38 Days of Pemmican- Jarell Friesen

Movie Time!

The footage in this video came from all of us, filmed at various times throughout the trip and was all captured at the discomfort of the one behind the lense. It was always a challenge capturing images on this trip due to the cold-batteries refused to work, our hands and fingers refused to work and all the extra effort needed to set up a shot and get it taxed our already tired bodies.  Luckily the only casualty of the trip was my 32g memory card, which after two weeks, and over 20 gigs worth of images and videos, decided it had had enough and never worked again (taking along all of the data with it).  

So after spending pert near as many hours staring at the holy glowing box (my computer) as we spent on trail and breaking new personal records of both swearing quantity and foul tongued originality aimed at this cantankerous technological gizmo's cheapskate editing software...It's Movie Time! 

Answering the Call or The Benefits of Running Your Mouth

“The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with the competence and courage the danger fades.” Joseph Campbell, “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”

How did I get myself into this? I like to ponder questions like these, letting them playfully swirl around my mind like the dark water lazily eddying behind a boulder in a cold freestone river. My mind is particularly peaked in this matter when I hear stories about people, who by any number of causes (mean and sublime) have found themselves in a difficult/ trying/ ridiculous/ adventurous/ precarious situation; say, on the saddle of a 10,000 foot mountain in a whiteout blizzard with friends who have on little more than blue jeans and cotton sweatshirts or perhaps in the middle of the two mile wide Mississippi River floating helplessly in a canoe towards an oncoming 200 ton freight barge. In each story there seems to be a moment, say less than a minute where the protagonist, in the  midst of the maelstrom, is given respite, sanctuary from all that is chaotic and gains the detached wherewithal to acknowledge their place in space and time on a grander scale. I get lost in the incongruous absurdity of those moments- the chaos vs. the tranquil; that single short span of existence when time coagulates into a thick gooey mass and then briefly solidifies allowing for, even in the midst of the entropy of normality, the gift of clarity; the chance to temporarily transcend the immediate reality and with open eyes, take in all that is happening.

Whoa, but what I find even more interesting is that first question- how did I get myself into this?

Some people will say “it was my calling” to do these things- as in “it was my calling to climb mountains, to sail deep water, to enter ice cream eating contests”...and I bow to such self aware individuals who have heard to call and are following it. To respond to such supernatural voices drives many to the extrema, the poles of ability, to approach our own event horizon and to go beyond the boundary of the known world and take that first tenuous step into the otherness. That lucidity of self awareness is great if you have it, but luckily for the rest of us there are other ways of enticing the spirit of adventure.

As I have found repeatedly in life, there is a tried and true way of beckoning adventure instead of idly waiting for adventure to call you, and fortunately it requires much less mystic self-awareness than it takes “to hear the call to adventure” and instead relies more on your ability to speak or act without thinking-that is to blunder. I like the verb to blunder, it is underrated as a life plan in these hyper scheduled times; after all, if you don't plan, nothing can go wrong, right? As Joseph Campbell says “A blunder-apparently the merest chance- reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into relationship with forces that are not rightly understood...[blunders] are ripples on the surface of life...and these may be very deep, deep as the soul itself...the blunder may amount to the opening of destiny.”

My preferred mode of blunder is to run my mouth, usually with one hand cooled by an icy beverage and the other with index finger extended to aid in proving my seriousness (for some reason this usually happens between the hours of midnight and two in the morning). It was this technique that propelled me to attempt and rightfully claim the record at an international ice cream eating contest and, more recently, to commit to a winter trek across the Boundary Waters. The hard thing is recognizing the moment when you just have to let go and embrace a life that seems outlandish. 

