Backpackers generally agree on the basic equipment for a backpacking trip: sleeping bag and pad, camp stove, fuel, tent. What clothes to take is a matter of season, climate, and personal choice. What food to take is more variable. Though I felt I had worked out a good regimen years ago, I began to doubt my choices when I was packing for my first trip with Bob Cook, who had been hiking in Yosemite National Park for twenty years and was a backpacking "pro." He, I thought, no doubt walks with a light pack, leaping up mountains with the alacrity of a mountain goat—graceful, lithe, and unencumbered. I didn't want to be trundling up the mountain behind him like a lumbering turtle, so I tried to lighten my pack by adjusting my trail menu. I was pleased that, in the end, I trimmed my week's food supply to three and a half pounds, but when Bob told me his food weighted nine pounds, I began to worry that I would get hungry. Bob was worried that I would want to start eating his food.
The differences were great. Bob carried ready-to-eat, freeze-dried dinners: chicken a la king, beef stroganoff, three-cheese lasagna. My one-cup dehydrated meals—mushroom soup, miso with seaweed—sounded pitifully plain. And small. But one packaged gourmet trail dinner (two servings, but some of my hiking partners eat one package per dinner) weighs 4 3/4 ounces, provides 520 calories, and costs $6.50. One cup of soup weighs 1.2 ounces, provides 140 calories, and costs $.99 on sale. So who comes out ahead?
For breakfast Bob invariably has oat bran. I usually carry muesli, but muesli isn't light, so on one trip, years ago, I carried bran flakes instead. But light in weight also means "lite," as in no calories, no fat, no sustenance. On the first strenuous climb after my bran flakes breakfast, my energy flagged. I began stumbling behind my hiking partner and had to call for a snack stop. On the Yosemite trip I would carry muesli again, but, for variety and to lighten my pack, I would alternate muesli with a powdered protein drink for breakfast.
Bob's trail lunch is, invariably, six Triscuit crackers, two ounces of cheddar cheese, and a small bag of M&Ms. One of my backpacking partners carries peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which by the third day look very unappetizing. Another partner carries cucumbers. That's too much weight for me, but I like the idea of fresh food so sometimes I'll take six or eight cherry tomatoes to eat with the dehydrated hummus that, reconstituted with water, serves as my lunch. On short trips I'll also dribble on a little olive oil, but for the Yosemite trip I left behind both cherry tomatoes and olive oil, augmenting the hummus only with cutup bits of sun-dried tomatoes for a lunch much lighter than two ounces.
Because trail snacks are important, even when I'm keeping weight to a minimum, I have thoroughly explored all possibilities, carefully comparing trail mixes and different brands of energy bars for weight per grams of protein, calories per grams of protein, and cost. Luna Bars won. I take enough Luna Bars for one a day, half of a bar for each midmorning snack and the other half at midafternoon. Other extras include enough tea bags for one cup of tea a day and some dried mango or apricots for vitamin C. And that's it. Three and a half pounds. Seven days.
As it turned out, I wasn't hungry. I kept up with the fast-footed Bob, I didn't gawk enviously at his gourmet meals, and I ended the hike without the extra weight of unused food in my pack. I was well satisfied with my three-and-a-half-pound, seven-day menu, even though the first thing I did when I got off the trail was go straight to a restaurant and eat. But so did Bob.
Since then I have made one major adjustment in my backpacking menu thanks to the dinner my son and daughter-in-law made for me on my sixtieth birthday. They and I had backpacked into the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area, in the Oregon Cascades. To celebrate the occasion, on the day of the birthday itself Leah told me she and Ela would make me dinner that night—no trail food for me on such an important day! Dinner was superb: angel hair pasta mixed, while hot, with cream cheese, cutup pieces of Monterey Jack cheese, Parmesan cheese, and dried tomatoes along with the bit of water they soaked in. (The augmentation of artichoke hearts that Ela and Leah enjoyed was, alas, not included in my dinner because of my peppers allergy.) The meal was so good and so easy it has become, with adjustments, a variation to my trail dinners. Instead of artichoke hearts (too heavy) and the Jack and cream cheeses (too heavy and too susceptible to heat on longer trips), I add bits of tuna from a vacuum-sealed tuna package that is easy to carry in a pack, weighs only seven ounces, lasts for three meals, and can be used for lunches or dinners. Later in the same summer that I was in Mt. Jefferson Wilderness with Ela and Leah, on another trip to Yosemite, with Bob, I sat at the edge of 9200-foot Smedberg Lake, fresh from a long swim in its blue, blue water under white-granite, gray-and-orange streaked peaks, enjoying a meal of angel hair pasta topped with a tuna-Parmesan-dried-tomato sauce. I thought nothing could have been finer had it come out of my own kitchen in my own little house in the faraway Siskiyou Mountains.
