Day 8 – 800 Calories of Cheese

Mile 94 to Warner Springs (mile 109)

Ask yourself, when was the last time you knew, with certainty, how many calories per ounce were in the food you were eating. I’m guessing almost never. That’s because during the course of a normal day in a city, this information is totally irrelevant. For hikers however, it’s one of the top concerns. In normal life, you might read the caloric info on a package to make sure there isn’t too much sugar or too many calories. On trail, you read the caloric info to make sure there are enough calories and sugar. In normal life, your food is filled with water, while on trail you might subsist entirely on food that’s had all the moisture sucked out, just so you could add it back in later. And these are just some of the ways in which your relationship to food changes once you start going on long backpacking trips. In fact, I’m going to go as far to say that trail food and normal life food are not even the same thing.

In normal life, food may be selected based on a variety of factors. How close a restaurant is, what is in season at the grocery store, what you feel like eating at this very moment. Depending on where you live the options for what and where to eat may be overwhelming.

During trail life, choosing what to eat becomes sort of like a game in which the prize is that you don’t starve. Furthermore, there are only two ways in which you get to choose what you eat. One – what is in the grocery store that you’re standing in right now, is nonperishable, and you’re willing to carry on your back for the next four to ten days. Two – what of the remaining food you packed out of town are you most interested in eating as you sit in the dust on the side of the trail. There are no other options until you’re back in town, and then the game starts over. The best part of the game is when you’ve grown tired of all your food and so you try to combine them in new and interesting ways. It’s fun, in a way.

Here are some things of import if you’re interested in backpacking, or hiking a long trail and wish to win the food game.

⁃ Potato chips are a backpacker super food, they come in lots of flavors, can be found anywhere, and at 150 calories per ounce are some of the most calorically dense foods around.

⁃ Cheese will survive 2-5 days on the trail unrefrigerated. Furthermore, a standard block of cheese contains about 800 calories and can be consumed by an average woman in two days. Trust me on this one.

⁃ Tuna can be added to anything. Anything.

⁃ Forget lunch, just snack repeatedly until dinner time.

⁃ Seaweed sheets are a good way to fool yourself into thinking you’re eating enough veggies on trail.

⁃ The only utensil you need is a long spoon.

⁃ Campbell’s Soup to Go cups are the perfect backcountry mug, and they have a lid!

⁃ Just because you don’t like something normally, doesn’t mean you won’t love eating it on the trail. Gummy bears are now a standard carry for me even though I used to hate them.