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How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Tue 16 Apr, 2019 6:50 pm
by weeds
Between re-supplies?

We carried eight days of food when we did the OLT and though that would be our max....we need to work on base weight.

Did a hike over the weekend and learnt that a group of four each carried 21 days of food for their traverse across the Kimberley’s (maybe a member of the group is on here) pretty impressive I thought.


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Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Tue 16 Apr, 2019 7:03 pm
by ILUVSWTAS
13

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Tue 16 Apr, 2019 8:24 pm
by debkah
13

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Tue 16 Apr, 2019 9:37 pm
by peregrinator
13. Oh, sorry, I thought you asked how many hours.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Tue 16 Apr, 2019 11:30 pm
by johnw
8 days

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 9:23 am
by DavidB
12 days - but won't do that again.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 9:32 am
by ribuck
DavidB wrote:12 days - but won't do that again.

Same. Doing 9 next month though, with water carry to dry camps, so not much different.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 11:27 am
by Son of a Beach
Carried 14 days' worth of food, but only used 12 days' in the end.

Carried 17 if you count rafting the Franklin. But of course that was mostly rafting with a few stretches of hiking here and there. I still managed to fit it all into one backpack (apart from the raft, paddle and wetsuit).

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 1:29 pm
by wildwanderer
8 days worth of food so far.

That about the longest trip I like to do without a day's town/motel/shower/shave break.

I wash in streams during the trip etc however nothng beats a hot shower and shave at the end.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 2:03 pm
by Tyreless
6 days of food, but I carried it up Hannels Spur.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 17 Apr, 2019 2:18 pm
by ofuros
2weeks worth in a 80l Berghaus expedition pack, as a young 19/20yo, solo, chasing beautifully spotted trout in the tassie highlands....way too many seasons ago.

No hope of carrying that much weight these days, nor would I want to...back issues. Food stashes for extended walks.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 18 Apr, 2019 10:48 pm
by beardless
14 days or part thereof (finished with a spare emergency cous cous packet)

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sat 20 Apr, 2019 11:58 pm
by Officer Down
65.

North Pole solo unsupported.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Apr, 2019 9:09 am
by north-north-west
Officer Down wrote:65.

North Pole solo unsupported.


Yeah, but I bet you had a sled rather than carrying it.
My max is 15 (14 days planned walking, one day reserve).

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Apr, 2019 3:01 pm
by madpom
Also keen to hear that story - @Officer Down.

Regularly (coupla times a year) do 14 day trips - 17 days food. That distance seems pretty common here in NZ. But that's carrying a few hours of water (normally 1.5l, at most 3l). Don't reckon I could manage it carrying a full day and night's water supply. Some benefits to being in the land of the long black cloud.

Mind you, the added weight of saturated clothing & pack & wet weather gear must balance that out a bit!

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Apr, 2019 3:05 pm
by wildwanderer
1.5-3L in nz.... you must walk different/ more hardcore locations to me.. in NZ I think I've carried 500ml max. I've only walked in valleys and crossed a few saddles so far. To much water (flooding) was often the problem.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Apr, 2019 4:27 pm
by Lophophaps
Two weeks, sometimes 16 days, and that's quite heavy. It helps if there is no need to carry much water at the start.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Apr, 2019 5:36 pm
by Officer Down
north-north-west wrote:
Officer Down wrote:65.

North Pole solo unsupported.


Yeah, but I bet you had a sled rather than carrying it.
My max is 15 (14 days planned walking, one day reserve).


Correct.

The question in the OP was "how many days food have you hiked with".

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Wed 24 Jul, 2019 1:21 am
by trekker76
14 but only used 10 that occasion. These days 7 is about all I do.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Thu 25 Jul, 2019 10:54 pm
by Gimped
9 days, but figured we would catch some trout to add another 3 days worth.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Fri 26 Jul, 2019 7:50 pm
by Neo
Just 4.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sat 27 Jul, 2019 8:48 am
by warnesy
6 days but that was more than enough. Can’t imagine 13. Then again with 13 days you might have to give up on the steak!


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Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sat 27 Jul, 2019 1:22 pm
by Biggles
Four nights, five days. Tame, I know, but I do not have the capacity for heavy pack carrying (secondary to a cycling accident in 2014 where I landed diddly-squat on my lower back, which was horror...).

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sat 27 Jul, 2019 2:15 pm
by onward
9 nights when my food was around 900gm/d now I more typically take 600gms/day. Plus the 9 days was in Tassie where you don't have to carry much water...4L of water is more than 5 days food!

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sun 28 Jul, 2019 4:43 am
by ribuck
onward wrote:9 nights when my food was around 900gm/d now I more typically take 600gms/day

How do you manage on 600g, and what do you take? Until this year I took (and ate) 1kg per day. This year I replaced some of my carbs by protein and fat, and cut it down to 800g per day. I wouldn't have wanted any less.

