Continued from Part 5: Everything Else.
Previous installments have discussed the gear I took with me to Yosemite in July. This entry looks at the consumables, specifically food choices.
There are three causes for what I call “late-train weight-gain” in the pack. The first is not planning far enough out in advance and having to pack on the fly. The second is making impulsive decisions right at the end. The third is packing too much food. The first two didn’t get me this time, but I missed the boat on the third. I continue to err on the side of (way) too much food, as if I will eat it merely because I packed it.


FOOD STRATEGY
I started out with a plan for food, an improvement over previous efforts where I pretty much packed food at the last minute. I would eat one hot meal each day, in mid- to late afternoon, about a couple of miles short of my campsite. This ensured I would not have strong food odors in my campsite (and hopefully no one else’s campsite). For the hot meals, I repackaged Mountain House two-person entrees into quart ziploc freezer bags, keeping the dessicant packet. Since I would resupply on the 6th day, I only needed to take five such meals. That was the easy part.
When analyzing food for a backpacking trip, I look at the ratio of calories per gram of gross weight (including packaging). The higher the ratio, the greater nutrient density for the weight. Granted, the “nutrients” here are pure fuel for the body, not a well-balanced diet which captures the proportion of carbs, protein, and fat for long periods of time. In the backcountry, it’s simply about consuming enough calories to keep the body from wasting away. For a trip longer than two weeks, more long-term nutrition issues need to be considered.
The magic number for me is 4 calories per gram. Unfortunately, it’s a hard number to hit, especially for things like trail bars and dried fruits. All five Mountain House entrees I took with me exceeded 4 cal/g when repackaged. Mixed nuts also score very high at nearly 6 cal/g. My choice of sweets, Barnum’s animal crackers, also scores very high at 4.5 cal/g. Dried fruits typically reach these levels only if sugar has been added. The most nutrient-dense, edible Granola-based foods score around 3.5 cal/g, which is acceptable given their convenience and historical part of the backpacker’s food pyramid.
So the plan called for the following:

  • Breakfast: pop-tarts and banana chips
  • Morning snack: pumpkin-spice granola bars, with an Odwalla bar on big-climb days
  • Mid-day meal: Mountain House entrée
  • Late afternoon snack: animal crackers
  • Before bed snack: Odwalla bar
  • Trail food: mixed nuts

The plan provided a minimum of 1,633 calories a day, up to 2,433 calories with an Odwalla bar in the morning, some nuts during the day, and the higher calorie entrée in the afternoon. Suffice it to say, I did not follow the plan.
ACTUAL CONSUMPTION
For breakfast, I ate a package of two cherry pop-tarts for four days, exhausting them. I rarely ate banana chips, either at breakfast or at any other time, and ended up throwing most of them away at my resupply point. I had an Odwalla bar — by far the best tasting trail bar I’ve had to date — or a package of two Kashi pumpkin-spice granola bars for breakfast most other days.
The morning snack rarely occurred, as I was seldom hungry during the early portion of a day’s hiking. The morning is all about mileage before it gets hot (or stormy), so I often just kept going. I recall having some mixed nuts on a couple of mornings and a pumpkin-spice granola bar on one day. I ended up throwing out most of the granola bars at Tuolumne Meadows.
I ended up carrying an extra Mountain House meal for the front half of the trip because I did not eat a big meal on the second day out. Rain and lightning had swept in from the east, and I spent my afternoon dodging it or sitting under my canopy waiting for it to pass. Once I reached camp, I crawled into my hammock and napped. I ate all five I took, and purchased two Backpackers Pantry meals at the Tuolumne Meadows store to cover the remaining afternoons on the trail. At Tuolumne, I ate at my hot meal at the grill.
The animal crackers were worth their weight in gold, and I often ate them in camp in the late afternoon or evening. Because of the high heat and lack of chilled storage, I did not take my favored gorp mix, which includes liberal amounts of chocolate and peanut butter nuggets. These would have melted into a gooey mess, so the animal crackers sufficed as my “treat.”
Aside from some animal crackers, I almost never ate before going to bed. I usually got into the hammock just after sunset, so the opportunity to eat rarely presented itself.
At Tuolumne Meadows, I threw away half of the nuts, all but four of the pumpkin-spice granola bars, and most of the banana chips. At trail’s end, I threw away about a quarter of the nuts and two of the pumpkin-spice bars. At Tuolumne Meadows, the only addition I made to what I was carrying was two freeze-dried meals. I intended to be out of food by then but in fact still had several days of it left.
I began the trip with 6 lbs 10.5 oz / 3,019g of food. My best estimate for the weight of the food I discarded is 1 lb 6.4 oz / 635g. My best estimate for the weight of food I carried to Tuolumne Meadows, my resupply point, but consumed later is 1 lb 8.7 oz / 700g. In other words, I overpacked, or under-ate, nearly 3 pounds of food!
WATER
For the most part, I would fill up a 2-liter Platypus reservoir for backpacking and consume as much water as I could while resting. The most water I carried at any one time was just short of 5 liters, which I hauled about a mile from Sunrise Creek to my dry campsite off the Half Dome Trail.
It always amuses me to watch people struggling with their hand-held pumps, perching themselves precariously on rocks while trying to keep a water bottle upright on one hand and an intake hose submerged on the other. Long ago, I learned to get water out of the stream with either a ziploc bag or a water container dedicated for the pupose, and then treat it. I had a water bottle dedicated to retrieving water from its source, then I poured it into a Platypus reservoir for treating. The bottle was extra weight, granted, but was easier than using a ziploc. When the SteriPEN worked, I treated water in my hard-sided one-liter bottle. When it didn’t, I used the iodine tablets in the 2-liter bags (and, in at least one case, my 1-liter canteen).
For weight-calculating puposes, I assume I am carrying 2 liters of water, which weighs 4 lbs, 6.5 oz / 2,000g.
TRAILHEAD WEIGHT
(A) Items Always Worn or Carried: 7 lbs 10.1 oz / 3,461g
(B) Items Packed (excluding Consumables): 20 lbs 0.8 oz / 9,095g
(C) Consumables: 11 lbs 5.4 oz / 5,143g
Full Skin-Out Base Weight (A+B): 27 lbs 10.9 oz / 12,556g
Total Initial Pack Weight (B+C): 31 lbs 6.2 oz / 14,238g
Total Skin-Out Weight (A+B+C): 39 lbs 0.3 oz / 17,699g
The complete gear list can be viewed here.
Not counting the cost of food, the full replacement cost of everything I carried — or a close equivalent — is $3,263. However, almost half of that replacement cost is related to the camera gear ($837 — 26% of total), GPS unit ($400 — 12% of total), and other electronics ($221 — 7%). The “Big Three” — pack, shelter, sleeping bag — account for $628 (19% of total), while clothing represents another $632 (19% of total). All other gear adds up to $545 (17%).
The final installment of this analysis will explore ways I could have reduced this weight and/or made better gear decisions based on the conditions I faced. The latter will be judged both in terms of the experience and the “savings” achieved by eliminating excess weight.
Continues in Part 7: Further Weight Adjustments.
The complete analysis:
Part 1: The Big Three
Part 2: Clothing
Part 3: Hydration and Cooking
Part 4: Camera Gear and Electronics
Part 5: Everything Else
Part 6: Food
Part 7: Further Weight Adjustments

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