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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by colorado_rob View Post
    This is why I love WB; 6 itemized paragraphs of analysis right after saying this topic is over-analyzed.... PLUS one item poo-pooing advice (item3) while giving lots of advice.... Classic. . .
    Ah, wallowing in hypocrisy. . . touche!

    That being said, I was railing against debating over 1.5 vs. 2 lbs of food and the fundamental importance of specific food types. I'd like to suggest there is a difference between analytics (specifics and numbers) vs. general assessment and personal priorities and decision making.
    I'm not lost. I'm exploring.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by nsherry61 View Post
    Ah, wallowing in hypocrisy. . . touche!

    That being said, I was railing against debating over 1.5 vs. 2 lbs of food and the fundamental importance of specific food types. I'd like to suggest there is a difference between analytics (specifics and numbers) vs. general assessment and personal priorities and decision making.
    Yeah, I don't disagree on the analytics definition... I was being ornery.

    But I do think it is indeed important to dial in the weight/day thing, with whatever type of food you do like. It's not that hard to keep track of food weight carried (and brought home!) for a couple/few trips, then from then on, (except for the more extreme trips; deep cold, ultra-hiking, etc) you'll know almost exactly what to bring on these long no-resupply types of trips to stay fully fueled and happy with minimum extra weight.

    Furthering what you say about over-analyzing, I used to actually count calories on long trips using a spreadsheet with food values before the trip, then keeping track of food not used. I only did this briefly, from then on just the bulk food weight is good enough. One little outcome from this silliness I did is I honed in on how many calories/ounce my food was (125 including any packaging). Not that this number is really important.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by colorado_rob View Post
    . . . One little outcome from this silliness I did is I honed in on how many calories/ounce my food was (125 including any packaging). Not that this number is really important.
    Oh, don't get me wrong. I think knowing calories per ounce of the foods we like is super handy. I love knowing what foods I can bulk up on to save weight - sora speak. Knowing the numbers is super handy. Trying to delve too deeply in getting your numbers to match someone elses or telling someone what numbers will likely work best for them seems an exercise in futility at best.

    I have a good friend and climbing buddy that carries a 250 ml bottle of olive oil with him and takes swigs from it regularly. Not my thing!

    On another similar note, to keep up his body weight, my son was adding vast amounts of olive oil to his food while hiking the PCT last year. He got tired of the taste dominating everything he ate, so he happily switched to canola oil and never looked back. I'm surprised we don't have more people advocating for the use of canola oil instead of olive oil in these forums that regularly suggest olive oil for long distance hikers.

    To each their own. Especially when it comes to food.
    I'm not lost. I'm exploring.

  4. #24

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    10 days is a lot of food to carry. You might try 1.5 or even 1.25 pounds per person a day, but cutting your food in half from your usual 2 pounds a day for ten days on trail seems overly extreme to me. You'll survive, but you may be hungry a lot. I agree with adding olive oil (or canola oil, if you don't like olive) to your dinners or other meals. Nuts are another high calorie (and nutritious) food.
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  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by nsherry61 View Post
    ...I have a good friend and climbing buddy that carries a 250 ml bottle of olive oil with him and takes swigs from it regularly. Not my thing!....
    Yuck. A guy I hiked much of the PCT with started doing that in the Sierra and continued it for the rest of the hike, about a liter a week. He was a fit 40 years old. After finishing, he went home feeling sick. His doctor checked him into the hospital for observation and he had a heart attack that night. (He survived it.)

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by nsherry61 View Post
    ...
    On another similar note, to keep up his body weight, my son was adding vast amounts of olive oil to his food while hiking the PCT last year. He got tired of the taste dominating everything he ate, so he happily switched to canola oil and never looked back.
    I wonder if perhaps we (myself and your son) crossed paths... I seem to remember a guy doing just that. I started the PCT on March 29... was that your son's same time frame? Just curious.

    One reason why I like long winter trips is that I can carry butter, yummy full sticks of butter. Butter makes everything taste better.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by nsherry61 View Post
    I'm surprised we don't have more people advocating for the use of canola oil instead of olive oil in these forums that regularly suggest olive oil for long distance hikers.
    Personally, if I was going to go the extra-oil route, I'd choose avocado oil over Canola oil.
    But, to each their own, especially when it comes to food. I read that somewhere.

