Whether you’re preparing for a weekend backpacking excursion or a week-long, primitive camping trip, you need to bring food. Instead of cramming your backpack with heavy loads of fresh produce, jars of pasta sauce and bottles of flavored beverages, load up on foods appropriate for backpacking. These foods typically weigh less and take up less space than other consumables. Although several companies offer food products created with backpackers in mind, Mary Donahue, a professor of physical education and biological and health sciences at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, suggests that you scour your grocery store for suitable alternatives.
Gorp
Know to the uninitiated as “trail mix,” gorp can contain anything from roasted nuts and granola to chocolate pieces and dried fruit. Grocery and health-food stores carry their own versions of the crunchy, salty and sweet snack, but you also can concoct your own trail mix. When choosing ingredients, consider your tastes and also what will provide you with the most substantial nutrition. Include some variety of dried fruit and candy for complex carbohydrates, and add one or more varieties of nuts for protein and fat. You can mix all the ingredients together before embarking on your journey or, as Donahue suggests, carry a variety of ingredients in individual plastic bags and mix them together according to your tastes while on the trail.
Dehydrated Food
Lightweight and compact food is always better for backpacking, and you can’t get much lighter than dehydrated meals. A trip to the grocery store will yield a smorgasbord of dehydrated goods, including mashed-potato flakes, dried noodles with pre-mixed spice packs, soup mix in cups and instant oatmeal. The plethora of choices will keep you from getting too bored with your meals while on the trail. Before you embark on a backpacking trip, remove store-bought dehydrated food from their original packages, and seal them into more compact plastic bags. Keep ingredients for each meal together, and cut out the preparation instructions to tape to the side of each bag.
Cured Meats and Dairy Products
Jerky, hard salami and summer sausage are tasty, high-fat and high-protein snacks for the hike. The cured items keep, even in warmer weather, and they require no cooking. Although dried or cured meats make for tasty treats, they should serve only as supplements to other protein-rich foods. If you eat too large a quantity, warns experienced hiker and author Victoria Logue, the protein will convert into fat, which does not provide the immediate energy you might need over the course of a long hike. If you’re planning a long-distance backpacking trip, stock up on cheese and powdered milk–you will need the calcium over the course of the journey.
About this Author
Heidi Reeves writes in Alexandria, Va. She got her first writing and editing job in 2001, when she worked as editor-in-chief of her undergraduate newspaper. Since then, she’s earned a Master of Fine Arts at The University of Alabama, where she wrote and designed artist’s books. Reeves writes hobby, lifestyle and wedding planning articles for various online publications.
