UL backpacking food prep

[Yoyo]

This is my approach to meal planning. What’s yours?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSdLkvJzxWA

[Lester Moore]

For long trips, that’s pretty much the same approach I use – spreadsheet for meal, calorie and supplement planning, then pack it all into multi-day zip bags for each segment, then weigh the bags to confirm. For short trips (1 week or less) I just eyeball a mound of different foods and weight it all, then add or subtract a little to get the trip’s target weight, usually targeting 1.5 lbs of high-fat and protein food per day (up to 1.9 lbs/day for longer trips).

[David Thomas]

For shorter trips – up to a week, I multiply calories/serving x servings on the packages and aim for 2000 calories for breakfast + lunch + dinner and then figure snacks will make up another 1000 calories.  That’s not enough for high mileage/climbing days, but losing a half pound a day of body fat happens pretty painlessly that way.

I don’t do all the individual packaging this guy does.  Some things like instant mashed potatoes* or Pasta Sides (both $1.07 at Walmart for 4 “servings”) come in reasonably light, factory-sealed packaging already.  Things like hot chocolate, I can ration from a larger ziplock throughout the trip.  Instant oatmeal stays in it’s original packet which then goes in a bag of burnable trash for the next time I’m in a fire-safe area and burning TP.

For longer trips, I’d need to add another 2,000 calories/day.  And I’d mostly try to add it as snacks since the most studly hikers I’ve seen do that and the more I shift towards 100-200 calories / hour as snacks, the better I do.

*Walmart also has small, cheap packages of bacon bits that I’ve recently been using a lot to add protein and fat to an otherwise carb-heavy dish.  I wouldn’t do that in bear country, unless we had bear tags along, but last week we were 500 miles from the nearest bear so there was a lot of bacon and salami used.

[M B]

I know my standard options  for each category. i dont need to worry about calories. Its not enough anyway.:

First breakfast (while hitting trail) -bar , pastry

Breakfast (first break) cereal, granola, nido

Mid morning snack, gummies, jerky, dried fruit

Lunch, pg&j tortillas, tuna dalad, etc, chocolate

Afternoon snack,meat sticks, cheese, trailmi x

Dinner, mh or dehydrated .w/brownie, snickers, etc

Drink mixes,

 

I count how many each i need based on time between resupplies, and buy them.  I aim for 600 from breakfasts to start day, 500-700 cal from drink mix, 1000 from dinner (little debbie brownie adds 300), rest takes care of itself.  Lots of snacks. Lunch gets skipped often not wanting to stop.

[BlackHatGuy]

I’m not a spreadsheet guy, so I don’t use one (for meals or gear). Breakfast is always a Rise bar, an Emergen-C packet, and a cup of coffee. Lunch is generally a bar. I might put a packet of Tailwinds powder in my water during the day, depends on the hike. I might have a mid-afternoon bar, most often not, but I usually carry one (and end up with a few bars uneaten by the end of the trip).

I have a couple of big plastic containers with various trail meals in them. After figuring out how many nights I’ll be on the trip, thus how many dinners I need, I’ll browse through the containers and pick a meal for each night. I generally have a hot chocolate as well. On shorter trips (which is most of my trips) I also bring scotch, and I’ll finish off the night with a dram.

No idea how many calories/fat/protein/carbs I eat per day, I don’t pay attention to that. No idea what my food weighs (or my gear, for that matter), I don’t pay attention to that either. I always lose weight on a trip, but generally gain it back pretty quickly. I know it’s not how most people do it, but it works okay for me.

[James Marco]

I don’t use spreadsheets either. Count out the number of days I’ll be out (this week, I’ll be out 8 days.) Subtract 1 for the hiking days I will not need suppers/breakfasts for (down to 7.)
Prepare 7 suppers. 4oz of Macaroni, Rice for bulk carbs, around 2oz of dried meat, around 2oz of various cooked beans, corn, peas, onions, salt and seasonings. Total weight in a baggie is just 7 to 7.5oz. (I often add a packet of lentils (6oz), minestrone(7.3oz), and/or Rice sides. Sometimes I will bring a stick of peperoni or salami.) I also add 1 packet of Lipton chicken soup, and a 4oz packet of pemmican. It all weighs just under 3.5 pounds. Dried meat is salmon, beef, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. It takes about an hour plus dehydrator time.

I pack 1 heaping tablespoon of cocoa per cup. I drink roughly 3.5 cups per day (average) including Marco’s Mud & two cups of mocha in the morning and a cup of weak cocoa with a shot of scotch at night. I also count out 1 table spoon of coffee per cup of mud/mocha in a separate baggie. I pack 5 table spoons of oatmeal per cup of mud. This weighs under 3lbs, not sure here because I didn’t weigh it.