  8. #28
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    I eat similarly to you. I bought a freeze dryer and make my own freeze dried meals. I think there's a link to my thread in my "signature." I haven't updated it in quite a while.
    https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults

    A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by nsherry61 View Post
    On another similar note, to keep up his body weight, my son was adding vast amounts of olive oil to his food while hiking the PCT last year. He got tired of the taste dominating everything he ate, so he happily switched to canola oil and never looked back. I'm surprised we don't have more people advocating for the use of canola oil instead of olive oil in these forums that regularly suggest olive oil for long distance hikers.

    To each their own. Especially when it comes to food.
    Canola oil is the cheapest oil you can get and probably one of the deadliest and most damaging to your body. You can easily buy olive oil that doesn't overwhelm with flavor or perhaps I have just become used to it. I also use a lot of coconut oil. I love it. But refined has less of a coconut flavor if that's an issue as well. You couldn't pay me to use any "vegetable" oil.

    But, to each their own.
    https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults

    A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by swjohnsey View Post
    A pound of olive oil will get you around 2,000 calories.
    How do you get that? An 1/8 of a cup is over 1000 calories.
    https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults

    A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White

  11. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by PennyPincher View Post
    How do you get that? An 1/8 of a cup is over 1000 calories.
    1000 calories per ounce?
    I always heard 250 calories per ounce for olive oil.

  12. #32

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    Meat? What kind? How was it/going to be prepared? These can have a bearing on cal/oz and meat water content? Depending on the time of the hike and choice of water content in the meat and water content of other dietary foods they have potential consequences on other wt carrying factors, such as liquid water wt carried or required...sooo the 2 lbs of food wt, IF it is high water content, is a consumable wt trade off reducing needed carried water wt. When seeking to reduce carried wt it is cumulative... not just food or gear but fuel and water too.

    DO a shorter duration hike.

    Huckleberries. PCT WA has some of the most abundant plump luciouious, better than the biggest blueberries.

    Supplement.

    Get satiation dialed down pre hike
    a) drink more water
    b) eat more fiber
    c) as you're likely aware already avoid food additives, prescription drugs, etc that mess with satiation
    d) I find for myself, satiation is also about having a wide nutritional profile food offering

    First day: eat b-fast and topping off H20 before hitting the trail ie; it saves food and H20 wt
    Last day: bring only 1/2 days food

    Eat more fat.

    Here's a BIG ONE: expend your food energy wisely. I think of it as being considerate of the output for the food input.
    a) I'm regularly altering pace based on conditions
    b) for only a 10 day PCT WA hike I could go 4-7 days with a highly caloric restricted diet with minimal performance or energy fall offs hitting the hike from the get go fit, in a normal body wt and fat % range, and with selective nutritionally dense food options while drinking copiously from every water source, and being mindful of energy expenditure. A big part is what you're already aware...avoiding the high sugar junk food crap.
    c) if summer I use less enegry and carry less water by night hiking. The summer PCT in WA is prime conditions for this for me.


    BTW Stehekin is a GREEEAT in and out food supplementing stop. Unless you're hiking LOONG hrs it doesn't make that great an hour expenditure as a trade off for reducing food wt...which you're after. Not currently positive but I've known PCTers receiving mailed or pre arranged pre purchased food services at the PCT Stehekin area that were driven in as can be in teh AT's 100 MW rather than going into Stehekin.

  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Southeast View Post
    1000 calories per ounce?
    I always heard 250 calories per ounce for olive oil.
    I have no idea how much 1/8 of a cup weighs but I would guess more than an ounce. I googled it and found this info. just tried again and now finding 239 calories. no idea what did.
    https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults

    A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White

  14. #34
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    Thank you Tipi Walter, another great and interesting post!!!
    Quote Originally Posted by Tipi Walter View Post
    I do ALOT of backpacking trips in the 18 to 24 day range---without resupply---and in fact I just pulled two 24 day trips back to back.

