Backcountry Eats

Those of you who have ever been out backpacking for more than an overnight trip should be well aware of the many limitation one has when cooking in the backcountry. Now factor in how I will be resupplying at some small grocery store with limited selection of food, I will be using a pop-can alcohol stove that can't easily regulate heat and will need to ration my fuel-use to last until the next resupply. Needless to say, I won't be eating very fancy meals but I certainly like to be creative with my meals. I am excited to see what sort of trail concoctions I will create along the way and how skilled of a chef I can become over a pop-can stove.

"Dieting" for Thru Hikers

Maybe not quite Michael Phelps' diet but you get the point

One of the best things about thru hiking is all that work requires a whole lot of calories, which mean I get to eat a whole lot of food. Back when I rowed, I used to pile on the food in the dining halls and never have to worry about putting on any extra pounds. Luckily, I have a decent metabolism and in this past year my appetite has significantly decreased, but I will be happy once I get out on the trail and get to eat like a fat kid again. These past few months I have also transitions to a semi-vegetarian diet where when I cook for myself I don't cook meat. This should help prepare me for the trail where you don't necessarily want to take chicken breasts or ground beef with you.

I have recently been reading some good advise on keeping yourself properly fueled for a thru hike from dietician, experienced backpacker and trail angel, Brenda Braaten. Her blog, Pack Light Eat Right, provides excellent advise on what types of food your body needs to power through a long distance trip such as the PCT. She advises a 50:35:15 diet where 50% of you food should consist of carbs, 35% fat and 15% protein. While protein is important for muscle building, a thru hiker is mostly concerned with getting enough complex sugars and high calorie fats to burn throughout the day. That mean oils and fats should become a more significant portion of my diet on the trail and my protein intake can really just stay similar to my typical diet.

Another major difference for me on the trail is there are not really such thing as meals, just bigger and smaller sized snack breaks. When I am hiking I tend to eat a big snack, or what many may refer to as "breakfast", before I start my day. Throughout the day, every time I take a little break I will grab some trail mix, granola, or other bars to munch on. I will usually stop for "lunch" which is actually just a bigger snack that may take a little more time to prepare. As I go I may even shift to having my biggest snack or "dinner" in the middle of the day. This can be especially advantageous in the desert where I will likely be taking a siesta during the hottest hours of the day anyways. However, I do like to have a big reward to look forward to towards the end of the day. One new backpacking trick I will start practicing on the trail is never cooking food where I plan on sleeping. This will help keep the critters away and let more of those calories go towards helping me make the final push of the day. Only for those "biggest snack" will I break out my cooking gear; a retrofitted pop-can and gas-line antifreeze.

Fuel for the Fire

One of the biggest changes for me will be moving away from using a white gas backpacking stove and replacing it with an alcohol stove. While alcohol stoves tend to be lighter than white gas or canister stoves the weight difference is only a minor factor in my decision. Instead the larger concern is fuel availability. One of the biggest advantages of using an alcohol based fuel is that it can be commonly found at most gas stations under the brand name HEET.

Yellow = Methanol, Red = Isopropanol

The yellow HEET bottles are composed primarily of methanol and used as a gas-line antifreeze. The methanol in HEET is intended to remove any moisture in a car's gas tank, but it also burns cleanly and has an ideal vaporization pressure for a pop-can stove. Other liquids more commonly associated with the word alcohol, such as grain alcohol, could also work but I can think of much better uses for that than fueling my stove. Rubbing alcohol surprisingly does not make a good fuel source as it generally is only 70% alcohol and is composed of isopropanol which doesn't burn as cleanly.

However, there are some major disadvantages to using alcohol, such as the inability to moderate the fuel input into the stove. The heat output from methanol is generally much more reduced than other backpacking fuels as well. Overall the advantages of using alcohol stoves win out and many PCT thru-hikers get along just fine with them.

Pop-Can Chef

As I can attest from my attempts thus far, using a pop-can alcohol stove is not necessarily the easiest backpacking stove to cook with, but it is quite possibly the coolest. What I really like about pop-can stoves are their do-it-yourself nature. I must give full credit to the great site Zen Stoves which helped instruct me how to construct my own stove. There are many options out there and I have gone with the pressurized-jet design for a more fuel efficient system. After many trials and errors (including almost lighting a kitchen table on fire) I have finally gotten a hold on how to light these stoves as shown in the video below.

First the methanol must be poured into the stove before anything is lit and the screw sealed tight when finished. The pressurized jet design requires a primer plate to heat up the methanol inside the stove. The cool part of this design is the flame actually never reaches the fuel in the stove. Instead the fuel is heated increasing the vapor pressure within the stove eventually causing the pressurized fuel to shoot out of the jets. The jets will then catch some of the flame from the primer plate and continue to burn until the fuel inside is depleted.

In addition to my stove I am still hunting for an ideal lightweight pot with a lid (I've heard that Walmart sells a pot designed to collect grease that works well). I partially ruined mine on my last backpacking trip when I slipped on a muddy bridge falling on my pack which significantly bent my aluminum pot. I also am debating whether or not to carry a pot stand and may just find rocks on the trail to rest the pot on. However hopefully by the time I get to Canada I will have mastered the art of cooking on a pop-can stove.