Packing food for a hike is easy with these tips. Get advice on backpacking, hiking, and the great outdoors in this video.
Eat granola or trail mix as snacks
Eat high energy food
Include a small stove to cook pasta or soup
John Flaherty has a great love for the outdoors. In 2003, John and his wife started Central Coast Outdoors in northern California. His company provides hiking, kayaking, and biking services for those wanting to be closer to nature. John has traveled all around the world through his love of hiking.
JOHN FLAHERTY: Hi, my name is John and we are going to talk about the food that one might prepare and take along for a hike. And we can break this down into two segments. If you are going for a day hike, a few hours, snacks are usually what people think about bringing. I like to bring either some granola bars, lots of different varieties available out there for sale, or the bag of nuts and raisins and maybe some chocolate in there, ubiquitously referred to as GORP. GORP for those of you who do not know what it stands for, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts, but a lot of people like to jazz it up with some more things. You can make varieties yourself or almost every food store or camping store that you go to will have some version of GORP. When you are thinking about food for a day hike, you want to think about high-energy food that compacts in a small space for a lot of high food value. You do not want something big and juicy that is going to roll around your pack and going to be mashed around. One time I made the mistake of bringing a banana on a trip and then later on the day I reached on my pack and it came down like a fistful of gooey banana goo. So, if you are going to bring anything like fruits, make sure it is hard and something that is going to stand up to the abuse. So that is day hiking with food. Pretty basic, really simple. If you are going to be going backpacking, the same rules apply. You want to bring high-energy food that is relatively light and that you could pack away and is relatively indestructible. Most people when they go backpacking, they bring a small backpacking stove. These are the pots, you put a little bit of water in there to cook up what you need to do. What I usually like to do I keep it very simple. I bring a little bag of pasta and maybe some sauce or some dried soup. And I cook my pasta and I toss the soup in at the end and I have a nice meal for myself. Bring snacks as well, lots of snacks when you are going backpacking. Some things that you might think about if you want to have a nice trail lunch, hard salamis or hard sausages with some hard cheeses and some bagels or other dense hard bread if you have a hankering for bread. Try to avoid real soft bread or crackers because those can mash and become pretty messy on the trail. So, that is what I would recommend for food on the trails.
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