Chris Townsend

by The Backpacker's Handbook - 3rd Ed

  chapter seven

  the wilderness kitchen

  “I THINK,” SAID CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, “THAT WE OUGHT TO EAT ALL OUR PROVISIONS NOW, SO THAT WE SHAN’T HAVE SO MUCH TO CARRY.”

  —Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne

  FOOD AND DRINK

  One of the joys of backpacking is taking the first sip of a hot drink at the end of a long day. Often it’s the anticipation of that moment that keeps me going for the last hour or so. The tent is up, my boots are off, and I can lie back and start to unwind. I may eat and drink while lying in the tent, a gale raging outside, or while sitting outside, back against a tree or boulder, admiring the view. Either way, this period of relaxation and renewal is a crucial part of living in the wilderness, one of the aspects of backpacking that differentiates it from day hiking.

  Food plays a large part in how much you enjoy the outdoors. The possibilities and permutations are endless, so you can constantly vary your diet. Wilderness dining has two extremes: gourmet eaters and survival eaters. The first like to make camp at lunchtime so they have several hours to set up field ovens; they bake cakes and bread and cook multi-course dinners. They walk only a few miles each day and may use the same campsite for several nights. Survival eaters breakfast on a handful of dry cereal and a swig of water and are up and walking within minutes of waking. They pound out dozens of miles every day; lunch is a series of cold snacks eaten on the move. Dinner consists of a freeze-dried meal, “cooked” by pouring hot water into the package, or more cold snacks.

  REASONS FOR BACKPACKING

  The exact route doesn’t matter; we’ve altered our original plans several times. Time passes. We hear the scolding of squirrels, the screeching of jays, the clicking of deer hooves, the delicate whisper of breezes in the aspens, the trickle of tiny creeks, and the roar of mighty waterfalls. Yes, and the whine of mosquitoes, the buzz of rattlesnakes, and unseen animals in the night that just might be bears. But beyond these sounds—or perhaps beneath them—is a profound silence. When I leave the roaring cataracts of a river to enter a thick grove of massive, ancient conifers, it is as though I’ve walked under a blanket—so all-embracing, so physical, is the silence.

  Most people, of course, fall somewhere between these two extremes. I lean heavily toward being a survival eater, so you won’t learn here how to bake bread or pizza. For that you’ll need to turn to an outdoor cookery book, such as Dorcas Miller’s Backcountry Cooking and Good Food for Camp and Trail, Claudia Axcell, Vikki Kinmont Kath, and Diana Cooke’s Simple Foods for the Pack, June Fleming’s The Well-Fed Backpacker, and the wonderfully named Gorp, Glop and Glue Stew, by Yvonne Prater and Ruth Dyar Mendenhall, in which 165 well-known outdoorspeople give their favorite recipes and tell some kitchen tales. These books are full of mouthwatering recipes and suggestions. I’ve been meaning to try some of them since I bought Simple Foods for the Pack some twenty-five years ago.

  Which foods are best for backpacking is debatable. At one hikers’ gathering I attended, a speaker denounced a certain popular candy bar as “not food” and said that when they reach town hikers should head for the salad bar, not the all-you-can-eat pizza place. Others demurred, strongly. Pasta keeps me going better than rice, potatoes, or other carbohydrates, perhaps simply because I prefer it. I know other hikers who hate pasta and never eat it. What it comes down to, of course, is personal choice. If a certain food helps you enjoy backpacking, then take it with you, whatever anyone else says.

  Here I describe what I eat and why. I prefer less-processed, additive-free whole foods, preferably organic, and I am mostly vegetarian. I’ve been known to eat candy bars at times, however, and I can’t resist pizza.

  Much of the information below was derived from Food Facts, by David Briggs and Mark Wahlqvist, a fascinating volume published in the UK and Australia in 1988 (it is long out of print, but available online at healthyeatingclub.com), and from the Dietary Guidelines published jointly by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dga).

  Hot or Cold?

  Hot food provides no more energy than cold food. Cooking food can destroy some vitamins, though some starchy food such as potatoes, beans, and lentils need to be cooked to make them more digestible and, in the case of the last two, to destroy substances that make utilizing their protein difficult. One way to cut the weight of your pack would be to eat only cold food and thus dispense with stove, fuel, and cookware. I’ve considered this, but I always end up taking food that needs cooking because on short trips the extra weight is so slight that it doesn’t matter and on long trips the psychological boost of hot food is wonderful, especially when it’s chilly or the weather turns cold and wet.

  I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to survive without a stove and hot sustenance in winter, when you may have to melt snow for water and when a hot meal can send waves of welcome warmth through your cold, stiff body. If anyone becomes really cold, perhaps on the verge of hypothermia, hot food and drink are a great help.

  Fats, Proteins, and Carbohydrates

  Food consists of several components, and the body needs them all. The main ones are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. All three provide energy but also serve other functions.