Then toss in about 4oz of jerky and 8oz of hard candy and a few packs of salted nuts.

Mostly, everything is either bulk packed in baggies or packaged in plastic. My total weight for this trip is 7-3/8pounds. This works out to about my average of 17-18oz per day but close enough to have enough to eat. I always plan on loosing up to 5 pounds per week. After all, that is what fat reserves are for.

And no, I don’t feel hungry, mostly, I have to force down the big supper at night and am sometimes not interested in food in the mornings. On longer through hikes, I buy boxes of minute rice, pounds of little macaroni’s, bottles of olive oil, large bags of jerky, sticks of pepperoni, nuts, and a bottle of vitamins. I have been out for a several months at a time doing this and think of these as trail rations. Of course, an occasional pastry, pizza, fresh veggies, barbecued chicken, fish fry, etc are all picked up in town (and eaten before I leave;) They are fried, and/or boiled and/or mixed with various greens I forage for, bits of apple, berries, etc, I find along the way.

It changes every trip and there is no set formula.

[Matthew / BPL]

I know what foods I like to eat and are high in calories/pound. I know that if I take 1.4 pounds per day I won’t eat all of it. I shoot for around 1.25 ppd and then throw an extra item or two which ends up in the 1.3 or 1.35 ppd range. I just bring whatever appeals for the given trip and don’t worry too much about it.

At this point it’s basically all snacks, no real “meals”.

[Ken Thompson]

Should this be in the food forum? How does James get an eight day week.

I never get out for a week. I just grab what I think I can choke down. Always come home with food.

[Five Star]

I don’t use a spreadsheet for anything but meal weight.  I know from experience I will lose 5+ lbs. during a weeklong (7-9 days) section hike but feel fine eating my way.

I do Packit Gourmet smoothies and bars for breakfast (no cook, little time), snack 3-4x during the day on various things (Snickers, Twix, trail mix, Duke’s shorties, cheese, Combos, Fritos etc.), but I want a really good dinner at the end of the day.  I’m a foodie, and having a great dinner to look forward to makes a long day on the trail even better.  All of my dinners are cobbled together using mainly dehydrated ingredients from PG, Harmony House etc. with occasional fresh produce such as garlic that doesn’t weigh much but has a big flavor punch when fresh.  The meals generally weigh in the ballpark of 1-1.5 lbs.

September’s menu will be:

Ethiopian chicken and red lentil stew, kung pao spaghetti, samosas (burrito style), beef tagine, chicken panang curry, Ecuadorian chicken stew, taquitos with refried beans and rice, and African peanut stew with pelau rice.  Typically somebody will want some so bad that they’ll trade me something awesome like whiskey for a little smackerel.

Yeah, I end up carrying a skillet as well as a 0.6L and 0.9L pot to cook it all up, but thanks to this site I’ve learned how to save weight in other areas.  I will start with a pack weighing 29-30 lbs.

[Matthew / BPL]

Yum

[BlackHatGuy]

September’s menu will be:…

Always wanted to hike in Alabama. When am I invited? :-)

[Tipi Walter]

I’m with Doug on this one. How many days equals how many dinners I take. (All home dried of course).  I have no idea about calories or food weight . . . or even gear weight.

I’m in the Ray Jardine camp when it comes to food weight—between 2 to 2.5 lbs per day.  Eat Hearty, Hogs.  Beyond this, trail food is purely subjective.  Want to hump out a watermelon?  Go for it.  A couple cans of Knudsen ginger ale?  Yes.

I’ve done hundreds of trips in the 15 to 24 day range without resupply and it’s now second nature to gather my food for each long trip.  A newb might get confused but it’s like anything else—Do it enough and you don’t even think about it.

I divide my Food Sacks into 3 main sacs for a long 21-ish day trip—A Cookables bag, a Snackables bag, and a third overflow bag (containing bulky items like loaves of bread and rice cakes and corn chips etc).

And then there’s the 30-40 energy bars per trip—currently on an RX Bar phase along with ThinkThin plant based bars.

Cookables is everything that has to be cooked.  It’s easier if all these items are in one bag.  The real weight comes when I add plastic containers of peanut butter, honey, almond butter etc.

[Five Star]

@Doug….there IS some good hiking in Alabama, but this is an AT section (US19 to Damascus) that will be at a slower pace than usual (I got 7 days and need to knock out this 75 odd mile section, so I’ll probably hit a lot of side trails, take a lot of pictures etc.).

