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You’ve been going on weekend backpacking trips for years, but you’ve never been in the wilderness for more than three or four days at a time. You’re not a novice; you already know how to stay warm and dry, you’re proficient at first aid, you’ve walked ten-mile days, and you know your strengths and limitations.

I can show you how to be in the wilderness for weeks on end, without longing for the comfort of a hearty restaurant meal at the end of your trip. (Of course you’ll have to restock on food and fuel from time to time; it’s hard to carry more than 8 days worth.) First and foremost, don’t rely on just-add-water freeze-dried meals; this kind of fare grows tiresome in just a few days, and is unreasonably expensive to boot.

This essay will explain how to plan and prepare tasty and satisfying high-calorie lightweight meals. You’ll need this information in order to keep up your strength and stamina, and to stay warm at night. If you want to enjoy superlative meals, you’ll have to expend some extra effort and do some real cooking. Your favorite recipes can be reproduced in the wilderness by assembling the ingredients in dehydrated and freeze-dried forms. Use several Zip-Loc bags per recipe, and group the ingredients according to their rehydration and cooking time needs.

Your local supermarkets and health food stores have a wide selection of dry main dish products, including:

• Betty Crocker Potatoes au Gratin. Pre-soak the dried potatoes in the required amount of very hot water for 20 minutes before adding milk, sauce mix, and butter. This extra soaking is mandatory at high altitude due to the lowered boiling temperature of water. In place of ordinary butter I recommend using ghee, which can be obtained from East Indian grocery stores. Ghee is clarified butter; it has a longer shelf life than regular butter, and it doesn’t require refrigeration.
• Casbah and Near East couscous mixes. Unlike rice pilaf mixes, couscous only has to soak after the addition of boiling water. Try adding home dehydrated ground lamb, freeze-dried green peas, roasted sliced almonds, roasted pistachios, dried currants, and/or golden raisins (sultanas) to couscous dishes. If you use nuts, stir them in after the couscous has finished soaking.
• Home dehydrated ground beef can be used with Hamburger Helper and freeze-dried chicken can be used with Chicken Helper. Both meats should be reconstituted in plain water because sauces and salt interfere with reabsorbtion of the water. These two brands, along with Betty Crocker, are owned by General Mills, which has a good record on environmental issues and a reputation for treating their employees well.
• Zatarain’s makes a line of spicy New Orleans style dinner mixes, including Jambalaya, Dirty Rice, and Red Beans and Rice. These mixes can benefit from the addition of freeze-dried chicken, home dehydrated ground beef, or Andouille sausage. There is a dry-cured variety of Andouille that, like dry salami, doesn’t require refrigeration.
• Fantastic Foods Refried Bean Flakes. Available in both pinto and black bean. Good with a spoonful of genuine pork lard, just like in real Mexican food.
• Knorr soup mixes. Knorr is a multinational corporation and if you go to the right stores, you can find their dry soup mixes in a wide assortment of European, Mexican, Thai, and Filipino flavors.
• East Indian grocery stores sell full cream powdered milk, imported to the U.S. from New Zealand and Australia—this is vastly preferable to nonfat powdered milk. It also has six times the butterfat content of our old standby, Milkman, for a luscious, creamy, homogenized milk taste.
• Smart and Final is one of many restaurant supply stores that sells chicken stock paste. Be sure to get the premium grade paste, in which the first ingredient is chicken meat, rather than the standard grade in which the first ingredient is salt. The premium grade paste is vastly superior to chicken bullion cubes. A one pound jar yields five U.S. gallons (19 liters) of broth and makes a worthy hot drink in the evening. One of my favorite uses for it is in chicken gumbo, made with home dried vegetables, including okra, and freeze-dried chicken from AlpineAire.
• You know those salads that come in a plastic bag with a separate packet of salad dressing? The coleslaw can be dehydrated straight out of the bag. About 30 minutes before you’re ready to eat, set the dried cabbage soaking in cold water. When it’s fully reconstituted, drain it well and add the salad dressing.

