[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[pct-l] food/medical suggestions.

Here are a few suggestions on food packing/planning

1)Variety. If you buy 80# of the backpacking-wonder-food "corn spagetti,"
You WILL be sorry.

2)Pre Portion your meals. It will seem like a pain dividing up 300 + meals
in your living room, but it will aid you in planning.

3)Use Zip Lock bags instead of "Seal-a-Meal" bags. You can re use the zip
locks for LOTS of stuff, but once you tear open a seal a meal, it is
basically trash.

4)I used a spreadsheet program to plan the distance/time between supply
drops, and I divided it into fractional days. Then I layed out my food in
daily piles, with a complete set of meals for each day. When I packed my
boxes, I started with breakfast on the first day, then put 4.7 days in the
first box, then 3.5 in the next, etc. That way I seldom ended up having 3
breakfasts and no dinners.

5)If you have a friend mailing the boxes for you, dont seal them. That way
the friend can put stuff in them for you. You will need more/different stuff
than you though when you packed the boxes.

6)I packed 5000 cal of food for each day of travel. This is about 2.2# a
day. I was moving about 30 miles a day. I added extra calories at each post
office supply pickup, by eating anything, and everything in sight at the
local stores/restraunts. After 6 weeks on the trail, I discovered that 5000
cal/day wasn't enough, and I started buying extra stuff to take with me. I
started in campo at 170# and finished in Ashland 8 weeks later at #150, the
lightest I've been since Jr High.

Food Suggestions

1)Dehydrate spagetti sauce. Record how much you poured into the dehydrator,
so you can cut up the leather into appropriate sized pieces to rehydrate.
Pick an oiley sauce with lots of calories per serving

2)Weightlifter powder. My favorite is "Champion Nutrition Heaveyweight
Gainer" because it has the best calorie/weight ratio. The stuff has plenty
of protien and is chocked full of vitimins. I made it the night before, and
drank if for breakfast. A liter of the stuff has 1600 calories, and you
don't need to cook in the morning.

3)Instant Pudding. I looked forward to finishing dinner and having another
1000 calories of this stuff. I pre portioned the powdered milk, and packed a
bag with each bag of pudding. I wrote the flavor of pudding on each bag,
when I removed it from the box.

4)Banana Leather. Mix overripe bananas, honey and shredded coconut in a food
processor. Let it run for a long time to break down the fiber in the
bananas. be carefull not to Dehydrate it until it is crispy. Leather-like
tastes much better.

5)Maltodextrin powder. This stuff is pure complex carbohydrate, and is made
from corn starch and is flavorles. You can add it to you coolaid for extra
nutrition. I premixed coolaid, and then added enough maltodextrin to bring
up each liter of drink mix to 250 grams, or 1000 Cal per liter of drink. You
can find MD at any home brew store. You can also add it to anyghing else you
cook. It is also completely dehydrated, so it is a light a carbohydrate as
you can find.

Medical

I put together some medical advice for the through hiker availabe at
http://www.netcom.com/~brick/pct_med.html It is a list of stuff I've
learned, and stuff I've read. Topics include:

Giardia Prevention and Treatment 
Ticks and Lyme Disease 
Mosquitos (treatment and prevention) 
Hypothermia 
Dehydration (not enough water) 
Hypoanatremia (not enough salt) 
Blisters (treatment and prevention) 
Poison Oak (treatment and prevention) 
--
Brick Robbins
San Diego, CA          
brick@ix.netcom.com              
http://www.netcom.com/~brick 

* From the Pacific Crest Trail Email List | For info http://www.hack.net/lists *

==============================================================================