Category: Adventure gear and techniques

I met a guy who told me his theory that people have a part of their brain that is only interested in survival and until this part is appeased it’s just not going to let you have any fun or let you think clearly about anything else. So, when you stop for the night it’s important to set up your tent and say, “Look, here is your home for the night�; take out something to eat and give yourself some water.

It’s why when you have company over you can make them happier if you show them where they will be sleeping that night and where everything is. Show them that there is food, water and a place to sleep.

My personal observations are that this is true. People start getting weird when they don’t know where they will be sleeping or if they are going to be fed.

I also remember Jardine saying something like this in his book. He said that if you don’t feed yourself well on the trail, if you don’t keep yourself hydrated, that the part of you that is only interested in survival will find a way to get you off the trail and back to town where food and water is more reliable.

When I was hiking in the North Cascades last summer, I met a woman with a painful knee. I gave her the ace bandage that someone had given to me and she gave me a Cherry Pie Larabar. It was delicious.  The only ingredients are: dates, almonds and unsweetened cherries. You probably could make your own.

I love my balaclava and I like it for sun protection, but in the summer I don’t want to be wearing a black fleece balaclava for sun protection. Searching on the internet I found this solution: the coolmax summer buff. You can use it a bunch of different ways; what a useful thing this seems to be.  Watch the video for instructions on how to turn it in to a pirate cap and a lot of different styles.  Someone on the internet said that they hauled a person up with one of these.

Packaging can add a lot to the weight in you food bag and then in your trash baggie. If after a week on the trail, you have more garbage then will fit in a one quart ziplock you probably didn’t slim down enough on the packaging. My favorite re-packaging bags are one gallon size food storage bags; I just tie a lose knot in them. The food storage bags weigh .10 oz. or 2 grams. They can be reused, but are hard to find in a mini-mart, but most mini marts will have ziplock baggies for your repacking needs. Carry a few extra just in case.

Cookies- dump in a baggie and throw the packaging away

Chips- the bag that they come in is fine but let all th air out of the bag and smash them up.

Mac and Cheese- throw away the box, dump the noodles and the whole cheese packet in baggie

Cereal- toss the box and just use the inner bag.

Instant mashed potatoes. and Liptons noodles and sauce. The baggie weighs less then the packaging and since I don’t eat a whole dinner at a time it works better for me to re-package it. If you are carrying more then one packet of either put them both in the same baggie

Ramen noodles- the package they come in is fine.

Instant milk- toss the box and dump milk in baggie.

Instant coffee- empty in baggie.

Corn nuts- empty into baggie and throw away the packaging.

Nuts- re package in baggie

Jerky- the bag it comes in is fine, but it is a little heavy.

Bars- the packaging they come in is fine.

Freeze dried food. – These expensive meals come with heaviest packaging I have ever seen. Toss the package. Either pack it in the inner bag that it comes with or throw contents in a storage bag. It doesn’t make any sense to cook in a bag; it will just leave you with a heavy gooey bag to pack out. Boil the water, dump the dinner in pot, put a cover on the pot, wait, and then eat out of the pot. See my no pot washing system article for a no water, safe, pot cleaning system. I have gone 6 months without washing my pot once.

This stuff can be found at most little stores along the way.

The Carbs:

Tortillas

Instant mashed potatoes

Noodles and sauce

Rice and sauce.

Mac and cheese

Ramen noodles

Bread or bagels

Cereal – Throw away the box, of course, and pack the inner bag.

“Bon Appetit” danishes – Besides carbs, fat and a load of calories per ounce, these probably don’t pack squat in nutrition but they taste good and you can pack them as tight as you want in your food bag and they don’t break apart, they just get a little flatter.

Chips—just let them get all crumbled up and eat them with a spoon.

Corn nuts

Dried fruit

Crackers

The fats:

Peanut butter—I recommend buying the 8 oz plastic jar and then re-filling it, because the 8oz size is sometimes hard to find. Peanut butter is calorie rich, requires no cooking and is good in a tortilla or just eat a spoon full.

Cheese—My personal favorite. keep it in a zip lock. It gets a little runny in the heat but it’s still good. The individually wrapped 1 oz sticks of string cheese make good pocket food.

Butter—put in in a empty, plastic, peanut butter jar. I have never carried butter but I meet a hiker that was having a problems with losing too much weight and he solved his problem by putting loads of butter on everything.

Margarine. lots of hikers carry a squeeze bottle of margarine.

Oil— You can find small plastic bottles of olive oil- but probably not at a little store.

Nuts. For some reason cashews seem to be the nut of choice for little stores; they usually also have peanuts and sometimes almonds.

Seeds—pumpkin, sunflower, etc.

The protein:

Nutritional bars— I look for ones that have substantial protein. Expensive.

Lunch meat—who would have thought. I read about bringing lunch meat in Yogi’s PCT book, She recommends buying it in small packages because they will stay fresh that way until you eat them. I tried it, and sure enough the meat stayed good for days and it’s much cheaper and more available then tuna packets.

