Make Your Own Backpacking Meals!

My 14 day John Muir Trail thru-hike with my son is just a few weeks away, so I've been busy preparing 28 days worth of backpacking food for us. Making your own is not that difficult, less expensive, and much lighter than buying those individually packaged meals. Are you up for the task?



A healthy hot breakfast is pretty easy. My favorite is couscous, dry milk, dried cranberries, chopped almonds and cashews. 15 1/2 ounces yields 2,240 calories, or seven 320 calorie breakfasts. Add some variety by replacing the couscous with rolled oats, which is a bit heavier but also very nutritious. Pack a weeks worth in a plastic produce bag, which is free from the grocery store and weighs only .08 ounces! Be sure to squeeze all the air out of the bag and tie it off at the end to leave room for the contents to form to your food bag or bear canister.



Now for some dinners. I could eat my Moroccan Delight every night, but my son just might get tired of the same thing after 14 days. So instead I made a huge batch of Delight Sauce (minus the couscous), and I plan to use it with different ingredients for a variety of meals.



I may have gone a little crazy with this stuff, but did I mention that I absolutely love it? 8 batches takes a lot of ingredients! 16 finely chopped green bell peppers, 8 pounds of hot Italian sausage, browned...



...4 huge cans of crushed tomatoes...



...8 white onions, finely chopped...



...all in two giant pots with lots of garlic, basil, black pepper, and whatever else you love! Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for an hour or more.



Then into the dehydrator on parchment paper. If you don't have parchment paper you can use plastic wrap, (just don't use wax paper). I filled my 9 tray bad boy 3 times!



I found the sauce finishes drying better if you remove it from the parchment paper and place it directly onto the drying rack. It gets solid enough to do this about half way through the 24 hour cycle.



You want it to be dry so it will break apart, not like fruit leather. Then get your food processor out again and grind it up into a coarse consistency. This makes it rehydrate much more quickly and completely. Otherwise you end up with large chunks of sauce, or you waste too much fuel cooking it.



And what you're left with is 5 1/2 pounds and 13,500 calories of goodness. That's over 150 calories per ounce, wow! Now you can add it to lots of different things to make some great tasting ultralight backpacking meals with a spicy kick!



That's it for the hard stuff, the rest I will buy and repackage. I'll show you how I put it all together for a 14 day, 2 person, ultralight meal plan in an upcoming post!

Training for the JMT

After a long 3 week break from hiking, I'm back in full training mode. It wasn't very good timing, but we moved right at the time when I should have been training hard for my upcoming JMT thru-hike. Although moving is good exercise, it's definitely not hiking.



Fathers Day, 4:40am, my son and I leave the house heading to the meeting place where he will depart for Boy Scout camp on Catalina Island. I was supposed to be going with him, but crazy things at work made it impossible. Sadness starts to overwhelm me because I've never missed one of these trips in his entire BSA career, so I bug out before long. My first free day in weeks, I head up to local Mt. Charleston to get back into training mode.



Just an hour in and it's like I never left. Damn it feels good to be up here. The cold morning air smells so fresh, and the Aspens are in bloom, waving in the gentle breeze. It's great to be out of the triple digit valley hustle and bustle.



A quick stop to take a glance across the valley, this is a beautiful camp site on a cliff just off the trail. Hmmm...maybe I'll camp here next weekend.



A hour later I find the perfect spot for a break by some lucky Bristlecones...



I stay longer than I normally would and enjoy the peacefulness of this beautiful place. As I gaze up at 11,918' Charleston Peak I realize there's far too much snow on the north face that I am approaching for me to reach the summit. I wonder how far I will make it.



Snow in mid June at about 11,000' elevation is not unheard of, but this year there's way more than normal, that's for sure.



Less than a mile from the peak, Hiking starts to turn into climbing, and I'm uninterested. After making my way over several snow drifts, the wall to the right and the drop off to the left turn me around. A 16 mile hike turns into about 14, and the 4,300' elevation gain turns into some 3,500'.



My MYOG cuben pack filled with all my JMT gear, bear canister included, takes a break on the way down. I'm glad to be back on the trail and am at peace with my world. I have a 200 mile hike just 5 weeks away, so the training now gets more intense. And I love every minute of it.

Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail [Kindle Edition]

By Bill "Skywalker" Walker



Skywalker's trail name undoubtedly has something to do with his 6'11" stature. In 2005 the self described average hiker successfully thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, then he wrote the book "Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail" which he published in 2008. The following summer he thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, and the experience turned out to be quite different than the AT.

I love reading books written by thru-hikers, probably because I aspire to be one some day. Skywalker does a nice job of describing the feeling of life on the PCT, and it isn't always a John Muir love affair of wilderness. He makes some pretty amateur mistakes along the way, and his fear of snakes, bears, icy cliffs, etc. become apparent. This may not be your vision of a mountaineer, but it does show what an average person can accomplish when he puts his mind to it.

Since he successfully thru-hiked the AT, you might think the PCT was just another long trail, but it proved to be much more difficult for Skywalker. In the end he did start and finish the PCT, but there were some large sections that he was forced to skip along the way due to injury, fire, and inclimate weather.

For me, this wasn't one of those books that's so intriguing that you can hardly put it down, but it is recommended reading for anyone who aspires to hike very long distances. Hs honest, and sometimes self defacing writing style gives you a good dose of the reality of life on a long trail, which I think is an important step in preparing for a thru-hike.