For me, a 9-day trip was 6.4kg of food, i.e. eight times 800g. I don't need the first breakfast or the last dinner, and I'm happy to have the last lunch when I get to the end, even if it means a late lunch.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sun 28 Jul, 2019 9:00 am
by Orion
ribuck wrote:How do you manage on 600g, and what do you take? Until this year I took (and ate) 1kg per day. This year I replaced some of my carbs by protein and fat, and cut it down to 800g per day. I wouldn't have wanted any less.


Lean mass of the person, metabolism, distance/elevation covered, difficulty of terrain -- all of these factor in. And of course caloric density of the food. In my home range, walking on straightforward tracks, and carrying relatively dense (mostly dry food with a higher percentage of fat than I eat at home), I find that I do okay with about 800g a day. That's with 40-50km and 1500-2000m elevation each day, but for no more than than 10-12 days. I'm slowly losing mass and beyond that time frame I need more food each day.

I met someone in SW Tasmania claiming he was eating only 400g per day. He said walking just didn't make him hungry. He was a skinny guy but I still found it hard to believe. I met a very small women who was subsisting on even less, and all in the form of powdered pea soup, for a walk on the John Muir Trail in California. I wonder if she made it?

When I walked the S.Coast/Port Davey/W.Arthurs loop, from Melaleuca I loaded up with what I thought was 13 days of food at 800g per day. But even on the South Coast I found I was eating my food a lot faster than anticipated. With an even larger pack and with the terrain, which even on the easier tracks in Tasmania is more demanding, I found that I didn't have as many days as I thought. My original plan had been to walk the E. Arthurs as well but I would have been starving at the end. Even if I'd known in advance I'm not sure I would have wanted to carry more weight through the W.Arthurs though.

I could have reduced my base pack weight some but I wasn't willing to go as light as would have been necessary. In theory I could have carried a lot more calories for the same weight but I'm just not happy eating food that is maximized for calories. For me it's unpalatable. There has to be some joy.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sun 28 Jul, 2019 1:54 pm
by onward
ribuck wrote:
onward wrote:9 nights when my food was around 900gm/d now I more typically take 600gms/day

How do you manage on 600g, and what do you take? Until this year I took (and ate) 1kg per day. This year I replaced some of my carbs by protein and fat, and cut it down to 800g per day. I wouldn't have wanted any less.

For me, a 9-day trip was 6.4kg of food, i.e. eight times 800g. I don't need the first breakfast or the last dinner, and I'm happy to have the last lunch when I get to the end, even if it means a late lunch.


I used to take 900m and came home with lots of food...so I might as well have put rocks in my pack!
120gms breakfast - 100gm muesli and powdered milk 20 grams coffee (used to take 60gm muesli)
150gms lunch - 50gm cheese 8 Cheds or similar crackers and 1 protein type bar
130gm dinner - 10gm freeze dried miso (don't have every night) 120gm own dehydrated meal (some with commercial freeze dried veg)
155gm snacks- 25gm dark chocolate, 80gm 2 protein/nut bars, 50gms nuts, seeds coconut homemade mix, 20gm extra powdered milk
30gms Whisky
I am 61 mostly around 65-70kg and sleep very hot (metabolism helps I think), my 3 season base weight is 4-5kg depending on mountains or coast (not carrying a heavy pack helps to I think!)
Usually don't eat all of that! And yes sometimes don't need first day breakfast and last day dinner so that is a little less.
Tested that last year on the 450km Hume and Hovell Track over 12 days, lost about 1kg and had food left. Been using it for at least 50 nights since. Mostly have bars, nut mix, chocolate and miso left over. And yes I'm one of those people who don't have an appetite when hiking! I do have a spreadsheet to calculate the energy values of the food I am taking versus what I calculate the hike will need.
Cheers

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sun 28 Jul, 2019 5:42 pm
by ChrisJHC
I find it’s pretty easy to get down to 700g/day including some treats.

Breakfast: cereal/muesli plus powdered milk
Lunch: fish in a pouch plus mountain bread or crackers
Dinner: dehyd main meal plus the chocolate bar
Extras: one or two coffees/hot chocolates per day plus scroggin/trail mix

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Sun 28 Jul, 2019 6:02 pm
by trekker76
I eat about 1000g, pretty concentrated. I still lose weight if the going is constant. Before I had to cut my salt it was bulk jerky, peanut butter, condensed milk, trail mix with nut,veg and seeds, energy protein bars, honey, tortilla bread, electrolyte satchels. No particular meal times or sequence. Now I'm looking for a beef jerky replacement.

Re: How many days food have you hiked with??

PostPosted: Mon 29 Jul, 2019 12:23 am
by ribuck
I have been taking 10,000 kJ per day for on-track walking (such as the Larapinta), and 11,000 kJ per day for off-track walking. Oz Govt says the average requirement for an adult is 8700 kJ per day (an average requirement is meaningless).

onward wrote:120gms breakfast - 100gm muesli and powdered milk 20 grams coffee (used to take 60gm muesli)

That's where my downfall begins. I start the day with 150g granola plus 35g powdered milk.