The blog has fallen by the wayside the last two weeks, and I apologize for the lack of productivity. I was on vacation for 10 days in the Pacific Northwest, trekking around Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, and the Northern Cascades.
For most of the seven days we were actively hiking, we were enveloped in intense fog, drenched by a consistent mist (with occasional downpour) of rain, I was stung in the face by two bees, and we traipsed around in wet socks for a total of 79 miles and 16,000 feet of total elevation gain. Our faithful group determined that either A) this trip was character building of some sort or B) we were paying penance for prior sins.
Mt. Rainier
Either way, I find by doing some extreme backcountry hiking once a year, I offset the incredible amount of time I spend in front of a laptop, somehow balancing my inner chi. Or is it my yang? I dunno.
In addition to frolicking with marmots, I was able to spend a little time in Seattle, and I had hoped to throw out a few posts along the way, but my laptop fell victim to a leaky beer cooler in the car. And it wasn’t even good beer, it was Mt. Rainier, which is kinda like the PC-NW version of PBR, only it really sucks.
fact – these go down smoother when you shotgun them
I did have my fair share of good beer out there, and some great grub as well. We hit up a lot of seafood – Dungeness crab in Port Angeles, fried halibut near Mt. Rainier, and sushi and Ethiopian food in Seattle. I hope to post on those meals within the next week, but right now I’m still getting acquainted with my new MacBook Pro and need to transfer some photos.
For now I’ll take this opportunity to post about our camp eats, which I had hoped to document in great detail, but somehow I forgot to take photos as I stood in the rain, shivering while waiting for our dehydrated meals to reanimate to whatever purported concoction was printed on the front label. On the four day backcountry trip, our daily food consumption looked something like this:
Breakfast
Folger’s instant coffee (2 per day)
Individual packs of various flavored oatmeals (1 per day)
Dehydrated huevos rancheros (1 day only)
Dehydrated scrambled eggs and bacon in tortillas (1 day only)
On Trail
Trail mix (M&M’s, almonds, sesame sticks, dried cranberries, pretzels)
Kashi and Powerbar Energy bars (2 per person/day)
Beef Jerky (1lb for 4 days)
Assorted Hershey’s Nuggets (4-5 per person/day)
Lunch
Bagels (2 per person/day)
Tortillas (1 to 2 per person/day)
One Package Tuna in Water (1 per day)
Peanut Butter (1 large scoop per person/day)
Dinner
Dehyrated Meals (Beef Stroganoff, Chicken and Dumplings, Mexican Rice and Chicken, etc – 2 per day)
A few slugs of Black Box wine (3 liters in a box)
what to do with those jerky bits at the bottom of the bag? put them on the sandwich of course!
Clearly, this wasn’t gourmet camping. I had aspirations of creating some fabulous on-trail meals, but weight and convenience superseded my picky palate. With the menu above, we only had to bring one cooking pot for the group, and one cup and one spoon per person. And we never really “cooked” anything, we just boiled water in the pot then would pour the hot water directly into our cup or into the dehydrated meal package. Eating directly from the packages mean there is zero clean-up and we can easily pack the trash in an ziploc and be on our way.
But it’s a pretty sorry sight to see a group of cold, wet, and smelly hikers, circled around a hot bag of beef stroganoff, shoveling spoonfuls of noodles and meat that haven’t quite fully reconstituted because we were were too eager to get hot food in our belly to wait. Even more terrifying, when we made the scrambled eggs, there was too much water in the package so in the bottom of the bag was almost a cup of thin scrambled egg and bacon juice. I shamefully drank the gross concoction, partly because it’s irresponsible to leave food at campsites, but mostly because I would have devoured any hot food flavored liquid at that time.
I realized along the way that not only does a trip like this energize body and mind, but it resets my food consciousness as well. It’s easy to get lost in the food and blog madness, where I find myself looking ahead to my next meal/destination, trying to satisfy an intense desire to expand my palate, pretty much eating all the time, and often times not even for nourishment! It was satisfying to think of food as the energy needed to give my legs the strength to pull myself sixteen miles up the trail, versus the normal, well, gluttony.
The first off-trail meal is proof that this food abstinence is worth it. I had freshly caught halibut fish ‘n chips that were beyond incredible! Five thick slabs of flaky halibut, breaded in house made beer batter, fried to perfection, served with lush tartare sauce and plated with loads of large, crispy steak fries that were beyond satisfying. And apparently I was lucky the fish was on the menu because the day prior it wasn’t on the menu. Why? Because the fisherman didn’t bring in any halibut that day of course!
Who knows how that meal will measure up in an few weeks, but at that moment, my level of food appreciation was soaring, and I think I need that every once in a while.
“the works” – bagel with peanut butter, beef jerky, and M&M’s
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