We did the entire walk unsupported, carrying and cooking our own food. We carried a bit too much for a few reasons. Firstly, I prefer to err on the side of caution, especially in unknown climates; the colder it gets the more I eat. Secondly, we had relatively little time together before the trip to really go through what we had got collectively. And thirdly my food dehydration and repackaging project is still in the future.
Still with the benefit of hindsight this is what we might have carried. It should be also noted that I have a relatively high capacity for repetitive menus on the basis that "food is just fuel". However in contradiction to that assertion I must mention that for me Chai is an essential and quite a bit of weight was dedicated to ensure a liberal supply.
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| Another pot of "Kebnekaise stew" is ready |
Packaging, or rather repackaging, is important for three reasons: weight, volume and convenience, and this trek provided a good opportunity to reflect on this process.
There are a number of ways of organising one's food: randomly, in bulk, by meal type, or by menu. Obviously the first thing to do is remove all unnecessary packing (perhaps it's useful to take a photo first of any cooking instructions with which one is unfamiliar). Also if you are doing this at home it is helpful to have a digital scale to check weights, so you are sure of exactly what you have. Labelling is also good. Bulgur makes a poor substitute for cane sugar, but admittedly better than salt for white sugar.
I have for a while repackaged food in ziplock bags by meal type and have a dry bag for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks. This way I can ensure that lunch and drinks are on top when I pack my single compartment sack in the morning. In an ideal world there is everything one needs for a given meal in one pack, but then there are things like salt and pepper or milk powder which may be used across multiple meals.
A slight modification to this regime occurs with snacks (I put the day's ration into a convenient pocket) and for Chai where I have a bulk supply bag and a "next few days" bag. The latter uses more convenient small screw top plastic jars, which are much easier to open and reseal with powders. This imposes a small volume penalty but if they are topped up regularly this is minimal.
On the whole this worked pretty well and certainly helped with stashing and finding things in the tent.
However I am not convinced that this system is optimal from a time point of view, and have been thinking about building single day food packs as part of a broader project to move to more self-dehydrated food. Rationing supplies becomes a lot easier and the current day's bag is always packed at the top. Basically this is transferring some of the organisational time to a period before the trek, but this is quite efficient as one could pack many day packs in just a few hours. After that packing for a trek of X days becomes very simple, and at the same time more variety can be built in - assuming you have labelled the contents.
The cost may come in slightly increased numbers of bags, but as these would be used over again it results in less waste. A nice innovation would be if the packaging itself were edible, or perhaps some could be waxed paper which might be burned safely. Looking at the waste that we produced over 11 days all of it was food related; 90% was packaging and the balance was composed of the empty gas canisters and a few baby wipes.
Further time savings on the trail could be achieved by having most meals pre-cooked and then dehydrated and packaged into meal-sized packs. And while it is nice to sit and prepare an evening meal together with someone under good conditions, there certainly are moments when you would much rather just get a good meal down and go to sleep. Just boiling water and adding to a bag also cuts down on washing up, which is always a good thing.
Shopping Check List*
Lunch: Bread (125g/day), Cheese (100g/day), Jam (in plastic tub 200g) Packets of soup (1 per 2 days)
Dinner: Rice (125g/day) or mixed grains (200g/day) or Bulgur (125g/day) or Pastas (150g/day), Red Lentils (500g), Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil (250ml), Spices, Tomato concentrate (3 x 200g tubes), garlic (3 bulbs)
Snacks: Muesli bars (16), Chocolate (300g), Dried Fruit (2x250g)
Drinks (for TWO): Tea bags (85), Milk Powder (1kg), Sugar - cane or raw (1kg), Fresh ginger (300g), Chai spices (100g of own mix), Cocoa (200g)
Other: Baby wipes, Hand sanitiser, Batteries*
* This is for ONE person for 12 days (ten days trek plus two journey days)
** Given the allergies of my companion this was the only item containing nuts.
* There is little need for a headlamp in summer
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