Jerky

Powdered milk

Salami

Tuna packets

Chicken packets

Something fresh: apples, carrots, etc.
apples— If you have been on the trail for a long time, a piece of fresh fruit or a vegetable tastes wonderful. I eat the entire apple core and swallow the seeds and stem, so I don’t have to pack out anything.

Treats:

Cookies— personal favorite: Mystic mint cookies. Fig newtons are also good.

Honey bear— peanut butter and honey in a tortilla is pretty tasty. but you can also just take a swig if you have a mind to.

Hard candy

Gum.

Hot beverages: hot chocolate, tea, coffee, lemonade mix, jello mix, etc.

If they have a little deli I usually buy something pre-made for dinner that night. It’s sort of like sticking a carrot out in front of a horse; it coaxes me out of town.

Example of one day of food:

4 oz cereal or danish

2 oz powdered milk.

2 bars, Nutritional bars, granola bars, or candy bar with nuts.

4 oz of snacks- jerky, chips, nuts, dried fruit, etc. I try to pick a variety in the fat, carb, and protein category. For instance if I’m buying for 3 days I may get 4 oz of jerky, 4 oz of nuts, and 4 oz of corn nuts or chips.

2 oz hot beverage making stuff.

2 oz fat- cheese

2-3 oz protein – lunch meat, salami, tuna packet, etc.

3-4 oz carbs.—rice and sauce, instant mashed potatoes, noodles and sauce, or tortillas

4 oz something fresh- apple, carrots, etc. – only for whole days on the trail; not for the day I hike in nor the day I hike out.

3 cookies.

approximately 2 lbs (.90 kilograms) of food a day.

I usually make sure every meal has a carb, a fat, and a protein.

If you don’t have a case for your GPS, that protects the screen, I would recommend putting some clear packing tape over the screen.

It won’t be long before I’m sporting 12 new metal Chinese spoons. A reader, of this blog, pointed me to this E-bay seller that is shipping the metal Chinese spoon, that I like for backpacking and travel, to anywhere in the world.

Because sometimes the world is a loud place, ear plugs are a good thing to have in your pack when you are traveling. Some hikers also carry them, to block out loud snorers in the shelters or when the wind is whipping their tent around so much that it is hard to sleep.

The best ones, in my opinion, are the EAR Classic Yellow Disposable Foam Earplug, because they can be washed or gotten wet and they still work; once the smooth foam ones get wet they will never fit in your ears right again. To wash the yellow ones just put them in your pants pocket and throw in the washing machine and dryer. I have been using the same pair, for when I use my chainsaw, for over two years. I found single pairs for sell in a drug store. They weigh so little that my scale with a 1 gram readability doesn’t register any weight for them.

For a toothbrush, I carry the lightest child’s size toothbrush I can find. I keep it in a plastic flip top sandwich bag. This ensures that it doesn’t get dirty, while in my ditty bag, and that it gets a little air so it doesn’t get moldy. I really miss toothpaste, when I don’t have it, so I carry a trial size tube.

I only use a little bit of toothpaste. A little bit of toothpaste does as good a job as a lot of toothpaste and I don’t have anything to spit out when I’m done — it’s considered bad form to leave toothpaste residue on the ground or on the leaves.

I have used the toothbrush/toothpaste/carrycase toothbrush. They work well and you can refill them but they are a little heavier.

I have tried the two piece ones that you connect together and wouldn’t recommend them. The brush section sometimes flings out of the handle section.

Note: The small tubes of toothpaste are often kept in the “travel size” section and not with the big tubes of toothpaste.

For eating on the trail all a person needs is a spoon. My favorite spoon was a metal Chinese spoon I got in Thailand. It held big bite fulls of food, had a good edge for digging into hard frozen pints of Ben and Jerry’s, and it fit into my small pot for storage.  Update: zebra spoon for sale

I carried that spoon for 4 years, but one day, in my cabin, it just disappeared. I found them on the internet at http://www.culinox.co.uk/acatalog/usparts.html, but they don’t ship to the US.

Since the disappearance of my Chinese spoon I have reverted back to the standard ugly polycarbonate spoon. It works fine but I would much rather have my Chinese spoon.

It is generally agreed among hikers that a spork makes neither a good spoon nor a good fork, but I decided to try out this Light My Fire Spork because it has a spoon on one end and a fork on the other. The spoon is okay, but the fork doesn’t really have enough curvature to be useful and it sometimes pokes me in the hand when I’m using the spoon. If they had just built a colorful Chinese spoon they probably would have been better off. Still, the spoon part is okay and it is colorful.

Update on the Light My Fire Spork.  I carried this spork for awhile on the PCT(Pacific Crest Trail) in my food bag.  It broke.  It’s not very sturdy.  Would probably be okay if kept in your pot.

When I was taking an Outward Bound course it was a common event to lose a spoon. People improvised a spoon with a shell, a rock, a stick, or a drivers license. One woman used two sticks like chop sticks when she lost her spoon.