Another short cut to adventure: instead of opting for the “let go and embrace” method just stated (which can go awry without the proper self discipline), I prefer the back-yourself-into-a-corner approach to living life because it (assuming you are person of integrity who values keeping their word) prevents you from flippantly dismissing the call to adventure, which on the good-bad scale is bad; the gods of adventure don't take kindly to being ignored. Another benefit to running your mouth: it will forever slew the tri-headed beast of apathy, ennui and malaise that torments so many poor souls these days. I can't tell you how many times I told people about this idea to “walk from the end of the road (the Gunflint Trail) and go right into downtown Ely in the heart of the winter” but it reached a frequency that required either total commitment to seeing the idea through or else compulsory reclusion from society (or at least from your friends who heard you boast such outlandish claims).

So go out for the night, maybe get a few ideas in your head before you go so you have some options in case the first one falls flat and fails to raise an eyebrow or fails to bait your company into taking interest in your plan or in case your idea has already been logged into the history books of humanity (not that that is an immediate disqualifier, only that you should rethink some of your plan's details to ensure a high degree of originality). Don't be dismayed by naysayers, remember you have a plan and you're not looking for others' approval, only their interest to fully back yourself into a corner. At times like this it is helpful to your cause to be able to offer up some other information or a juicy detail of said idea, like you're not only going to walk from New York to L.A., you're going to do so in the buff or without stopping or by eating only banana Laffy Taffy- you know, something to sell the deal. And remember, you are doing this for you, of course you like sharing stories with friends, but the ultimate goal is to give you that iron clad excuse to get out and do something crazy.

I recommend starting small, say maybe by claiming you could read all the books in the children's department at your local library in a month or that you are going to try all 30 of the micro beers on tap at the bar, in one night (remember, the larger the audience that hears such claims the greater to motivation to complete the challenge, so talk loudly). Then work up to something like a major trail hike, the AT or the PCT, canoeing across lake Superior or drinking a shot of each liquor behind the bar, in one night. Be careful though, blundering into adventures can take on an addictive and compounding nature; after all, no one including yourself will get excited about your new idea if it is somehow less than your last one. This situation, like runaway evolution, can take on a shocking autonomy, where each claim that is made has to be exponentially greater than the last, and the next thing you know you'll be in the middle of a howlin' storm in the Pacific in a small sailboat, wind and water becoming one tumultuous squalling wall of white, up and down losing meaning, one hand clasped to the wheel (sailboats have wheels right?) and the other clutching the hat your new friends in Australia gave you for luck that night in the Barrier Reef bar in Sydney when you, around bar time, proclaimed that you were going to go out the next morning, buy a boat and sail to Green Bay for the Packer's home opener in the fall. At least now, as you're standing there getting pelted by rain and gritting your teeth at the wind, in that brief moment of clarity, you don't have to wonder “how did I get myself into this?”- consider yourself warned.

There and Back Again

It's been a little over a week since we packed up my truck in Ely, said our goodbyes and left the Boundary Waters behind to return to our lives that, by all appearances, have continued on just fine in our absence. My tent (yes I traded life on trail in the winter in a tent to life at home in the winter in a tent) is in the state I left it, save for the new mouse nest I found that was a compilation of chewed up tye-dyed tapestry and fringe from my wool rug. The wood pile was just as pathetic as I left it, my dear wood stove was cold and quiet and the trails that I made meandering around my property became the favored paths of the deer and coyotes.  It has taken a week to catch up with life (catch up? what is this, a race?) and to start collecting the distilled droplets of condensed thoughts and reflections from this experience. I am not a great record keeper despite at least a dozen attempts at keeping a journal, so I will piece together the day-to-day aspects of this trip amongst my more typical free range thoughts. Yukon (his Appalachian Trail name) is writing another blog on this trip, so if you want his view of the trip or more detail on our adventure, be sure to check out his blog at:  http://yukonsquest.blogspot.com/

