RE: [Philmont]: Inedible Trail Food???

One thing I kept in mind as we prepared for both our Philmont treks: we
are supposed to be educating the youth about being able to do a backpack ON
THEIR OWN at some later point in their life. One tenet of this is that you
don't have to spend $100 at REI getting a bunch of dehydrated meals that
are questionable in their level of deliciousness. Also, the next time a 21
year-old former Philmont trekker wants to do a backpack with his friends,
he sure isn't going to call Philmont and order Philmeals either <g>!

So we take a different tact for our training backpacks. We train the youth
that they can get EVERYTHING they need for nutritious and light-weight
meals from your grocery store. Now while I certainly don't subscribe to
the approach used by Bill Bryson when he hiked the Appalachian Trail (ramen
noodles every night until you decided the stove was too heavy and went with
Snickers bars, peanuts and raisins <g>), I find that I can make great meals
out of the grocery store.

Some of our favorites are:

Dinner: spaghetti (with packaged sauce & pouched beef) and garlic bread,
macaroni and cheese with bacon bits, or rice-a-roni (again, with pouched
beef or chicken). We try to liven things up with some crazy desserts, like
grasshopper pie (pistacio pudding with oreos crushed in it).

Lunch: it's tough to get away from "cracker-mania", but some of the things
our youth like are vienna sausages, Underwood potted meats, & the smallest
brick of Velveta. We have even been known to bring pressurized squeeze
cheese. Even with the can weight, it is pretty light-weight and the kids
like it. We can usually get two 4-person lunches out of one can. We also
try to go with more variety in the crackers (outside of the
Ritz/saltine/Club Cracker cycle). The kids like Chicken-in-a-Bisquit and
Better Cheddars. We buy them in the small box (for a 4-person eating
group) and don't repackage. The box prevents some of the crushing and
breakage.

Breakfast: like most of Philmont's breakfasts, we normally go with a
non-cook breakfast. One of our fond favorites is bagel with individual
pack of cream cheese. Bagles travel well and are not that heavy,
especially if you have them for your first breakfast on the trail. The
youth DO like the pop tarts and breakfast cereal though. We normally don't
buy individual boxes of cereal. We buy the big bag and repackage.

We round out meals with things we buy in bulk (at Costco, Sam's Club,
etc.)--beef jerky, slim jims, various granola/power bars, rice krispy
treats, hard candy, etc. We find that we can usually do the food for a
backpack for $7-8 per day. And it is usually all food the kids are
familiar with, usually like and I feel our meals usually end up just as
nutritious as Philfood.

By not training with Philfood, I don't feel we missed out on much
(personally). But I do understand that good training for a trek usually
increases trek enjoyment by reducing "surprises". As is much of life,
there are choices, so as the master said in that old TV show Kung Fu "Chose
wisely, grasshopper" <g>!

Well, I have run on long enough. This is just my two cents, your mileage
will vary... YIS. Mike Conkey ('76, '02, '04, and hopefully '07)

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Received on Wed Aug 24 08:58:10 2005