Next week: "The Worst Job I Ever Had"
Recipes from this post:
Backpacking breakfasts (muesli and protein drink)
Backpacking lunches (hummus, tuna, torta)
Backpacking dinners (easy dinners; angel hair pasta)
Breakfast #1
Ingredients
Muelsi
Nonfat instant powdered milk (Not Carnation. Health food stores carry much better-tasting milk powders.)
Preparation
Measure 1 serving muesli (1/2 cup) and 2 tablespoons powdered milk. Mix together. Depending on how good your eye is at measuring proportions, put one, two, or all servings in separate zip-lock bags.
To make
Add 1/2 cup water. If it's boiling water, you have an instant hot cereal.
Breakfast #2
Ingredients
One package instant protein mix, such as Spiru-tein
1/4 cup instant nonfat milk powder (See note in Breakfast #1)
1 cup water
Preparation
Put the measured milk powder in zip-lock bags.
To make
Put the protein powder and the milk powder in a container. Your empty hiker's water bottle works great. Mix them together. Then add the water and shake or beat well.
Backpacking lunches
Lunch #1
Ingredients
Dehydrated hummus
Sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
Olive oil (optional)
Crackers (optional)
Cherry tomatoes (optional)
Preparation
Cut up the dried tomatoes into the hummus and divide hummus into individual servings of 1/4 cup or more, depending on appetite. Place two servings each into a zip-lock bag. Put olive oil in a tiny plastic bottle if you're going to carry it. Put crackers and cherry tomatoes in hard plastic containers, condensing the space as much as possible.
To make
At lunch, squeeze half of the hummus out of a bag into t cup and add enough water to make a paste of the consistency you like. Let it sit for a few minutes to thicken and to let the hummus granules melt and the tomato bits soften. Olive oil improves the taste immensely, if you've carried some along, and crackers are always nice, though not necessary. Cherry tomatoes stay remarkably fresh on the trail and are great fresh food, especially with hummus.
Lunch #2
Ingredients
Tuna
Cherry tomatoes
To make
There's not much to it. Just flake a meal's worth of tuna out of the foil bag into your Sierra Club trail cup, add 2-3 cherry tomatoes, and eat tuna and tomatoes together. It's a yummy trail lunch.
Lunch #3
Ingredients
Your favorite whole-grain crackers
Torta (cream cheese with dried tomatoes, gorgonzola with walnuts—there are many choices.)
This works well if you are on a short trip. It is too heavy and needs too much refrigeration if you are gone more than two nights. Otherwise, it's a superb option.
Backpacking dinners
The easy dinners
Ingredients
Big Soups provide more food than Nile products per carton, but, of course, take up more room in the pack. Try couscous and rice mixtures in a cup (the kinds that only take boiling water to make—no cooking) as well as conventional soups. Take the dehydrated soup out of its carton and put it in a zip-lock bag to save space. Far East couscous meals are also good because you don't need to cook them, only to pour boiling water over them. They usually come packaged for four servings. Divide the ingredients carefully into one-serving meals and put in zip-lock bags. A piece of dried mango makes a great dessert.
To make
Boil 1 cup of water. Pour over the soup or couscous, cover, and wait five minutes.
More elaborate: Angelp-hair pasta dinner
Ingredients
Angel-hair pasta
Cream cheese
Monterey Jack or cheddar cheese (or substitute vacuum-packed tuna for these two cheeses)
Parmesan cheese
Dried tomatoes
Preparation
Break the pasta small enough to fit into a backpacker's cooking pot. Cut the Jack or cheddar cheese into small pieces with your Swiss Army knife. Soak the dried tomatoes in enough water to cover.
To make
Bring a pot of water to a boil, not paying any attention to the directions on the package of the pasta suggesting lots and lots of water. Backpacking pots are small; just fill the pot about 3/4 full so the pasta won't boil over while it is cooking. Add the pasta and cook till done, about 3 minutes. Drain the pasta and add all the other ingredients, including the water of the soaking tomatoes. Mix well. The hot pasta will melt the cheeses into a thick sauce or heat the flakes of tuna. No dinner could be finer on the trail, under the high peaks, by the side of a beautiful lake.
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