Coming off trail from this type of adventure is hard; you begin to become institutionalized to life in the Wild to the point where you wonder how or if you can function back in the modern world. As Ernest Shackleton on his Nimrod expedition to Antarctica said “We are now reveling in the indescribable freshness of the Antarctic that seems to permeate one's being, and which must be responsible for that longing to go again which assails each returned explorer...” You don't have to visit the polar regions to become addicted to or assailed by that freshness- it exists anywhere where the human spirit can live free from the artificial bonds and drudgerous toils of modern life. That freshness lives precariously teetering on the edge between this life and that life, within grasp of anyone with the heart to try but far enough out over the void that there is no guarantee if you reach just a bit too far and tread out on the crumbling threshold betwixt the two worlds that you won' tumble off the edge of existence, perhaps never to make it back to share your story or if you do you may forever become that solitary creature sitting at the end of the bar with the 100 mile gaze, searching the darkness for memories of your last taste of freshness and the route to your next fix. All of us who pin the word “explorer” or “adventurer” high upon our being know full well that by chasing that freshness we pay a steep toll and are required to sacrifice much, but once that life is experienced, our blood is never again still in our veins.

Perhaps what Shackleton was alluding to is the vivacity and simplicity of life on trail or the freedom from the frenetic and overwhelming milieu we learn to live with in our daily lives. Maybe he is speaking to that moment, that beautifully intense moment when you realize you are out there; after months of planning, organizing, and waiting, you are there, and you love every iota of it- perfection. Shackleton was Thoreauvian philosophy in action, living Henry David's iconic statement “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to it's lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole meanness of it, and publish it's meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know by experience and be able to give a true account of it.” From “The Worst Journey in the World” to “The Heart of the Antarctic” the cannon of South Pole exploration has reports on the frozen continent's meanness and sublimity- accounts from the people who drove life into that cold, dark and windy corner. Explorers get the meanness and the sublime oftentimes in a concoction of the two- a little of both- the good with the bad, after all too much of one or the other and you can get either complacent or disenchanted (or worse). Shackleton was a master of converting the meanness to the sublime, as alchemist of perspective and situation- not all polar explorers were so lucky just as not all of us modern explorers who take to the empty places on the map are so lucky, but fortunately for our group of five we got meanness in tolerable amounts and came home with much more of the latter.

Oh the sublime- your face gets burned by the wind and the sun, your muscles become toned and surprisingly bulgy from the continuous labor and your spirit gets a layer of gristle from the intense presence of reality- a good thing for the adventurous type. The problem with the sublime is that it is ethereal and that all those highly prized side effects of this type of adventure fade quickly when exposed to life at home.  You acquire a softness at an alarming speed- all that hard won edge/hard won toughness dissolves like a setting sun, you blink and its gone.

Instead of doing the dishes from the trip which have been sitting on my porch for over a week now, I choose to let my mind wander into the blank spaces, into the roadless areas of our consciousness in order to draw meaning from this experience, and also I suspect, as a way to avoid doing the dishes. I speak of all this as that is where my mind has been since getting back to life after our trip...oh yeah our trip.

By the numbers:

5 guys

5 toboggans

2 canvas tents

400,000 calories

1,000,000 acres (1,500 sq.miles) of wilderness

70+ miles traveled

19 days on trail

1 frostbitten finger (which healed on trail)

-55 below wind chills

3'+ of snow

1 close call with thin ice

1 otter

3 broken snow shoes (3 fixed snowshoes)

1 mile (slowest day)

9 miles (fastest day)

16 days with no signs of other people

The Group:

Plan B's

I spent the morning packing, repacking, weighing, and sorting through our supply of food.  After a few hours of work (and tasting- to make sure it was all fit to eat of course, especially the chocolate) we now have five cardboard boxes of similar weight organized into: 1 that will serve as a pantry holding enough of each item to last for a few days and the other 4 boxes holding the rest of the food.  The idea is that when we pull into camp, we won't have to rummage through 250 pounds of food to find a bag of raisins or a pinch of salt.

Ice Picks- kinda like retractable claws for humans

Throw rope

Two new pieces of gear showed up today also: a throw bag/rope and a set of ice picks.  The throw rope is the same style used by whitewater boaters and, even though the water is frozen, will serve the same purpose: to get a safety line to a person who unexpectedly ends up in the water.  The ice picks are also used in case of a break through the ice, but instead relying on help from other people as with the throw rope, ice picks allow a victim to pull oneself out of the water and back up onto the ice.  These safety items are a reminder that anytime you venture out onto a frozen lake, there is an ever present risk of breaking through.

