Fine Glacier Dining: Planning Food for the Ski Expedition

When I talk to people about the many ski mountaineering expeditions I have been on, one of the first questions is: “What do you eat?” Well, food obviously. The real answer is not that simple. Numerous factors must be considered when planning food for an expedition: taste, nutrition/calories, weight, ease of preparation and more.

Taste
It is important to make food that you actually look forward to eating. If you don’t like the food that you have, you won’t eat that much of it, which will adversely affect your ability to perform at high physical output. This is especially true at altitude and cold weather. For the SkiTheBig3 expedition and on Mt. Hayes we went with some more exotic cuisine to break up the routine.

Breakfasts are easy for me. It is my favorite meal. I love eggs and hash browns and anything mixed in with them. There are many types of powdered eggs that are surprisingly good. For these two trips we went with Ova Easy Egg Crystals. Highly recommended.

Lunch is another easy one. It has to be simple and easy to eat throughout the day. We mixed a bunch of Honey Stinger products (chews, waffles, and bars) in with different types of trail mix, Cheese-It or Wheat Thin crackers, and a Snickers bar.

Dinner can be tricky. It is easy to fall into a routine where everything tastes the same. The key is diversity. Pad thai, curry and other Indian foods were mixed in with the regulars like burritos, quesadillas and pasta. This ensured that it would at least take a little longer to get bored with our dinners. I think it is also important to eat a hot dinner to help with staying warm while sleeping. That may just be in my head, but it works for me.

Thanksgiving Day dinner on Aconcagua, Argentina 2009. Slightly different from the usual spread.

Calories/Nutrition
There are many different viewpoints as to how many calories are needed per day for an expedition. I imagine it depends on what you are actually doing day-to-day. Since I am mostly in cold weather environments and high altitude I prescribe to the idea that there cannot be a limit. The higher the calorie count the better. When in a cold high altitude environment your body is eating an absurd amount of calories while at rest. It is using a ton of energy to keep warm as well as fighting effects of the altitude. Then add in the fact that for long periods of time you will be exerting yourself at a high level. On the Kahiltna and Mt. Hayes we ate roughly 4,000 to 6,000 calories a day.

Nutrition is another important factor (and something we emphasize here at WildSnow dot com). You can easily dump a ton of calories into your body, but if it’s all junk food it is not going to do your body good. Just like at home, it is important to eat well rounded meals. Carbs, proteins, fats and sugars all need to be taken into account. This is obviously harder to do on an expedition, especially when you need to carry everything on your back, but it is certainly possible. Dehydrated foods make it easier. I always try to make sure that meat (or a meat equivalent, high in protein) and veggies are put into breakfast and dinner. Lunch usually consist of lots of grains, and sugars. Grains like couscous and pasta are great for dinner; they help fill you up.

Weight
For most expeditions the food that you bring will have to be carried with you. This complicates things. Bringing well rounded meals packed with calories that also taste good can get heavy really fast. Luckily the amount of dehydrated foods available is incredible. The trick is finding what tastes good. Meat, veggies, eggs, tomato sauce, and anything else can be found. Then it is just a matter of spices and what to put them with. Couscous is great. It is super light and fast to make and can be made with basically anything. When weight is less of an obstacle, for instances like base camp meals, Tasty Bites Indian Food is amazing. They taste great and are easy to make.

For Mt. Foraker on the SkiTheBig3 expedition we had to carry about 6 days worth of food in our pack. Weight was of the utmost importance. Here is what we brought:

 
Ease of Preparation
After a long day of climbing that last thing you want to have is an in depth, time consuming meal prep. Anything that can be made fast is key. Having hot soup before every dinner is wonderful. It gives you something to start on while the rest of dinner is being made, and helps to hydrate as well.

Freeze dried Thanksgiving dinner is a favorite. Tasty Bites packages can just be put in boiling water to cook. Couscous is quick. Add water and let it sit for 5 minutes and you are done. There are some days where this is not too much of an issue, like storm or rest days where all you have is time to prep your meal.

For the most part you don’t want to spend hours cooking when you could be sleeping. Organization is key. Finding ingredients and measuring things out is not fun to do when you feel like death. Everything should be ready to go before you even start your trip.

What we did on the SkiTheBig3 trip was prepare everything in Anchorage. We measured everything out and separated it into days. So a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner for all four of us was put into a bag and labeled. This way each morning we could just grab a bag and have our food all ready for the day.

Ski Plane Base Camp in the Tordrillos. When the plane takes all your food in and you have to carry nothing you can go big with food prep. Double bacon cheeseburgers on a glacier are pretty tasty.

The best tools for eating. GSI Fairshare mugs with 40 Below insulators.

Readers, we know many of you are experienced multi-day expedition skiers. What are your food tricks? Nutella? Celery? How do you deal with individual likes and dislikes? Leave comments.

Stock up on Honey Stinger here.

