How to package it all

[Prettywoman0172]

How do you all organize your trail food? Do you portion out snacks and meals or take bigger bags and just dip into them as needed? I would be afraid I would overeat if it was in a bigger bag and would then be short on supplies.

Thanks

Ann

[gumball]

I take two bags, one has my dinner meals and a week's snacks and the other, smaller bag, is on top--it has my day's snacks and one meal. This keeps the bulk of my food in the middle of my pack and my snacks handy to the top. I refill the top back for the next day each evening as part of my night routine.

[Jonnycat]

Lunch goes in a bag on the outside of my pack (in a stretchy pouch).

Everything else goes in the big ripstop bag at the top of my pack.

[Jonnycat]

Forgot to say, everything is pre-portioned out before I hit the trail, so grabbing, dinner, is grabbing a bag of dinner, etc. The only "community" bag is the cookies, and I have to trust myself to only eat one cookie for dessert.

[Blue Jay]

How do you all organize your trail food? Do you portion out snacks and meals or take bigger bags and just dip into them as needed? I would be afraid I would overeat if it was in a bigger bag and would then be short on supplies.

Thanks

Ann

You really have to hike for a while to get a sense of how many calories per mile you require. Don't worry, you'll quickly figure it out. Worry less about overeating (unlikely), carry more than you think you'll need for a few days and eat all you want. Having no energy and there is a mountain between you and resupply sucks.

[garlic08]

Ditto Blue Jay's answer, you'll figure out what works for you. My wife has to have her daily ration planned out or she won't eat enough. I just eat out of bulk bags and can ration it OK that way.

[leaftye]

I find it impossible to overeat on the trail. I package my food to help me eat enough. I tried aiming for 6000 calories a day, but couldn't stuff down that much food. 4500 calories seems to be the maximum that I can consume with my current diet, but I still lose weight.

I only use Ziplock brand freezer bags. I tried a couple store brands and regretted it, although luck was with me when those bags failed.

I put one day of meals in one quart size bag and one day of snacks in another bag. One of each bag goes into a gallon size bag that goes in the back pocket of my pack. My goal is to finish all of that before the day is over. The rest of my food is packaged similarly in day size bags that all get stuffed into a large food bag--an Ursack most of the time.

[bigcranky]

I like to keep things in smaller bags, rather than having, say, a giant bag of gorp. It's just easier to deal with that way. Snacks go in ziploc sandwich bags -- light and small and easy to put in a hipbelt pocket.

By the way, it's best to never reach inside a bag of snacks and grab a handful -- always pour out into your hand. That way you avoid an cross contamination. (And always wash your hands or use Purell.)

[Tipi Walter]

Your question is dependent on many factors, the main one being length of trip and resupply. VARIETY in my opinion is the name of the backpacking food game, and beyond that comes length of trip w/o resupply. On a 15-18 day trip w/o resupply(my usual trips of late), I divide my food into two main categories and two main food bags: snackables and cookables.

Before a trip I lay out all the food and try to get the exact daily amount of cookables(15 meals for 15 days), and then add one or two extra just in case I need to stay out a few days longer, my ride bails, or I'm caught in a blizzard. In my snackables bag I put anything and everything I feel like eating out of hand for two weeks, and this runs all over the place: avocados, grapes, eggs, cheese, banana bread, cookies, crackers, pecans, peanuts, dates, figs, raisins, grapes, and of course the usual galore of granola/power/Pro Bars, etc.

One stop at a decent modern grocery store will provide everything a backpacker needs for however long they want to stay out or however much they want to carry. 40 lbs of food? Sure, it's the price of freedom on a long 20 day trip. On my last 18 day trip I ended up with 3 full food bags, each in the 30 liter range(stuff sacks). This is nonsense for the typical AT thruhiker, as they like to interrupt their trip with near constant town trips on a 3-5 day interval. Not my style of wilderness backpacking, but hyoh, etc. Such frequent resupply allows long term backpackers to carry very little weight at the expense of excessive yellow blazing and town trips.

Oh, and when all else fails, there's always a steady diet of OATMEAL, which can be eaten either soaked and raw or cooked. I never go out w/o at least some amt of the mighty oat.

[Spokes]

On last years thru, I ended up eating breakfast and dinner meals then snacked through lunch- well really all day long.

So the only real "organizing" occurred each morning after breakfast when I set out my snacks for the day.

Small stuff like hard candies, fruit roll-ups, powerbars, etc. fit nicely in my cargo pants pocket and the rest went inside the top pack pocket for easy access. Ziplocks worked great keeping it all dry.