As mentioned above, you can dehydrate your own fruits, vegetables, and meats at home. Details of dehydration technique are beyond the scope of this essay. To learn this art, get a copy of How to Dry Foods, by Deanna Delong. This book also gives a full explanation of the rehydration process and has many excellent recipes using dehydrated ingredients. This book can be ordered from the manufacturer of the dehydrator I use: an American Harvest FD-50. (Be warned that How to Dry Foods isn’t listed on the American Harvest Web site. You’ll have to contact customer support or call 1-800-288-4545 to place an order for it.) The FD-50 performs beautifully, and its base, which contains the heating element and fan, is both sturdy and durable. Unfortunately, its shelves are flimsy, and they’re likely to wear out in less than ten years. On the upside, they can be replaced at a cost of $20 a pair plus shipping.

Home dried ground beef and lamb rehydrate very nicely, but if you want to eat chunks of meat, go with freeze-dried, as dehydrated chunks don’t rehydrate to an appealing texture. Freeze-dried meat can be bought from AlpineAire in #10 cans, each of which contains 6 ounces of waterless cooked meat. This is equivalent to just over 2 pounds of fresh cooked meat. The cans cost about $22 plus shipping, which isn’t a bad deal compared to what you’d pay for dinner on a hotel vactation. One ounce pouches are more costly at just over $5 a piece, but don’t require repackaging.

The fat in meat easily oxidizes, so it’s a good idea to get a vacuum sealer—I use the FoodSaver—in order to remove all oxygen from the meat while it’s being stored. Both dehydrated and freeze-dried meats should be vacuum-sealed. Be aware that vacuum sealing non-acidic moist foods and storing them without refrigeration can lead to botulism poisoning.

Get a backpacking stove with a wide burner ring, just like you would expect on a home natural gas range. The Coleman Peak 1 Multi-Fuel 550B Stove (not to be confused with the Peak 1 Feather 442) has such a burner, and is the most fuel-efficient white gas (Coleman fuel) stove on the market. It’s hard to find on the retail market, but can easily be ordered from the manufacturer.

The MSR Whisperlite also has a wide burner ring, and is the lightest, most compact white gas stove on the market. However, the Peak 1 Multi-Fuel is over 50% more fuel-efficient than the Whisperlite. Over the course of a long trip, the heavier, bulkier Peak 1 stove is the lighter one to carry, due to its conservation of fuel.

The Peak 1 can also be turned down to a low simmer, which is something that the Whisperlite can’t do. The Peak 1’s maximum output is also significantly hotter than the Whisperlite’s. This adjustability makes the Peak 1 eminently suited for real cooking, whereas the Whisperlite is best suited for the boiling of water in order to reconstitute the aforementioned freeze-dried backpacking meals.

My main backpacking partner and I always bring along two stoves so that we can prepare hot drinks such as coffee, tea, and chicken broth while our main meal is simmering. Also, when we’re using the Outback Oven (described later in this essay) it’s very handy to have a second stove, as the oven ties up a burner for 45 minutes or longer.

Now let us turn to the food preparation techniques that you’ll be using while on the trail. For real cooking you’ll do best with a cook kit that has a separate lid for every pan. You’ll also need a pan of at least 3 quarts (3 liters) capacity if you want to cook enough pasta for two physically active people. You’ll need a pan this large because if you cook pasta with too little water, it comes out sticky and gummy.

I recommend at least 4 ounces (114 grams) of uncooked pasta combined with 1 cup (240 ml) of reconstituted spaghetti sauce per person. If you don’t have goodies like ground beef and mushrooms in addition to your cup of sauce, it will take even more pasta to fill you up.

Most foods take longer to cook at high altitude. The cooking time for foods that are simmered usually increases by about 25% for each 5000 feet of increase in elevation. The cooking time for foods that are boiled usually doubles with each 5000 feet of increase in elevation. However, pasta is an exception; it cooks faster above 7000 feet than it does at sea level. Unfortunately, pasta does not cook satisfactorily at altitudes much higher than 9000 feet. At 10,000 feet, pasta never reaches the al dente stage; it passes directly from underdone to a crumbling library paste texture. However, unlike other pastas, couscous comes out beautifully at very high altitudes.