Traveling on the frozen lakes means flat and relatively easy travel compared with pulling a toboggan through the woods.  Where the bush is full of downed trees, deep pockets of snow, and hills, lakes and frozen marshes/bogs give you a nice flat surface that, if you are lucky, has been scoured by the wind either down to the ice or down to wind packed snow.  Of course, spending 3/4 of our time on frozen water brings risk, but knowing a few basic principles of ice and how lakes freeze can mitigate much of that risk.  Any place where there is current like at inlets and outlets of lakes or on rivers, where spring water flows into a lake, or in and around pressure cracks all should give you reason to pause and check the ice's thickness.  Bottom line is if you are unsure as to the safety of the ice- check it out by chipping a hole and measuring the thickness- 2"at least are needed to safely hold a person.

Along that thought, we are each planning on taking some ice fishing gear.  The fishing gear is not only a pleasant distraction from the daily routine of life on trail and a (possible) source of fresh food, but it also represents another level of safety in case there is an accident involving thin ice (i.e. losing a toboggan to Davy Jones' locker) or if the weather (extreme cold or heat, wind, heavy snow and/or wind) delays us and keeps us on trail over the 25 days we have packed food for.  Thanks to the nice folks at Anglers All in Ashland Wisconsin for helping us pick out a small and efficient ice fishing kit for this trip.

The Bigger Picture

One of the great challenges we are passing on to our children is figuring out how our relationship with the natural world, i.e. Nature, Outside, the Wild, fits into our current societal scheme. While we are all on our own path towards reestablishing that connection individually, as a whole we have many incongruities between the way we think of the natural world and the way we treat it. One place where those incongruities are most visible is when industry (usually resource extraction) takes place in, on or adjacent to preserved public lands. This is not to make a judgment as to the value of those resources, we are after all taking a solar power kit on this trip and the demand for copper in the alternative energy industry (like solar panels and batteries) is one key reason for the intended development of the Pebble Mine in Alaska which threatens the health of one of the world's greatest fisheries in Bristol Bay and its tributaries. So while the issue of development /progress vs. preservation of wilderness may not have a clean answer, we are not tackling head on the glitches between us and rest of the life on Earth.

Those glitches in ethos become evident anywhere our modern civilization comes in contact/conflict with places and people who present a barrier to our system's need for natural resources, undeveloped land or locations of social/economic/political importance. We are taking actions that prove our understanding of the importance of a sound global ecosystem- through the preservation of undeveloped land, reestablishing the populations of endangered species and legitimizing the idea that not only do we need an intact global ecosystem for our physical and psychological health but that we also have the ability to alter the function of the global ecosystem in ways that threaten our current understanding of life on Earth. But for all of our actions to save, there are just as many that will threaten any gain we have made in the past. The Boundary Waters Wilderness, just like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, is now subject to that tension where wilderness and progress conflict.

There are plans to develop a copper-nickle mine just outside of the Boundary Water's southern boundary using a method of mining called “sulfide mining.” Essentially this process involves digging up a bunch of Earth, in this case sulfide-rich Earth, separating out the copper and nickel, and disposing of the waste ore. The problem is that when that sulfide rich ore is exposed to the environment, sulfuric acid can be created and that is bad on the good-bad scale. This process can lead to water pollution, ecosystem disruption and a loss in biodiversity. Now, whatever side of the fence you come down on, pro mining or anti mining, it is important to be knowledgeable about issues that impact our public lands. 