BPL has really helped me lower my base weight over the years.  Good and occasionally pricey gear certainly helps, but experience and knowing what fears to no longer pack has been huge too.  Also knowing how to properly use a layered clothing system.  And then ultimately, once you learn what you don’t mind adding back some weight for, you have the “room” to do so.  For me, my S2S sleeping pad and my dinners (and cook kit) are those things.

I certainly don’t want to carry TipiWalter’s weight and lol I couldn’t anyway, but fully dig why he chooses to do so.

[Adam White]

At this point it’s basically all snacks, no real “meals”.

I’m with Matt on this. Although I do spreadsheet it–I know for a trip of a certain distance/duration/effort level, how many calories I need, and I know what I like to eat–I just bump up the number of servings in the spreadsheet for everything until the calories needed = calories required, then throw it in a bear can (usually). Done.

“Breakfast” or “Dinnner” isn’t something that means anything to me when I’m backpacking. I need to eat all day, so I do. And I eat whatever I want all day. I sure as hell don’t have any food set aside for “Friday” and if today is “Wednesday”, I won’t eat it. Anything in the can is fair game at any moment.

I’m in the Ray Jardine camp when it comes to food weight—between 2 to 2.5 lbs per day. Eat Hearty, Hogs. Beyond this, trail food is purely subjective. Want to hump out a watermelon? Go for it. A couple cans of Knudsen ginger ale? Yes.

Also with Tipi on this one… I will put up with many discomforts while backpacking, but neither going hungry nor suffering through food I don’t want to eat are not on the list! Sometimes this happens involuntarily, of course, if tastes change on a long trip, or I get the wrong ratio of carbs/protein/fat. But it seems like I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on that, and I haven’t put much thought into it–just trial and error.

[AK Granola]

Reading all these planners makes me think I should be more meticulous in food planning! But I find it pretty tedious.  If planning food only for myself, I just count the BLDs and add snacks, and don’t even look at calories. I’ve never felt like what I planned wasn’t enough at a specific meal. I try to save recipes I really like and now when there’s one I really don’t like, I write that down too so that I don’t repeat my mistake. I’ve learned a few things about myself that I factor in to my minimal planning:

I need a decent breakfast, not a cold, dry manufactured bar. Usually it’s oatmeail or muesli or some variation. I need to snack small amounts during the day, frequently, to keep my energy up. I tend to like salty things better than sweets, the reverse of my at-home tendencies. I actually really dislike a lot of the packaged snacks most people bring, preferring nuts, dried fruit, sun dried tomatoes, my own baked goods, etc. if all I had was a little Debbie cake or a honeybun I’d probably skip! Why not just eat pure sugar? Of course, there are exceptions (pretzels, sesame sticks and yeah, Oreos). I do also seek out wild berries wherever they might be.

I don’t mind being a little hungry toward the end of a trip, if I run low on food; I’ll just stretch it out. Once a friend and I did run out, after being trapped for an extra day in fog. The only terrible part was getting back on the tourist bus (Denali) and watching all those chubby tourists munching their unneeded snacks while we tried not to stare. We considered begging but couldn’t do it. If we’d had to wait another day, the begging would have happened without shame!

Much harder is planning for someone else. On our recent Chilkoot Trail hike I vastly underestimated my husband’s appetite. Fortunately he had brought plenty of his own snacks to fill in my too meager dinners. I cannot imagine how we could do a through hike together, at least with my planning abilities. I also wonder if I should be more detailed in planning if I plan a longer hike for myself, to save on weight I do have an extra 20 pounds around the middle that can be utilized in case of emergency.

 

[David Thomas]

Karen, maybe we should swap spouses for our next trip. My wife doesn’t think I bring enough food. I think she brings too much. She’s in fear of running out (we never have) and I grumble about returning with a day or two worth of calories.  On our Chilkoot hike, one kid’s friend dropped out but I couldn’t talked her into reducing the food (we were 5 people with generous provisions for 6!)

Some UL gear (quilts, canister stoves, UV water treatment) she’s adopted. Some UL concepts, not so much.

[john hansford]

So… wife swapping on BPL now.

[Tipi Walter]

One big reason I like backpacking and living outdoors is I love to Ration stuff—food, white gas, etc.  There’s a great satisfaction in starting out on a 21 day trip and getting into the rationing mindset.  Everything’s on my back for the duration.  Like Karen says, I just stretch it out.

[AK Granola]

Sure, David. I’ll take your wife and you take my husband! I could use a doc along who carries extra food.

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