Spaghetti sauce dries into a leathery substance similar to fruit roll-ups. You simply tear it into pieces and pour boiling water over it. It will reconstitute to perfection in about 30 minutes. If you want meat sauce, dry the ground beef separately from the sauce, and rehydrate it completely before adding it to the sauce. This practice also applies to adding dried mushrooms.

Rice cooks very nicely at any altitude. To cook fluffy rice, bring the water to a rolling boil and gradually sprinkle in the rice while stirring continuously. When the water returns to a boil, put on the lid and lower the heat. When you’re cooking rice indoors you use a very low flame; but in the great outdoors, there’s likely to be either a light breeze or a stiff wind—putting your stove in a sheltered spot is a good idea. Because of windchill you’ll need to use a slightly higher flame. When cooking rice at home, you don’t want to peek, because this can make the rice gummy. But when cooking rice outdoors it’s essential to make sure the water is bubbling. When you peek, only lift one side of the lid, and only lift it just enough to get a look at the water. After the rice has absorbed all the water turn off the stove and leave it to sit with the lid on for at least 10 minutes.

The best varieties of rice for cooking at high altitude are Jasmine from Thailand, and Basmati from India. This is because these two rices absorb water much more readily than regular white rice. At low elevation Jasmine rice requires 1½ cups of water for every cup of rice, and only needs 10 minutes of simmering. At 11,000 feet Jasmine rice requires 2 cups of water for every cup of rice and is done after 14 minutes of simmering. Unlike Jasmine rice, the cooking time for Basmati rice doubles at 11,000 feet, from 15 minutes to half an hour. Use 2 cups of water for each cup of Basmati rice at either sea level or 11,000 feet. You should be aware that a cup of uncooked Basmati is over 50% more filling than a cup of uncooked Jasmine. Half a cup of uncooked Basmati per person should be quite generous.

Hot air dried (dehydrated) foods need to be pre-soaked in very hot plain water for 20 minutes to 1 hour. The shorter time applies to most vegetables, the longest to ground meat. Salt, sugar, and sauces interfere with absorbtion of the water. An exception to this rule is chili con carne with beans, which can be dehydrated straight out of the can. Check the nutritional label and choose a brand that’s relatively low in fat, as grease can interfere with rehydration and makes the dried chili somewhat messy to handle.

After initial soaking, the partially reconstituted food needs to be simmered for 20–30 minutes. Freeze-dried foods reconstitute considerably faster. For soaking, I recommend Nalgene polycarbonate containers. When tightly closed, these containers are watertight, and they have the advantage over ordinary plastic that they can be filled with boiling water without any ill effects. With these containers, you can set your foods soaking in the late afternoon, hours before you reach camp.

How do you like the idea of eating baked goods hot from the oven? The Outback Oven sits on top of your stove, and requires only a very low flame—it’s extremely fuel-efficient. Biscuits, brownies, coffeecake, cornbread, fruit cobbler, gingerbread, and even excruciatingly small servings of pizza are finally within your reach.

Make pizza crust from bread machine mix or pre-blended flour, salt, and dried yeast. Plan on using a little bit more than three parts flour to one part warm water, and for every cup of water allow 1 teaspoon salt. This technique can also be used for making loaves of bread. Yeast dough rises faster at high altitude, so watch it closely or it’ll collapse from over-rising. For toppings use reconstituted dried spaghetti sauce and mushrooms, string cheese sticks, oil-cured Kalmata olives, and vacuum-sealed pepperoni.

The Outback Oven comes in three sizes. I recommend the smallest, which is 8 inches in diameter. A 1 pound box of brownie, cornbread, or other baking mix will yield 2 to 3 batches in this size oven. The Outback Oven also comes in 10 and 12 inch sizes, but according to my cousin, the 12 inch size doesn’t perform well.