6 Responses to “Fine Glacier Dining: Planning Food for the Ski Expedition”

1. Kristian July 7th, 2015 1:52 pm

   Last week on Rainier, I used Gu, salted almonds, BelVita blueberry biscuits, instant coffee, decaf tea, instant oatmeal packs, precooked Oscar Meyer bacon packs, Hormel hard salami packs, small wheat tortillas, and Backpacker Pantry dinners. The dinners take over 20 minutes to reconstitute at altitude. Put them sealed under your outer layers for warming goodness.

   And an MSR Whisperlite International for melting snow. Plan on about 18 ounces of white gas fuel per person per day. A four quart/liter aluminum pot is handy for scooping/melting snow and also stowing your food.

2. Phil July 8th, 2015 1:55 pm

   Thanks for that post. It is always interesting to see what other people choose on long trips.

   Food choices really depend on the type of trip. A base camp trip or a trip with little travelling doesn’t need to consider food weight nearly as much as a point-to-point expedition where you are travelling most days. Trips like the Foraker climb require different choices again (fast cooking, light). A weekend trip has few constraints. The food choice also depends on how you cook your food (just add boiling water, or actually cook it).

   On our longer trips (typical would be a 3 week traverse, perhaps with 1-2 food caches, sometimes no caches) we haven’t used the commercial dehydrated foods for many years.; they all seem to end up tasting the same and you often need 2 (or more) for one person in terms of calories. They also don’t allow for adjustment for dietary requirements – and it seems that is more and more common with my trip partners. It is really quite easy to dehydrate much of your own food or ingredients and there are many sources of dried ingredients that you can put your own meals together with. And they are almost guaranteed to taste better… Get a book to start (e.g., Fork in the Road) and experiment.

   One standard item in my menu list: Salmon jerky, green curry (paste or dried – experiment with the amount), dried coconut milk, dried lemongrass dried green beans or peas & red peppers, rice or pasta. Tasty and very light… Takes no longer to prepare than cooking the rice/pasta.

   It was mentioned very briefly above, but a pre-dinner soup is standard. Light, fast to prepare, rehydrates you and replaces salts lost during a hard day, warms you up….

3. john July 11th, 2015 6:25 am

   try the Instant Indian food like chana marsala. miso paste for miso soup. both are light fast and keep you moving.

4. Jim July 15th, 2015 2:52 pm

   On recent trips this past season to the Tordrillos and Denali Park we brought a Coleman camp oven that sits on top of a propane stove or whisperlite. We baked bread, pita bread, pizza, apple tarts, cookies. We brought flour,salt sugar and yeast and kneaded and let it rise. It saves space compared to pre made bread, and doesn’t get crushed. It also provide a emergency food buffer. Its surprising how easy it is to make bread. Without an oven, one can make pita bread easily in a pan. It was a great way to pass time on weather days. This is only for plane camping.

   We brought a lot of bacon, as on cold days, the body seems to crave the fat and its a way to get enough calories in your body. We also brought meat for stews, potatoes, carrots. Soups every day before dinner is a great way to keep warm and avoid hunger crash while cooking after a long ski day. A nice technique is to use the freeze dried food as a base, and add in fresh potatoes, carrots, onion. Parsley and lemon can really zing an otherwise bland preprepared meal. We brought in 5 dozen eggs. Butter is big, lots of butter is good to flavor everything.

   The old sourdoughs used to live an entire winter on a bag of flour, salt, coffee and a slab of bacon.

   Carrying your food is a whole different challenge which I leave to the younger guys.

5. Jim July 15th, 2015 3:01 pm

   I’ve been making my own Soylent, or what I call superfood. It is ideal for ski touring. There is a do it yourself website with recipes and a nutrient calculator online. Its made of protein powder isolate, olive oil, maltodextrin, dextrose, minerals, potassium citrate electrolyte, vitamins, chia seeds, masa harina all available mail order on popular sites. I blend mine as an athletic energy food which contains all the nutrients needed to survive. I mix a 240 grams litre in a bottle which makes 1000 calories and drink it as I skin up every 30 minutes or so. Your body can only function with such exertion for 2 hours before glucose supplies in the blood are depleted. That’s the feeling you get of hitting the wall. At that point, without further nutrition, the body start using muscle and brain tissue for energy. Drinking quickly absorbed complex sugars, with some protein, and oil allows the carbs to absorb directly through the stomach lining for rapid conversion to glucose and steady constant energy. The stomach cannot process heavy food during exercise because the blood has been diverted away to the muscles, so rapidly absorbed foods are optimum for athletic performance and avoiding bloat and after lunch tiredness.

   I premix the daily pack and vacuum pack them. In the morning before the tour, I mix my litre bottle which provide me hydration and nutrition on the go for the day. Its also great protein for muscle recovery and rebuilding at the end of the day.

6. Jim July 24th, 2015 7:54 pm

   Anton, What area did you ski in the Tordrillos? Thanks.