Adding Variety to your Backpacking Menu
The food on my last 3-day section hike was so boring I thought I’d gag on the last day of my trip. I was lazy and brought along the same food for several days.
So this week, I’ve worked out 4-day freezer bag backpacking menu for my next hike that has an enormous amount of variety and very little repetition. In addition, I’ve created a menu that is lightweight and quite calorically dense, at 109 calories for every 1 oz. of food weight. In general, anthing above 100 calories per oz. is great.
Here’s my menu, broken out my meal and by day. Can you think of any other foods I should try on future hikes?
| Day | Item | Grams (g) | Calories |
| Breakfast (cold) | |||
| 1 | Organic Pop Tarts | 104 | 420 |
| 2 | Fruit & Nut Granola | 90 | 420 |
| 3 | TJ’s Granola Snack Clusters | 114 | 580 |
| 4 | TJ’s Granola Snack Clusters | 114 | 580 |
| Lunch | |||
| 1 | Ritz Crackers and Gouda Cheese | 199 | 670 |
| 2 | Ritz Crackers and Gouda Cheese | 199 | 670 |
| 3 | Whole Wheat Crackers and Honey Almond Butter | 139 | 680 |
| 4 | Ritz Crackers, Tuna in Olive Oil | 251 | 675 |
| Dinner (hot) | |||
| 1 | Annie’s Microwave Mac & Cheese | 244 | 920 |
| 2 | Refried Beans and Tortilla Chips | 238 | 1010 |
| 3 | Potato Leak Soup and Chorizo Sausage | 256 | 970 |
| Snacks | |||
| 1 | Dried apricots | 120 | 270 |
| 1 | Walnut halves | 60 | 400 |
| 1 | Snickers bar | 59 | 280 |
| 2 | Smokehouse almonds | 56 | 340 |
| 2 | Cheese-its | 90 | 480 |
| 2 | TJ’s Spicey Buffalo Jerkey | 92 | 190 |
| 3 | TJ’s Candied Crystallized Ginger | 84 | 300 |
| 3 | TJ’s Chili Spiced Mango | 90 | 330 |
| 3 | TY’s Flattened Dried Bananas | 80 | 360 |
| 4 | TJ’s Australian Licorice | 120 | 360 |
| 4 | TJ’s Dried Mango Slices | 114 | 360 |
| 4 | TJ’s Trek Trail Mix | 86 | 420 |
| total | 6.69 lbs. | 11,685 cal. |
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That’s a good menu - I’ll have to see if I can find some of those items in Japan. The staple mountain food out here is curry & rice, it’s all anybody eats. While it’s OK for a day or so, it gets old pretty quickly..
I’ve been experimenting with home-made energy gel this season, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I powered up and down Mt Fuji over the weekend on just one 300g packet (almost a full 24 hours, climbing from 800m to 3776m and back). The recipe is on my blog at http://i-cjw.com/blog/2008/08/06/carbohydrate-days/
Very very cool. I’m going to try making this stuff. There are times when I know I need calories but I’m don’t feel like chewing anything. I’ve tried GU but don’t trust it. Plus making your own means I can package it in 300 calorie doses. Ingenious.
I thought you might like that
It works best in small but frequent doses, ideally 25g (100kcal) every 20-30 minutes with a couple of mouthfuls of water. Any more than that and you risk spiking your insulin levels, which is obviously not desirable. I’ve found it keeps my blood glucose nice and steady, which leads to good fat metabolism and means I can keep going and going…
I added some amino acids into my last batch too. Pure rocket fuel!