Learn more-

Friends of the Boundary Waters:  

http://www.friends-bwca.org/issues/sulfide-mining/

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/julaug12/nonferrous.html

Minnesota Public Radio:

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/05/31/environment/ely-copper-nickel-mining

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was created in 1964 and includes over 1,000,000 acres (1,500 square miles) of rivers, lakes, taiga/mixed conifer- hardwood forests, moose, wolf, trout and exposed bedrock as old as any on Earth. All of this and no permanent signs of humans- no roads, buildings, or infrastructure like telephone poles or radio towers. There are campsites with fire grates, latrines and there is the usual detritus that seems to follow humans everywhere we go- pop cans, plastic bags, flip flops (just the left one's though- if you ever see a lone flip flop I almost guarantee it is a left, not sure why no one loses the right ones...) but none of these are permanent and the BW remains, as the Wilderness Act says “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”  

One Week and Counting

Today is a big day for this trip- after months of planning and training we are now just 7 days ( six and a half actually) from taking our first steps in the BW.  Food is starting to pile up, gear is in various forms of construction/ completion and my tent is starting to take on the appearance of a northwoods outpost.  One of my favorite reasons to take on a lengthy expedition-style trip like this one is the degree of planning, organizing, and figuring just how you are going to pull off such an adventure. 

New ice chisel made from a 1 1/2" wood slick,
a section of steel pipe and black ash handle.

For example, this trip has had us dehydrating meat, fruits and veggies, welding tools like the ice chisel in the picture, sewing bags to hold gear and also fit on the long and narrow toboggans, retrofitting/ modifying the gear we have that doesn't work quite right and inventing pieces of kit that you just can't buy anymore.  I spent the better part of a day last week figuring out a new snowshoe binding that gives me a solid feel but that is soft enough to work in conjunction with moosehide mukluks.  What I came up with is something that you can't buy (unfortunately because they work great) and that is tailored to fit my needs and the environment I live in.  

We will be heading up to Ely next Monday night and will be staying over 'till tuesday morning.  If all goes according to plan we will be loading up our toboggans and heading out from the end of the Gunflint trail on Wednesday morning and returning to Ely on or close to the 11th of March.    

 

Pemmican

Preparing for 50 days of Pemmican

by Jarell Friesen

I have embarked on a personal journey to test my body’s ability to subsist entirely on the traditional first nation food, pemmican. The experiment will take place during a five week period starting Feb. 1st - March 18th 2014 during a 100+ mile snowshoe expedition through the Boundary waters of northern Minnesota.

A Brief History of Pemmican: Pemmican is a concentrated nutritionally complete food created by the North American Plains Indians. It was originally made during the summer months from dried lean Buffalo meat and rendered fat as a way to preserve and store the meat for use when traveling and as a primary food source during the lean winter months. As long as it was kept away from moisture, heat, and direct sunlight, it would last for many years with no refrigeration or other method of preservation.

Pemmican Composition: Traditionally there are a few methods of preparing pemmican. The more authentic pemmican is simply desiccated and pulverized bison/elk/deer/etc. meat mixed with an equal amount of rendered animal fat (...more fat was added in the winter months). The other version incorporates dried berries along with the meat and the fat. The addition of berries was a response by the first nations to increase the palatability of pemmican for caucasian hunters and trappers when it was in high demand by the Hudson’s Bay Company. However the addition of berries increases the chance of spoilage and detracts from the functionality of the food.

Nutrition of Pemmican: Pemmican is a nutritionally complete food. There are many reports of individuals living solely off of pemmican for years!

Macronutrients These are the main calorie supplying nutrients: Carbohydrates, Fats, and Proteins. They respectively supply 4, 4, and 9 calories per gram.

1 days supply of pemmican (~1.2 lb) supplies ~ - 0 calories from carbohydrates (0g) - 4050 calories from fat (450G) - 384 calories from protein (96g)

Total calories = 4434

Carbohydrates: You might be wondering, what about carbohydrates? Don’t we need those? Fascinatingly no! In fact the human body can undergo a metabolic shift and switch from using carbohydrates to using fats as a primary fuel! This state of metabolism is called ketosis. More on this later...

