This post is part two of a three-part series that I’m putting out in the weeks before our trip detailing the trail, our food/resupply strategy, and our gear. If you missed my first JMT post about our plan and the trail in general you can read that here.
The Terrifying Crisis That is Backpacking Food:
Have you ever tried to plan out 10 days of food, with the knowledge that once you’re on the trail there will be no opportunities to change it? Have you ever tried to do this three weeks in advance, knowing that you’ll be drastically increasing your daily caloric expenditure? What about doing it with no access to refrigeration, with weight being a massive concern, and the only kind of cooking available to you will be to add boiled water to things?
Have you? Because I have, and it’s crazy stressful!
Picture this: I am standing in my kitchen surrounded by a multiple scales, innumerable plastic bags, and piles of the most calorically dense food that I can find. I’m portioning, weighing, and bagging my food before I dump it into one of two bags. The first bag will go on my back and will (hopefully) get me through the first 10 days of our trip. The second bag will be mailed to Vermillion Valley Resort, our one and only resupply point for our hike and should (again, hopefully) contain enough food for the remaining seven days of our hike.
The ten day bag looks massive sitting in front of my washing machine. I hoist it up using the food scale and it reads 15.5 lbs. “Fuck! How is it still so light?!” I exclaim to Keith who is in the process of portioning trail mix into little baggies and counting ounces out loud like some sort of M&M drug dealer. I do some quick mental math to add in the food I’ll have to cook right before we leave, and come up to just shy of 17 lbs of food for 10 days. The general rule of thumb is 2 lbs of food per person per day. I’m short almost 3 lbs and at this point I just say “fuck it.” My well-fed American body can do with a few less calories. I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. But then again, everything about this trip is new to me so maybe I’m 100% wrong. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
There are few hard and fast rules when it comes to backpacking, and a large portion of the advice out there is “see what works for you” which, I think we can all agree, isn’t really advice at all. But the general thought is that you should pick food that doesn’t spoil, has at least 100 calories/oz, requires minimal to no cooking, isn’t heavy, and is full of fat and carbs, with protein being a secondary concern.
So what does that actually mean I’ll be eating.
Well we can break it down into three categories: breakfasts, snacks, and dinners.
Breakfast: Simplicity is key when packing for days and days on the trail, so I stuck with a three meals for breakfast that I know I like, and can rotate between.
– Mountain House Breakfast Scramble – this is one of the best freeze-dried foods I’ve ever had, so Keith and I bought it in bulk online and repackaged it into two-person servings.
– KIND Chocolate granola, freeze-dried strawberries, and powdered milk aka trail cereal!
– Luna Bars and whatever snacks I feel like eating that morning
– * Most breakfasts will be accompanied by coffee or hot chocolate
Snacks: I rarely stop for a real lunch on the trail, preferring to snack 2-3 times during the day at convenient rest stops. Snacks also make up the biggest diversity and calories in my food.
– Potato Chips or Trader Joe’s baked Cheetos knock offs – chips have between 130 and 160 calories per ounce, are full of fats, sodium, and carbs, and are delicious. They’re a backpacker superfood.
– Home made beef jerky – because we’re classy like that. Get on our level!
– Trail mix – and by trail mix I mean 80% chocolate items with a few handfuls of nuts and dried fruit in there to give it the illusion of “mix.”
– Rice Krispies – because duh, they’re delicious
– More chocolate – because you can never have too much
– Motivation cookies – these look similar to regular cookies, except I save them for when I’m having a low moment.
– Various bars that I’ll admittedly save until the last 2-3 days before our resupply when I’ve eaten all the good food from my bag.
Dinner: Dinners are where we really put some effort in. We dehydrated veggies (a lot of which went moldy in our first batch – live and learn eh?), bough bulk freeze-dried meat to supplement our lacking protein sources, and developed/made up eight unique-ish recipes. The store WinCo Foods aka “prepper heaven” proved to be invaluable for buying bulk foods. Do you need pounds and pounds of fake mac and cheese sauce powder? If so, Winco Foods is the store for you! Here is what we’ll be eating:
– Green Chili Chicken chili – Recipe Courtesy of Anna and Derrick, thanks kids!
– Mac and Cheese with sausage
– Bean and Cheese Burritos
– Chicken Teriyaki
– Chicken Fajitas
– Pasta with ground beef
– Cheesy potatoes with sausage
– Chicken tortilla soup
– Something else I can’t remember that probably has potatoes or something
You’ll probably have noticed a pattern in that list, which is to say most meals start with a carb (either rice, potatoes, or refried beans), add in some flavoring (cheese powder, taco seasoning, teriyaki seasoning) and finish with whatever protein sounds like it fits the best (we bought freeze-dried chicken crumbles, sausage, and ground beef in bulk).
Resupplying – Or How I paid $50 just to mail myself food:
The final step of this entire process will be getting ourselves our food on the trail. The JMT goes through a very remote portion of the Sierra Nevada range so the only two options for a mid-point resupply are Muir Trail Ranch (generally thought to be for uppity jerks who can pay an exorbitant amount just to avoid hiking a few extra miles), or Vermillion Valley Resort commonly known as VVR (for the less wealthy among us who are totally willing to save $80 by hiking a few extra miles).
The plan will be to start the hike with 10 days of food each, resupply once at VVR, and then hike the remaining seven days into Yosemite Valley without starving, killing each other, or being eaten by bears. This is why I’m packing lots of chocolate people, chocolate solves all issues, except for being eaten by bears.
Look for part 3 on the blog in the next few days where we’ll be discussing gear!
Looks bountiful. When you’re all done throw in a jar of peanut butter or Nutella. And a candle.