[sbhikes]

I package it all by meal. Then I lay out the meals and count them to make sure there are enough for each day.

On a long hike, meals may begin as breakfast, lunch, one or two snacks and dinner. But around 300 miles or so, it becomes breakfast, second breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner, dessert.

Being a woman like you and one who gains weight easily and loses it with difficulty, it was really hard to adjust to a different mind-set where eating as much as you possibly can becomes a grave responsibility. There may come a day on the trail when you start eating your snacks and before you know it, you ate it all and you feel full of energy like never before and that's when you realize that you really do need to eat a lot of food. I'll agree that for me 4500 calories was probably about right, but I never counted the calories in my pack.

[JAK]

I buy all my food by the pound, or by the half pound.
Sometimes I pack it in the bags I bought it in. Sometimes I repack it.

I generally don't mix stuff together until meal time.
Sometimes when stuff gets used up I mix stuff together to free up a bag.

Recently I have tried mixing all my stuff into one big plastic bin, with just my tea and spices separate. So its just one big bin full of oatmeal, almonds, sunflower seeds, currants, skim milk powder, and whatever else might come along. I can make porridge with it, or use it to make some sort of oat cakes. I can add extra hot water and then drain the water out to make oat flavoured tea and tea flavoured oatmeal. I can pick out some raisins and almonds, and a few oats, if I just want a snack. Works well for short trips. I put the plastic bin back on the shelf when I get home, and dump another bag of this or that in if it starts to get low.

[Deadeye]

Like Spokes, I eat breakfast then snack throughout the day, then eat dinner. At the start of a trip, everything goes in the bag or canister, in sort of a day-by-day dump. That is, I dump in a dinner, some snacks, a breakfast X as many days as I'm going to be out. After breakfast, I load a handy pouch with the day's snacks. After a day or two, it's all a jumble and I just eat what I want when I want.

Some people get super-organized about it, I just carry enough food to get me Through.

[Tinker]

I find it impossible to overeat on the trail. I package my food to help me eat enough. I tried aiming for 6000 calories a day, but couldn't stuff down that much food. 4500 calories seems to be the maximum that I can consume with my current diet, but I still lose weight.

I only use Ziplock brand freezer bags. I tried a couple store brands and regretted it, although luck was with me when those bags failed.

I put one day of meals in one quart size bag and one day of snacks in another bag. One of each bag goes into a gallon size bag that goes in the back pocket of my pack. My goal is to finish all of that before the day is over. The rest of my food is packaged similarly in day size bags that all get stuffed into a large food bag--an Ursack most of the time.

I find it extremely easy to overeat on the trail if I'm out for a couple or three days. The first day usually burns yesterday's calories, the second day I only need a little more caloric intake than a typical day of work, and the third day I might desire a little more food but, rather than carry it, I go a bit hungry until I hit the road and the nearest eatery, where I usually more than make up for any caloric deficiency over the past three days.
A long hike - say a couple of weeks or more might be a different story.
Most of the folks on WB are weekend or section hikers, some are former thruhikers, some are future thruhikers, and most former thruhikers are now weekend or section hikers.
There is a lot of confusion and conflicting opinions because the length of hike is not specified by the orig. poster or responders.

[Tinker]

How do you all organize your trail food? Do you portion out snacks and meals or take bigger bags and just dip into them as needed? I would be afraid I would overeat if it was in a bigger bag and would then be short on supplies.

Thanks

Ann

Simplistic answer:
# of days of hike determines # of breakfasts, # of lunches, and # of dinners. Package each meal separately, or if you're bringing bulk items, such as oats, measure them into a ziplock bag and use a similar sized container to measure them out of the bag.
I, personally, use Knorr-Lipton dinners, which have more salt than I usually eat but far less than Ramen or many other ready-made dinners. I fortify them with a healthy dose (I don't measure it) of olive oil for slow-burning fat calories, and sometimes add canned (or pouch) chicken, tuna, or salmon to the dish. Lunch is almost always bagels (cinnamon raisin) with peanut butter which I spread on at home. You could use honey, too.
Breakfast tends to be prepackaged oatmeal (though I don't really like the flavor or texture - it's about getting carbs to start off the day). On a multiday hike where supplies can be obtained not far from the road crossing I'll usually treat myself to a restaurant meal and a can of beer for the trail out of town (cans are pretty light).
I also carry hard candies for a quick shot of simple carbs, and buy a quart of Gatorade when I get to town which I consume, switching back and forth with water, during the next two days.
Each one has his/her own method - whatever works for you. Asking for advice is the best advice. Good luck and happy hiking.