Fats: During the trip we will be quite physically active and a caloric need into the 4,000’s isn’t unheard of. As you can see fats are almost twice as calorically dense as proteins or carbohydrates. This makes fats a supreme source for energy with just short of a pound supplying almost all of the days calories. An amount of potatoes supplying the same amount of calories would weigh almost 10lbs!

The type of fat used in pemmican is also of great importance. The tallow or fat of grassing animals is composed of ~50% saturated fat, 42% monounsaturated fat, and 8% polyunsaturated fat. Saturated fat, living up to it’s name, is ‘saturated’ meaning that the fatty acid chains fit nicely together creating a denser fat which is solid at room temperature. The more saturated the fat the more easily it resists rancidity through oxidation.

There is also a major difference in the fatty acid profile of grain-fed vs grass-fed animals. The grass fed animal fat is between 25 and 50 percent healthy Omega 3 fatty acids. The grain fed animal’s fat is only 2 to 3 percent Omega 3. Omega 3 fatty acids are one of the three essential fatty acid groups contained in tallow and they are critical to the development and maintenance of our brain and nerve tissue.

Protein:

Protein is comprised of amino acids which the body uses to repair and build new tissues. The RDI, or recommend daily intake, of protein ranges from 0.6 - 1.0 g/lb lean body mass. The protein needs vary between each individual and even in the same individual depending on levels of physical and emotional stresses.

In my case, due to my metabolic shift into the ketotic state, over-consuming protein will have negative effects that could impact my ability to properly assimilate the nutritional value of pemmican. So protein will be kept at a ‘just enough’ level.

In my particular case:

Body weight is 178 lbs Body fat % is 10.0

So Lean body mass (total mass - ~ fat mass): 178 - (178 x 0.10) = ~160 lbs

At 160 lbs lean body mass my protein requirements should be:

160 lb x 0.6g protein / lean lb body weight = 96g protein

Micronutrients: The nutrients which act as the coenzymes and activators for different enzymatic processes in the body.

Raw meat contains every nutrient required for human life in varying amounts. Concerns regarding vitamin C have commonly been raised, however if the temperature at which the meat is dehydrated stays below 120 degrees then the vitamin c naturally in the meat tissue remains intact.

Metabolic Ketosis

When dietary carbohydrates are restricted to <50g/day for a period of 6-8 weeks something miraculous happens. The body shifts it’s entire enzymatic system that had previously been based on metabolizing carbohydrates into a state where it efficiently metabolizes fatty acids. This state is called ketosis.

What this means in the context of the trip: When one is in a state of carbohydrate metabolism their bodies are unable to quickly and efficiently access the vast reservoir of stored calories in stored body fat. A skipped meal or over-exertion can leave one feeling faint and chilled. This is potentially deadly in cold temperatures as low blood sugar will cause the body to decrease it’s metabolism. This decreases the activity of what is called ‘brown fat’, a heat producing fat tissue in the body. In contrast while in ketosis one can access their internal stores of body fat immediately and meal time simply becomes an opportunity to fill up the tank to full capacity. It is a truth that reminds me of the adage ‘eat fat to burn fat’ and in reality that is exactly how it works.

My Transition Period: For a 6 week period before the beginning of trip I began the process of weening my body out of carbohydrate metabolism. Though it was an easy enough process, it is not something that I would like to do in the bush. The beginning transition period can leave one feeling flue like symptoms as the body struggles to readily oxidize fats as its primary fuel. After a few days however the sluggishness disappears and steady energy replaces it.

There is a device called blood ketone meter, which is similar to a blood glucose meter. It measures the level of ketones in one’s blood to help them asses their personal level of ketosis. This is a snapshot of my ketone level on Jan. 18th 2014. It shows a level of 3.1 which is quite high. As the chart below shows an optimal ketone bandwidth is from ~1.5mml to 3.0 mml. Over 3.0 mml one begins to get into starvation ketosis and this is a state achieved during fasting; this is not something we are after if we want to maintain our strength and body mass.

