Food and cooking on a long hike
If you’re an athlete or a foodie, you understand that food makes the world go round. If you’re like me and your non-trail life is relatively sedentary (don’t kid yourself…45 minutes of spin class after 8 hours in an office is still ‘sedentary’), then you’ll be thrown off-guard by the massive metabolic overdrive that your body enters while on trail. Hiker hunger kicks in pretty quickly, and all of a sudden you feel like you could eat the Michael Phelps 12,000-calorie diet.
Let’s talk food! What to pack, ways to cook, and off-trail binges.
Food to Pack
At first, it can be pretty hard to predict how much food to pack for a hike. My method is I just think through each meal for every day I’ll be out on trail before the next re-supply (i.e. before I hit a town again and can stock up on more food), and purchase food accordingly. I usually underestimate how much I’ll need to eat (see earlier comment about hiker hunger), so to be safe, I double how many snacks I think I should bring.
The more often you hike, the more of a sixth-sense you develop for food quantities. A few rules of thumb:
- All food should be dehydrated or dried foods, because you don’t want to carry any water in your food bag. Say goodbye to canned foods, fresh produce, most meats (except salami and jerky), most dairy, etc.
- Aim for roughly two pounds of food per day, although this will vary based on your caloric requirements and food preferences.
- Maximize your food bang per buck, which I’ve colloquially heard is at least 100 calories per ounce. Snickers and olive oil are thru hikers’ best friends. (More technical details from The Trek.)
- Bring a variety of foods, or else you’ll be begging other hikers to please relieve you of your 100th Clif Bar. I once did an 80-mile section hike with my mom, who literally only packed mixed nuts (“they’re so calorie-efficient”); she definitely earned her trail name “Nuts”, for more reasons than one.
- Indulge yourself with a reward, because you deserve it after a long day. For many hikers, this comes in the form of a single-shot liquor mini-bottle. For me, it’s corn tortillas.
- Don’t mail yourself food packages, unless the trail logistics require it (e.g. there’s a necessary re-supply point that is a post office and nothing else). It doesn’t save you money, it forces you to a scheduled place/time, and I promise you don’t know what foods you’ll be craving when packing the box from somewhere worlds away.
The specific contents of my food bag change with every hike, but I follow these general guidelines when walking the aisles of Walmart or tiny bodega stores in prep for a few days on trail.
How to Re-Pack
Packaging is bad — partially because it’s generally wasteful and particularly because it leaves you with more garbage to pack out and carry. Save weight by re-packing your food!
Open up the containers of food you bought and discard of any heavy plastics, rigid liners, cardboard, etc. Yes, your Oreos and Pop-Tarts will get mushy, but you’re going to sprinkle them on your oatmeal anyway, right? Only the items in thin, flexible plastic should remain as-is (e.g. protein bars). For the rest, use Ziploc bags to re-pack everything— this allows your food to be re-sealable (very important for snacks & cheese) and helps you break up larger items into portions (e.g. turning a bulk bag of couscous into single-night meals). Don’t forget the flavor packets, which can be opened and emptied into the baggies.
Cooking: Stove Top
The standard cooking setup is straightforward: stove and pot powered by a fuel canister. The stove attaches to the fuel, but the pot sits precariously on top, which is why I personally ditched the stove-top setup (see below photo of spilled pasta). It can be relatively cheap (if you get a non-sexy stove) or super lightweight (if you get an MSR Pocket Rocket and titanium pot), which I think is why people like it, but it also is sensitive to windy conditions and requires you to routinely refill your fuel supply.
Cooking: Jetboil
The standard stove-top setup (described above) has evolved to something more compact, balanced, and efficient: the Jetboil. With this cooking system, the stove and the pot are a unit, which you then attach to the fuel canister while cooking. Because it’s one system, there is much less heat lost during cooking, so you save on fuel, money, and time. It’s gnarly how fast you can get a few cups of water to a boil with this thing! Plus, you’re a lot less likely to knock it over and spill dinner (which happens not infrequently on trail, given the uneven terrain of your ‘kitchen’).
Going Stove-Less
I recently decided to forgo a stove completely and eat only cold meals on trail. What drove me to this madness? Well, I didn’t want to spend money on a Jetboil or on fuel (before I started doing solo hikes, I just always mooched off my sister’s) and only my dinners were cooked (so the change affected just ~20% of my on-trail meals). What made this easier for me than maybe it would be for others is that I don’t drink coffee/tea (so there is no pressing hot-water need for caffeine) and, honestly, I have weird eating habits (hard to describe…but the thought of mushy cold-soaked food does not bother me at all). Obviously this stove-less style is the most ultra-lightweight option, which is a nice bonus.
The way it works is (see below photos):
- Prep: I carry a cute little Skippy peanut butter jar (Ziploc bags or Talenti jars are also popular — you just want something light/plastic and water-tight sealable)
- Mix: About 30 minutes or a few hours before I eat, I pour everything together plus some water. At first, I just eyeball quantities (see step #4 for excess liquid).
- Soak: Leave it be for some time. After breakfast, I might mix some ramen for lunch and then hike with it in my backpack; when I first get to camp, I might mix some couscous for dinner and then leave it sitting on a rock while I setup camp; after dinner, I might mix some oatmeal for breakfast and then leave the jar in my bear bag/can overnight.
- Enjoy!: I promise it’s yummy, the same way cold pizza is yummy the day after. If you have excess water, don’t pour it out! (Partially because that’s not LNT, i.e. Leave No Trace, and partially because there are lots of nutrients in that water!) Instead, mix in some almond butter (if it’s a breakfast item) or some dried mashed potatoes (if it’s a lunch/dinner item) — you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten “Ramen bombs”, trust me.
I really hope everyone tries cold soaking their food! I go stove-less even on car camping trips now, that’s how much I love it.
Off-Trail Food
Trail food is important, yes, but you will spend more time thinking and talking about off-trail food than anything else. “I would orgasm on the spot if I had an orange to eat right now” was declared and widely agreed to while mid-desert on the PCT in 2016. Fortunately, heaven-on-Earth comes in the form of “trail angels” who support hikers in many ways (see separate blog post), including with food. You generally don’t know when or where trail magic will surprise you, but when it comes, it’s pure elation. BBQs, stocked coolers, ice cream floats, day-hikers’ snacks, BEER, etc. — it truly is magic. And when you get to towns along the trail, or when you finish a section hike, you’ll get to indulge in whatever food you fantasized about for the last 80+ miles.
