Meal Planning Tutorial

To perform at your best during the extended effort demanded by alpine climbing your body needs high energy, nutritious food. Identifying nutritionally sound and appealing foods will require some personal experimentation. This page is meant to help get you started in the right direction with insights, recipes, and strategies that have worked well for Peak over time.

Everything we’ll present here can be prepared ahead of time, carried multiple days, and only requires hot water.

Oatmeal
Instant oatmeal is as simple and effective as it gets. Consider adding chocolate candy, nuts, etc to make it more sustainable.

Pancakes
Look for pancake mix that only requires water. Add oats, chocolate, dried berries or syrup for better taste. This is a step up from oatmeal but requires a little more effort.

Powdered eggs with cheese
This can be a fast high protein meal if your tired of oatmeal that’s simple to make and light. If you’re looking to get creative, get dried veggies, or potatoes. Amazon.com has a good selection of these items.

* Don’t forget instant coffee packets and powdered cream!

It’s rare to stop and eat a single “lunch” during a day of climbing. Numerous snacks and small meals are more efficient. Here is a list of some of the time tested favorites:
– Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
– Dried meats and cheese
– Dried fruit such as mango, pineapple, apple, and banana
– Instant Hummus with carrots, peppers, or crackers
– Bars: Cliff bars, Epic bars, Pro bars, Laura bars, Candy Bars, etc
– Trail mix: mix of nuts raisins, M&Ms, seeds, Chex, etc
– Cliff Shot Bloks or GU energy gel with caffeine

There are many different options for stoves. Some reputable brands are MSR and Jet Boil

Things to consider when selecting a stove:
-Type of trips
-Length of trips
-Type of fuel and if it’s refillable

If your going on a long expedition, a stove like the MSR Whisper lite is a good choice. It has a refillable white gas fuel tank and is user-friendly. It is popular among outdoor enthusiasts because it is easy to troubleshoot. Parts can be replaced and the stove can be cleaned fairly easy. Also white Gas doesn’t Freeze.

If you’re primarily going to be boiling water for freeze dried meals, or melting snow, use a Jet Boil. Nothing boils water as fast as a jet boil, they also pack into themselves for easy storing in your pack. While the downsides include having individual fuel cans, and an isobutane/propane fuel blend that can potentially malfunction if cold. A solution would be making sure you keep fuel off the snow and not out overnight.