DAA
Member
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2012
- Messages
- 715
My Son and I leave early tomorrow morning for a five day/five night "50 miler" Uintas trip with the Scouts.
I'm a total noob when it comes to backpacking. From my reading, the general rule of thumb for backpacking seems to be 2lbs of food per person, per day.
My question, is how much food weight do you experienced backpackers actually plan for and use? Is the 2lbs a day realistic?
Reason I ask... I assembled all of our food for the trip. For the freeze dried stuff, I put in at least 2 "servings" each for dinner every night, a desert of at least 1 serving each (but with 2 servings each for some nights) and breafasts of two servings each. To this I added 10 assorted Larabars and Probars each, plus 20 oz. each of home made trail mix (mixed nuts, M&M's, craisins, dried mango).
This all totals up to only about 14.5 lbs for two people, for five days. Not quite 1.5 lbs a day each. Which seems "light" just on the face of it. So I threw in another 6 dinner servings of freeze dried. So now we have at least 3 dinner servings each for the whole trip. But that still totals only about 16 lbs, for two people, for five days. I honestly think we have enough food at that weight. A little light on the day time snacks/lunch perhaps, but enough breakfast and dinner that I think we might have trouble eating it all. And I've used my new Jetboil Sol Ti enough on car camping trips, that to me it doesn't seem like it would be much bother to whip up a hot lunch from the probably surplus dinner servings if we feel like it.
Due to my inexperience, I'm going to "play it safe" and add another couple pounds of jerky and dried fuits to get us closer to that 2 lbs a day thing. But, I can't help suspecting we'll end up carrying some of this food 50 miles and bringing it home? Especially considering the fire restrictions up there have been lifted and I'm sure we'll have at least one or two meals of fish?
Anyway... I know this is something I'll get a handle on myself with experience and learn how to plan for "enough" without carrying needless weight. But it also got me very curious as to how you more experienced folks plan your food weight?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts, opinions or advice you'd like to share! Having an active thread going on this topic will help me from bouncing off the walls today. I'm stoked to get going on the trail in the morning!
- DAA
I'm a total noob when it comes to backpacking. From my reading, the general rule of thumb for backpacking seems to be 2lbs of food per person, per day.
My question, is how much food weight do you experienced backpackers actually plan for and use? Is the 2lbs a day realistic?
Reason I ask... I assembled all of our food for the trip. For the freeze dried stuff, I put in at least 2 "servings" each for dinner every night, a desert of at least 1 serving each (but with 2 servings each for some nights) and breafasts of two servings each. To this I added 10 assorted Larabars and Probars each, plus 20 oz. each of home made trail mix (mixed nuts, M&M's, craisins, dried mango).
This all totals up to only about 14.5 lbs for two people, for five days. Not quite 1.5 lbs a day each. Which seems "light" just on the face of it. So I threw in another 6 dinner servings of freeze dried. So now we have at least 3 dinner servings each for the whole trip. But that still totals only about 16 lbs, for two people, for five days. I honestly think we have enough food at that weight. A little light on the day time snacks/lunch perhaps, but enough breakfast and dinner that I think we might have trouble eating it all. And I've used my new Jetboil Sol Ti enough on car camping trips, that to me it doesn't seem like it would be much bother to whip up a hot lunch from the probably surplus dinner servings if we feel like it.
Due to my inexperience, I'm going to "play it safe" and add another couple pounds of jerky and dried fuits to get us closer to that 2 lbs a day thing. But, I can't help suspecting we'll end up carrying some of this food 50 miles and bringing it home? Especially considering the fire restrictions up there have been lifted and I'm sure we'll have at least one or two meals of fish?
Anyway... I know this is something I'll get a handle on myself with experience and learn how to plan for "enough" without carrying needless weight. But it also got me very curious as to how you more experienced folks plan your food weight?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts, opinions or advice you'd like to share! Having an active thread going on this topic will help me from bouncing off the walls today. I'm stoked to get going on the trail in the morning!
- DAA