  Fats release their energy slowly and can be stored in the body to be used when required. Because fats are digested gradually, they aren’t a quick source of energy. Your body can’t easily digest fats while exercising, either, so it’s best to avoid eating a lot of fat during the day. Eating fats as part of your evening meal, however, enables them to release their energy during the night, which helps keep you warm. Sources of fat include dairy products, margarine, eggs, nuts, and meat. The current standard advice is that you should cut down on foods high in saturated fats (butter, animal-fat margarine, cheese, whole milk, lard, chocolate) and replace them with those high in polyunsaturated fats (vegetable-fat margarine, low-fat spreads, vegetable oil) and monounsatu-rated fats (olive oil). Nutritionists recommend cutting down the total amount of fat in the diet anyway, since fat can have other unwanted health effects. The body needs some fat, but nothing like the amount most people in developed countries eat. However, fats are an important part of the backpacker’s diet, especially in cold weather.

  Protein renews muscles and body tissue. During digestion, proteins break down into the amino acids they’re made from. The body then rebuilds these into muscle and tissue protein. Complete proteins contain a full complement of amino acids; they’re most commonly found in meat, eggs, and dairy products. Incomplete proteins lack one or more amino acids but can be combined to create complete proteins; they’re found in grains and legumes. Thus a stew with beans and barley provides all the amino acids. The body either burns protein as fuel or stores it as fat if it isn’t immediately used for muscle regeneration, so it’s best to eat small amounts of protein at every meal.

  The body quickly and directly turns carbohydrates into energy, so these are the foods most needed by the backpacker. Carbohydrates may be simple or complex. Simple ones are sugars (sucrose, dextrose, fructose, glucose, and honey); complex ones are starches (grains, vegetables, legumes). Generally you should try to rely more on complex carbohydrates, because they provide more energy over a longer period. They also provide fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Fiber is essential in your diet to prevent constipation—a potential problem for backpackers living on dehydrated food. Sugars give you a quick boost when you’re tired, but it won’t last and you’ll feel tired again when the energy they supply is used up.

  Determining what constitutes a proper proportion of these components in your diet is a nutritionist’s basic reason for being. The current advice from most experts is to eat less fat and protein and more carbohydrates. Most backpackers, especially those who undertake long hikes, will have come to this conclusion, I suspect, because it’s carbohydrates that speed you along the trail and that you crave when food runs low. My backpacking menu is probably 60 to 70 percent carbohydrates, the rest split equally between fats and p
roteins.

  Vitamins and Minerals

  Vitamins and minerals are also food components, but not ones you need worry about on trips of less than one month. Even if your diet is deficient in them for short periods, it’s not likely to hurt you. But on long trips where you lack fresh food, adding a vitamin and mineral supplement to your diet could mean avoiding a deficiency. I’ve taken multivitamins on most of my long walks, though I didn’t do it on the five-and-a-half-month Continental Divide Trail hike and suffered no ill effects. Now I take vitamin C (1 gram) and vitamin E tablets each day (when I remember). Whether they make any difference I can’t tell, but they weigh very little, and they just might prevent a deficiency.

  Calories and Weight

  A calorie is the measure of food’s energy value. The calorie measurement used in reference to food is the kilocalorie (kcal)—it represents the amount of heat needed to raise 1 kilogram of water one degree Celsius. (Kilocalorie, or Calorie with a capital C, is the proper term, but it’s often referred to as “calorie” on food packages.) Sometimes kilojoules are used instead of kilocalories. There are 4.2 kilojoules to the kilocalorie.

  How many kilocalories a person needs each day depends on metabolism, weight, age, sex, and level of activity. Metabolism is an extremely complex system that is not fully understood, but it defines the body processes that transform foods into usable elements and energy; any surplus is stored as fat. If you eat more kilocalories than you use, you’ll put on weight; if you eat fewer, you’ll lose it. Putting on weight is not usually a problem for backpackers, but losing it may be. The weight that most concerns us is the weight of the food we must carry in order to have enough energy.

  People’s metabolic rates differ, though generally the fitter and more active you are, the faster you’ll burn up food, whether you’re working or at rest. Figures are available for the kilocalories needed for “everyday life” for people of different sizes. For someone of my height (5 feet, 8 inches) and weight (154 to 161 pounds), it’s about 2,500 kilocalories a day. Of that, 1,785 kilocalories make up the basal metabolism (the energy required simply to keep the body functioning), based on 1,100 kilocalories per 45 kilograms of body weight. To be able to expend more energy without burning body stores, I need to consume more kilocalories, so it’s clear that my backpacking menu must provide more than 2,500 kilocalories a day.

  You can roughly calculate your kilocalorie needs based on figures that give kilocalorie demands of various activities (see sidebar). I did this when I wrote the first edition of this book. Before that I had just carried roughly the same weight of food on each walk, assuming it would provide the same number of kilocalories. I made the calculations because I was curious to see how closely my field-based figures compared with scientific ones and because the exercise might be useful for others in planning their food supplies.

