Favorite Snack Food while on the Mountain

[kmehrtens]

Just another post asking a question and looking for an opinion about Denali.

 

What is everyone's go-to snack food / carb while on the mountain. I know that everyone says eat what you like to eat in hopes that you will since your appetite seems to go away while you are at altitude.

 

Typically mine have always been Snickers, Paydays, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids and beef jerky. These seem to work for shorter trips but I'm trying to come up with additional ideas that might have more staying power. More complex carbs and less sugar to avoid hitting the wall and bonking.

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks as always.

 

Edited March 23, 2017 by kmehrtens

[montypiton]

on two Denali trips, we used logan bread (google it for recipe - you'll make this yourself), snickers bars (huge calorie load per bar), nuts, dried fruit. - of course trail mix is an easy source of the last three ingredients. jerky for extra protein and salt, though we didn't eat that much of it...

-Haireball

[96avs01]

We still had an appetite for M&Ms even at the end of the trip. The varieties really help. And I've yet to ever eat a single Butterfinger after our trip, and likely never will.

[WCC]

Smoked salmon and dried coconut chunks (not shredded).

 

[diepj]

Doesn't really matter... Bring a wide variety. Snickers are great but keep it in your coat pocket (i.e.warm).

 

We had a huge variety of stuff - snickers, M&Ms, trail mix, jerky, fruit stick things, cheez&PB crackers, Cheez-it, rice kirspy treat, nutri-grain bar, chocolate, good&plenty, who knows what else. We established n planning various combinations to provide the calorie load we needed for a particular day, together with breakfast and dinner.

 

Most of that stuff can be eaten frozen, something to consider.

 

Pack your snacks up in daily rations and try to get through it all. That way you're getting the calories you need and also eating the stuff you really like and the stuff you're sick of in equal measure. If you have everything all combined for the whole trip you won't keep track of how much you "should" eat each day and also you'll favor the good stuff first and be left the gross stuff on the second half of the trip. (When you need it most!)

 

If you find you brought something you don't like find someone who does and trade. You'd be surprised what people might want to give and take out there...

[OlympicMtnBoy]

Pretty much what everyone else said. I've also had good luck with Gu/energy gels, in limited quantity, at altitude as well. Sometimes when you don't feel like eating but know you need to they easy to choke down. Think about how things will be cold/frozen as well though, for example the plain vanilla powerbar gel worked well for me in Peru, but the chocolate/coffee Clif Shot type ones were too stiff and harder to eat. I like gummy candy/shot bloks too but I did lost a crown off my tooth on a frozen one ice climbing. That sucked.

 

Sometimes high fat things like cocktail pepperoni (Oberto Outlet for big bags cheap) get more appealing on trips than at home, although altitude may make fat harder to digest so maybe best for basecamp.

[ZimZam]

Gummies FTMFW