Most grocery store baking mixes require the addition of eggs. You can buy powdered eggs at most backpacking stores. Simply add the required amount of powdered egg to the dry baking mix when repackaging it into oven-sized portions. Remember to add a little extra water to the mix at baking time in order to replace the fluid that would have come from fresh eggs.

Try to avoid mixes that call for added oil, as this requirement will result in one more container to carry. For example, Betty Crocker brownie mix requires added oil, while Krusteaz brownie mix doesn’t. Recipes will need to be adjusted for high elevation, but the Outback Oven instruction manual provides all the details. I’ve successfully baked cornbread at altitudes as high as 11,500 feet above sea level.

Before delving into the matter of caloric nutrition, I’d like to remind you that getting enough water is more important than getting enough food. When engaging in heavy exercise at high altitude you should drink at least one gallon (4 liters) of water a day. You can become dehydrated without experiencing thirst, and dehydration is the leading cause of altitude sickness. If you don’t get enough water your appetite will be poor, and you’ll lose muscle mass if you don’t eat enough. I once lost 8 pounds of muscle mass in 2 weeks because I forgot to drink a gallon of water a day.

Plan your meals carefully by calorie count before the trip, as this is the only way to assure that you bring neither too little nor too much food. How much food should you bring? Several of the backpacking books in my personal collection recommend that during spring, summer, and fall a 160-pound man consume 4000 calories per day while in the wilderness. For snow camping, this recommendation increases to 6000 calories per day.

Even with heavy exercise and cool autumn weather, I’m unable to eat more than 3000 calories per day. At this rate of caloric intake, I neither gain nor lose weight. Although the backpacking books recommend 800 calories for breakfast, my early morning appetite hits the wall at about 500 calories. On the other hand, it takes at least 1200 calories to satisfy me at dinner time. You’ll need to be aware of your own appetite patterns in order to plan a menu that meets your own unique needs.

Refer to the nutritional labels on the food you intend to bring on your trip in order to know how much fat, carbohydrate, and protein you’ll be getting. You would be well advised to avoid foods that contain partially hydrogenated oils, as these are bad for your health in any amount whatsoever. Unfortunately, partially hydrogenated soybean oil is nearly ubiquitous in processed supermarket food, and is present in many of the dinner mixes I recommended earlier in this essay. If you have food items such as fresh vegetables that come without nutritional labels, the USDA has an online database that can answer your questions.

Carbohydrates and protein both provide 4 calories per gram, while fat provides 9 calories per gram. 50–55% of your calories should come from carbohydrates, 15–20% from protein, and 30% from fat. This is quite a bit more dietary fat than the U.S. Surgeon General recommends, but under the conditions you’ll encounter while backpacking, you’ll need this much fat in order to stay warm. At least this is my opinion, which is based on personal experience; on the other hand, the National Outdoor Leadership School and the U.S. Army say that fat intake should be restricted to 15% of calories consumed at high altitude, because digesting fat requires more oxygen than digesting carbohydrates. Follow both links for further information on high altitude nutritional requirements.

If you know how to use a computer spreadsheet I strongly recommend using this tool for calorie tracking. (If you’ve got a spreadsheet, but don’t know how to use it, perhaps now is the time to learn—your program should come with a tutorial.) Below is a diagram of how the spreadsheet should be set up. Use this illustration as a starting point, you’ll need to add more rows to the spreadsheet in order to accommodate a reasonably diverse menu or a complex recipe. Your computer spreadsheet can also generate charts from rows 5 and 6 in the diagram. These charts can even track percentages of the total for you, giving a clear statement of the caloric balance between fat, carbohydrates, and protein in your diet. This spreadsheet is available for download in Excel for Windows. Please bear in mind that this spreadsheet design is copyrighted and may not be resold for profit.

The first time I used the calorie tracking method of menu planning, I traveled to an elevation of 10,000 feet in September and went with the Surgeon General’s recommendation of 20% of calories from fat. Since I put on some muscle mass during the trip, I didn’t lose any weight at 3000 calories per day, but all my subcutaneous body fat evaporated.