  KILOCALORIE DEMANDS OF VARIOUS ACTIVITIES

  ACTIVITY

  sleeping, resting, fasting

  sitting—reading, desk work

  sitting—typing, playing piano, operating controls

  light bench work, serving in store, gardening, slow walking

  social sports, cycling, tennis, light factory work, light farm work

  heavy physical labor, carrying, stacking, cutting wood, jogging, competitive sports

  very hard physical labor, intense physical activity, heavy lifting, very vigorous sporting activity

  If we include walking with a pack at the upper end of category 5 and the lower end of category 6, then men need 360 kilocalories per hour and women 240. If you walk for about seven hours a day, not including stops, as I do, that works out to 2,100 kilocalories for a woman, and 2,520 for a man (five and six per minute, respectively). Splitting up the rest of the day into nine hours of sleeping and resting (category 1), which requires 270 to 540 kilocalories an hour (women) and 540 to 810 (men), and eight hours of category 4 (setting up camp, cooking, packing, “slow walking” around the site), which requires 960 to 1,680 kilocalories (women) and 1,440 to 1,920 (men), we end up with totals of 3,330 to 4,320 kilocalories (women) and 4,500 to 5,250 (men). These figures are very rough, of course, but they seem on the high side. You could argue, however, that a lot of backpacking activity falls into categories 6 and 7 and requires more energy than given here, not less.

  Those figures seem high to me, because I need only about 4,000 kilocalories a day on trips that will last no more than a few weeks. But these figures are for “average” people, and no one fits them exactly. Even so, such exercises are useful to those who would like to know how much energy they use and where it comes from.

  On longer hikes, my appetite goes up dramatically after the first couple of weeks, and I now plan for more food from that time onward. I estimate that on long hikes I average at least 5,000 kilocalories a day. In bitter weather, I may need more because of the cold, and more again on ski tours, because skiing uses up energy at a far greater rate than walking.

  Most foods these days have the calorie content listed on the package, which is useful for making comparisons and compiling menus. I always check labels to see if the kilocalories are listed. Unlike many who count calories, I’m searching for high-calorie, not low-calorie, foods. The figures in the table on page 248 are taken from a variety of sources, including the USDA National Nutrient Database (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp); Food Facts, by David Briggs and Mark Wahlqvist; and manufacturers’ specifications.

  Based on calories only, these figures suggest that you should live solely on margarine, vegetable oil, dried eggs, nuts, and chocolate in order to carry the least weight. But you wouldn’t feel very well or find hiking easy, since these are all very high in fats (fats contain 9 kilocalories per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have just 4).

  The diet I eat of complex carbohydrates (dried skimmed milk, dried fruit, dried vegetables, pasta, rice, oat crackers, muesli, and granola bars), plus a little fat (cheese, margarine) gives about 400 kilo-calories per 3.5 ounces. This works out to 2.2 pounds of food for 4,000 kilocalories per day, which is about what I carry. This diet should also provide enough protein. Only a sugar-based diet runs the risk of being insufficient in protein.

  It’s worth checking the caloric content of any food you intend to carry—there are significant variations between brands, and high-calorie, carbohydrate-based foods mean less weight than low-calorie ones. For example, I’m glad I don’t carry canned fish—as so many backpackers do—since according to the chart the weight per calorie (including the can) is very high. However, I really should give up my coffee in favor of cocoa!

  On two- or three-day warm-weather trips, the weight of food in the pack isn’t a major concern, and I sometimes take bread, fresh fruit, canned goods, and anything else I find in the cupboard. But in cold weather and on any trip when I have to carry at least a week’s worth of food, weight matters a great deal. Unfortunately, you need less food for short trips and more for long ones. I’ve read of people who get by on a pound or so of food a day without subsisting on margarine and nuts, but I can’t—at least not for more than a few days. Skimp on food and you might find yourself feeling lethargic and irritable. You might even pack in the trip without realizing that your low morale was due to a lack of food.

  NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF SOME COMMON FOODS

  I need about 35 ounces of food for each day on the trail. Powdered drinks, condiments, and other odds and ends are included in this total, which roughly divides into 7 ounces for breakfast, 14 ounces for dinner, and 14 ounces eaten during the day. The main evening meal usually weighs about 7 ounces, the other 7 ounces being made up of soup, dessert, margarine, herbs and spices, milk powder, coffee, and sugar. These figures yield approximately 800,1,600, and 1,600 kilocalories for the three meals. If the total weight of my food comes to much more than 35 ounces a day, I know I’ve packed too much, so I jettison some.

  This 35 ounces a day equals 15 pounds a week, a considerable weight. Two weeks’ food—30 pounds—is the most I ever consider carrying, and I
do that only if there’s no other choice. Back in 1982 on the Pacific Crest Trail I foolishly carried 44 pounds of food on the twenty-three-day crossing of the snowbound High Sierra, which made for a 100-pound load, because I also carried snowshoes, an ice ax, crampons, and cold-weather clothing. My pack was too heavy for me to lift; I had to put it on while sitting down. The weight was ridiculous, and I attempted to carry it only because I had no idea what such a load would feel like. And I still ran short of food—probably because of the extra energy I needed to carry all that weight. Never again!

  On long hikes and in cold conditions, I keep the weight down to 35 ounces a day by increasing the amount of fat, usually by adding more margarine and cheese to evening meals. Polar explorers often eat appalling amounts of fat daily, since it’s the only way they can consume the 7,000 to 8,000 kilocalories they need. Eating that amount in carbohydrates would mean huge loads and never-ending meals.