Lightweight and Ultralightweight Backpacking

The View from Here

Panoramic view from a mountain top in Glacier National Park, Montana
INTRODUCTION     BACKPACK     PACKING     FOOD     GEAR LISTS     10 ESSENTIALS     PRODUCTS     LINKS     VIDEO     SITE MAP


The 10 Essentials

Food

If you are having more than a briefest lunch stop, or picnic, more specialized planning is called for.

This is because you will have to carry all your food. Foraging for food, in the modern woods or mountains, is supplemental food at best because the natural environment is, for foraging for food, destroyed. For this reason alone, a considerable backpacking industry has arisen.

Backpackers most often will make their primary meal at mid-day or, making camp earlier, at the end of the day doing all food preparation well away from the tentsite. The fire is set, hot water is ready, and the cook starts off with a mug up of a favorite hot drink.

I think anyone and everyone likes having a camp cook around. The camp kitchen is the center of the campout. Even if the other campers have brought their own food, the hot drink is a welcome first food in camp. Then, sometimes people will look over their food, share some things, and make a communal meal.

If you would like to be the camp cook, I recommend The Well-Fed Backpacker, by June Fleming. Dorcas S. Miller has More Back-Country Cooking: Moveable Feasts from the Experts, that uses so much of the information I have promoted, I have to recommend it.

I recommend, of course, Sarah Kirkconnell's Freezer Bag Cooking: Trail Food Made Simple. I recommend her book and methods, especially so, for solo backpacking.

Note: Bring only what you can carry, unless you are car camping.

Nevertheless, people do manage to bring cookware suitable for backpacking, the lid serves as a frying pan and the entire outfit can be made to serve for baking, or if small fires are allowed, do both simply with the Banks FryBake. I have carried the Backpacker's Pantry Ultralight Outback Oven. I made focaccia bread. If I have only one pot, it is ultralightweight and if that pot has a tight-fitting lid, I make dumplings. I have also made light and fluffy biscuits in a pan and even biscuits on a stick.

It should not be surprising we will crave bread products, in camp. Make more strongly flavored breads, however. More herbs, add cheese. My bannock is italian herb cheese biscuits or golden raisen and mace biscuits.



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copyright © 2010 Connie Dodson. All Rights Reserved.