    My food weight alone for each of these trips was around 50 lbs including stove fuel---and then you add the "accoutrements of idiocy" of all my other gear. In the end it results in sufficiently interesting food for the duration---which is what it's all about. If you don't carry food you really want to eat you'll be a very unhappy camper.

    It doesn't really matter what diet kick you're on at the time---vegetarian, paleo, keto, vegan, omnivorous WHATEVER. Just bring enough of the food your really want to eat and don't worry about the total food weight---as long as you don't end up with 5 extra lbs of food at the end.

    Carrying alot of food weight, along with your other gear---results in pulling lower mile days. On my heavy pack trips I feel good to pull 10 mile days and such days are not all that uncommon.

    If my base weight is 30 lbs and then I add 55 or 60 lbs of food/fuel . . . well . . . I'm talking about starting a trip with an 85-90 lb pack. Initial daily mileages will be low as pulling 5 miles with such weight is like doing 15 or 20 miles with a 20 lb pack---but the heavy weight allows a person to stay out for as long as possible while also backpacking and moving every day---and we're NOT talking about basecamping in one spot for 3 weeks.
    "I told my Ma's and Pa's I was coming to them mountains and they acted as if they was gutshot. Ma, I sez's, them mountains is the marrow of the world and by God, I was right". Del Gue

  15. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by double d View Post
    Thank you Tipi Walter, another great and interesting post!!!
    Thanks for the input. A guy with a Del Gue signature is my hero. Which brings up this: Should I get out of the mountains for awhile and parlay with city folk?? Naw, I've been to a town, Del.

  16. #36
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    Originally Posted by swjohnsey
    A pound of olive oil will get you around 2,000 calories.
    Quote Originally Posted by PennyPincher View Post
    How do you get that? An 1/8 of a cup is over 1000 calories.
    Well per https://oliveoillovers.com/calories-...trition-facts/ a tablespoon of olive oil (which is 14 g mass or .5 oz volume) has 120 calories.

    A cup has 16 tablespoons. An eightth of a cup would be two tablespoons, or 240 calories, not 1000 calories.

    453.6 g is a lb. So a pound is (453.6g per tablespoon)/14g or 32.4 tablespoons (roughly a pint or two cups), and would have 3,888 calories, not 2000 calories.

    Not sure where anybody is getting their figures. One greatly overestimates the calories, the other underestimates.


    Originally Posted by swjohnsey
    A pound of olive oil will get you around 2,000 calories.
    Time is but the stream I go afishin' in.
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  17. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Southeast View Post
    1000 calories per ounce?
    I always heard 250 calories per ounce for olive oil.
    That's close to what I calculated. Per the internet, olive oil has 120 calories per tablespoon which ways 14g. A tablespoon is 0.5oz (fluid ounces).
    Time is but the stream I go afishin' in.
    Thoreau

  18. #38

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    I don't think too much about Olive Oil and its calories or weight or whatever else---I just carry the stuff---and as much of it as I can.

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  19. #39
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    Yep, simple math.... oils have around 240-260 calories/ounce, depending on purity, etc. Butter, olive oil, canola oil, makes very little difference. 250*16=4000 calories/pound for most fats/oils. As calorie dense as you can get, that's why such foods are good (weight wise) for backpacking. Sugars and proteins are a mere 110 cal/oz. In metric terms, fats=9 cal/gm, carbs/proteins = 4 cal/gm.

    Anyone who does care about weights of food (pretty much anyone who cares about hiking comfortably and happily) should learn these basic numbers.

  20. #40
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    Thank you, this claryfies a health issue I've developed during my 6 weeks desert hike this spring.

    During this 6 weeks, most of the cooking was done by local Bedouins, and they use oil (very good olive oil) only by the drop. A small bottle lasted for 2 weeks - for 8 people total.
    After this 6 weeks back home I had my routine medical checkup and several blood test results were off from the normal, so I was as scared as the oncologist was.

    But deep inside me I had the feeling that I was (and still am) healthy, and that there had been some food issue.
    So, after 8 more weeks of normal home eating I had an extra blood test, and all the results were perfect again.
    We eat loads of butter and use lots of (olive) oil back home.

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