To Save Money Backpacking, Take Food

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Unless every ounce counts, carry enough fresh foods for the first day or two on the trail. Frozen steaks will thaw as you hike. Carrots and other sturdy vegetables will keep fine for the second day's lunch. So will hard-boiled eggs. In your pack's cool center, leftover home-cooked meat should keep well for the second night's dinner. Tightly wrapped smoked ham should keep until the third night or longer.

Will you have lazy days in camp? Will you build fires? Foods that need lengthy soaking before or during cooking (beans, lentils, regular brown rice, etc.) are fine for in—camp days and wood fires—but they won't do for fast meals after hikes or for trips when you must carry and ration stove fuel.

Will you be cooking at high altitudes? If the answer is yes, then forget about dining on anything requiring beans, because the dried legumes simply won't rehydrate. The higher you climb, the more slowly all starches and cereals will cook. And because of the lower temperatures at high altitudes, cereals left to soak overnight may turn into whole-grain Popsicles—even in summer.

Will water be in short supply? If so, choose your dinner starches from among those that require little more liquid for cooking than the small amount they'll absorb. Forget pasta.

How about wild foods? If you're in an area that lends itself to foraging, a copy of Lee Peterson's AField Guide to Edible Wild Plants (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1978) and a break-down spinning or fly rod can be worth three times their weight in processed and packaged meat and vegetables. Of course, don't ever eat a plant if you have the least doubt about its identity. (After a few seasons' worth of foraging experience, you'll probably have enough sure identifications locked in your head to make the book optional.)

HINT 2: LOOT YOUR LARDER

A backpacking trip is the perfect time to make use of home-dried garden produce. De hydrated vegetables will glorify any trail dinner (most hikers come home craving green stuff). Hiking also presents a good opportunity to use such homemade treats as jerky, your pet granola mix, candies, and sturdy cookies. (A tip on packing homemade granola bars: Overbake them a little. Crispier bars are lighter and hold up better in jouncing packs.)

Be sure to prepare your own gorp; store blends always leave out at least one thing you love. But keep in mind that a trail mix you enjoy at home may be lousy for the trail: I like sunflower seeds, but I don't like the way they jiggle down to the bottom of the gorp bag during a hike.

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