocket over nipples, genitals or the aforementioned elbows, lets them do double duty by protecting tender bits in tight crawls.

In freezing weather, I bring stuff that you wouldn’t/couldn’t normally bring backpacking.  Frozen pizza, for instance, on snow-camping trips.  Not our (the parents) favorite food, but the kids like it and we’re trying to make outdoor trips fun for them.  Any other foods that needs to be refrigerated or frozen are possibilities – meats, cheese, dairy products.  Years ago, when Alaska had consistently cold Winters, a friend realized that for the emergency rations everyone has in their car trunks up here (plus sleeping bag, foam pad, gloves, light, tow rope, road flares, etc), she didn’t need to limit herself to granola bars and canned corn.  Come October, she could keep ice-cream bars in the trunk until March or April.

[JP]

Frozen Taco Bell is great winter camping food.

[Author]

Posts