The Process:

Step 1: Render the Tallow!

Cut the tallow into pieces about an inch squared. This allows a greater surface area for the heat to extract the fat. Place the un-rendered tallow into a crock pot on low heat and let simmer for 10 hours. When fat is done rendering strain off the crackling and store until step

Step 2: Prepare the Meat!

Remove all fat from the cut of meat

Step 3: Slice the Meat! Use a slicer or a sharp knife and slice the meat as thin as possible. It helps if the meat is slightly frozen as it is easier to position and hold onto.

Step 4: Dehydrate the Meat!

Place the meat into a dehydrator for a minimum of 48 hours to ensure all moisture is removed. The slices should crumble not bend when touched. One could could also add an additional step of smoking the meat for 2-4 hours before the drying process. This actually helps the longevity of the meat as the anti-bacterial & anti-fungal essential oils in the wood smoke are imparted into the meat. It’s critical in both cases however to maintain a temperature of ~ 120 degrees or less. Higher temperatures degrade the nutritional value of the meat.

Step 5: Grind the Meat!

Traditionally this was done by hand with a mortar and pestle, but the vita-mix does a hell-of-a job!

Step 6: Mix Ingredients!

When meat is dehydrated is actually loses about 4/5th of it’s weight. Much of this is water and when meat is fully dehydrated it’s almost completely pure protein! As I mentioned before, my daily recommended amount of protein, based on my lean body mass, is 96 grams. So:

96g dried x 5 = 480g of fresh meat or about 1 lb.

This means for the trip of ~ 46 days, ~ 46 lb of meat was dehydrated to only ~ 10 lb!

Each 96 gram portion of meat is mixed with 450 grams of rendered tallow. This equates to about 4050 calories.

At 450 g / day for 46 days, this equates to about 45 pounds of tallow!

It’s incredible how nutrient dense pemmican is when you really crunch the numbers!

Step 7: Prepare into Blocks

Set the homogenized meat & tallow mixture into bread pans with a tin foil coating and let cool. As the mixture cools it will harden and when it has hardened enough to remove from the mold in one piece it is time to cut into blocks. Weigh out each molded block and cut into sections of 450-530g each.

The Food Situation Part 2

I have been sitting around this morning (and now well into the afternoon) swilling coffee and preparing the food list for our trip this winter.  What makes this exercise so time consuming?  Why have I been staring at a computer screen for five hours?  The numbers speak for themselves, well that's not true, the numbers say nothing, but our interpretation of those numbers justifies the time I have spent this morning:

4 People@

30 Days@

4500 Calories a Day=

540,000 Calories

2.5 lbs per person per day=

300 pounds of food

Cooking Bannock on a wood stove

This may seem like a lot of food/calories to those folks who haven't done any extended backcountry camping and even to those of you who have, the amount may seem excessive, but winter camping requires you to consume significantly more food than warm climate camping.  In cold weather your body is charged with not only keeping your body up and running as usual, but is also asked to increase the amount of heat it puts out to compensate for for the cold temperatures faced in February in northern Minnesota and also to handle the increased workload that comes with pulling heavy toboggans and living in a winter camp- think chopping through 2' ice for water and cutting firewood for the stove.  

The easiest way to understand the needs of the human body in terms of food is to think of the food we eat as wood on a fire.  Small sticks (carbohydrates) release intense heat for a short period of time but need to be replenished often.  Medium sized sticks (proteins) burn slower while releasing less heat, and large logs (fats) burn for a long time while emitting a lower level of heat.  We need to balance the three, carbs, fat and protein in order to have the quick energy and heat we'll need to get going in the morning and to stay warm throughout the day while also benefitting from the long term energy we'll need to keep going for the long haul (no pun intended).  