The weather got warmer and the morning frost disappeared from the ground as the weeks went by. Unfortunately, my tolerance for any cold at all was dependant upon body fat, and near the end of the trip I found myself so bitterly cold at night that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm until the sun came up again. Ever since, I’ve made sure to get at least 30% of my backpacking calories from fat.

Next we turn to the subject of sports oriented nutritional supplements. The soreness that accompanies intense exercise is caused by the build up of lactic acid in the muscles. There is a powdered sports drink mix called Cytomax that neutralizes this lactic acid build up, eliminating muscle soreness. Cytomax also reduces the body’s oxygen consumption by 11% and increases muscular ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and glycogen levels by 300%, dramatically reducing fatigue.

ATP is the substance that drives muscle contractions. It also facilitates the formation of glycogen. Glycogen is an intermediary between starch and sugar. The body stores its carbohydrate reserves in this form, mainly in the muscles and liver. Complex carbohydrates load glycogen into the muscles, while fructose loads glycogen into the liver. Therefore, during intense exercise, starches provide more muscle energy than dried fruit.

I used to swear by Cytomax, but unfortunately, it’s been reformulated with an “herbal lift” from guarana, which is rich in caffiene. My main backpacking partner and I find this change most unwelcome, even though we’re serious caffiene junkies in the city. Cytomax used to provide fluid replenishment, but caffiene is a diuretic, so now it increases sweating and frequency of urination, which is really a nuisance when you’re on the trail.

Most of the calories burned during exercise are from carbohydrates, but your muscles also burn small amounts of certain amino acids. These particular amino acids are collectively known as “branched chain amino acids” or BCAA. Under normal conditions, your muscles obtain these amino acids by partially digesting themselves. This is another cause of muscle soreness. Take a supplement containing free-form branched chain amino acids, and this self-digestion ceases. You can get this supplement from Jarrow Formulas. If you have food allergies, Jarrow is the supplement company for you. They also have some of the lowest prices on the market.

After heavy exercise, your body releases an anti-inflammatory hormone called cortisol, which is identical to hydrocortisone. Cortisol makes you feel great, but unfortunately, high levels of it cause muscle wasting. You may have experienced this phenomenon when you’ve gone backpacking. Fortunately, taking a supplement called “phosphatidyl serine,” which is derived from soybeans, may help reduce exercise associated cortisol levels. A number of companies which specialize in supplements for competitive athletes claim this is a sure thing, but the people at Jarrow Formulas—where the best prices on phosphatidyl serine can be found—say they’re unsure of whether or not it works this way.

Carrying a heavy pack places extra stress on your joints. Therefore, I take glucosamine and chondroitin supplements to provide my joints with extra nutritional support. The correct ratio of these supplements is 3 parts glucosamine to 1 part chondroitin.

You’ll be carrying a lot of food, a little over 2 pounds per day. Therefore, you’ll need a backpack designed for loads over 60 pounds. I strongly recommend that you get a Dana Design ArcFlex series backpack, as no other brand of pack is as well suited to extremely heavy loads—I’ve comfortably carried 95 pounds in my Dana Design pack. I recommend the Dana Design Astralplane on account of its large size. You’ll need the extra space to carry all the food you’ll need. Unfortunately, as of April 2003 the Astralplane costs about $450 retail. However, if you plan ahead and wait for an annual sale, you can get it for significantly less.

Get heavy duty hiking boots if you plan to carry more than 50% of your body weight on your back. The shape of your foot will determine your choice of boot. However, my main backpacking partner and I have radically dissimilar feet, and we both settled on Scarpa boots. Boots suitable for heavy loads and more than three trail days in a row will set you back by about $200. As with other backpacking equipment, waiting for an annual sale is to your advantage.

Those are the basics of backpacking menu planning. You now know enough to begin making informed choices that will keep you happy on the trail. Further research on your part will present you with a dazzling array of dietary options. Know your dietary preferences well, and plan according to that knowledge. Do this and I assure you that you won’t be thinking about that end of the trip restaurant meal at all.