So what are we eating?  It is amazingly hard to find half a million calories unless you consume large amounts of animal and vegetable fats.  Fats are the most calorie dense food (4800 cal/lb) so we are taking 15 lbs of butter and 8 lbs of coconut oil; the latter being more usable in a frozen form than other vegetable fats.  We are also taking nut butters, sausage and the holy grail of trail fat: bacon drippings.  For proteins (1800 cal/lb) we are taking bacon, dried meat and summer sausage.  Also, the grains we are taking (quinoa, flour, oats and rice) all contain good amounts protein.  Sugar, dried fruits, pasta, chocolate all contribute to the carbohydrates (1800 cal/lb) on our food list.  We will also be taking dried veggies, a few sauces, spices, coffee, tea, cocoa, and some locally made cookies and fruit cakes from Coco's Bakery in Washburn Wisconsin.  

It is a simple diet, but as they say "hard work is the best seasoning."  I have found this to be true countless times- where you are working all day outdoors, camping, hiking or cutting firewood only to be thoroughly satisfied by what would be considered a simple or bland meal were it to be prepared and eaten indoors after a day typing on computer.  Fresh air, the smell of the woods, and the contentment of a good day on trail all make dinner a source of nourishment and not necessarily a fine culinary experience.  That said, we will not be living on gruel- venison and vegetable spaghetti, oats with cranberries and whole milk (powdered), and homemade fruitcake are all on the menu.  Anyone in the northern Wisconsin area is welcome to attend an expedition food planning workshop I will be teaching at Northland College next month- date of the workshop will be posted here. 

The Food Situation

Dehydrating apples ain't no joke.  Not when you're doing a 30 day supply for 3 people. That's 90 apples.  It'd be easy enough to go out and buy a bunch of industrially dried or freeze dried food as I've done for adventures in the past.  But by purchasing such a large quantity of food and going through numerous processes to make it work in one way or another, I'm finding a deeper appreciation for this journey already.

Toboggans

One of the joys of winter camping, assuming you are pulling some sort of sled, is the extra gear you can bring on trail; gear that really goes a long way towards blurring the line between camping and living in the bush.  As opposed to carrying your gear in a backpack, where space is at a premium and, if you are at all like me, you start questioning your choices in life when your pack starts reaching the 50 pound mark, pulling gear on a toboggan, all things being equal, allows you to bring more gear and also a different variety of gear with you on trail.  For example, on our trip we will be hauling along a canvas winter tent and a stove to go with it, both together weighing close to 40 pounds.  It sounds like a heavy load, but considering that the stove and tent will be split up on multiple toboggans, it really only adds roughly 20 pounds per toboggan.  What that setup allows us, as opposed to cold camping, are warm evenings and mornings where gear can be dried out and where we can lounge and relax regardless of what the weather decides to do.  
Traveling with toboggans offers other advantages- the amount of time out on trail without a resupply is longer than if you were backpacking, the food that can be brought is different (better unless you are a fan of monotony or of store bought camping grub), and as opposed to lugging a heavy pack which is always heavy no matter what surface you find yourself on- ice, snow, slush, a fully loaded toboggan on a smooth lake, or even better on ice, pulls with very little effort at all.  Of course cold camping with backpacking tents and the such has its place, say in the mountains where the topography would make it ridiculously hard to pull a sled or for short trips into the back country, but from my experience the extra weight you haul on a toboggan more than pays for itself in the quality of the experience.

The toboggans we will be using from Black River Sleds

Just like any piece of kit, there are many different styles of sleds people use to pull their gear ranging from toboggans to pulks to whatever-you-can-find-at-the-hardware-store models.  If you want to spend a day reading all the pros and cons of each, there is a wealth of opinion and debate on discussion forums like WinterTrekking.com, but for this article we'll just look at the toboggan as that is what we will use for this Boundary Waters trip.

Toboggans have been used for a long time to haul gear and, much like the canoe, come in a variety of shapes, materials and styles.  The up-curve at the front of a toboggan is important as it floats the toboggan up onto the snow pack instead of plowing into the deep snow, but the degree to which it curves up, in some cases forming a candy cane curl or more, is up for debate.  Suffice it to say the nose should curve up to some degree.  The body of the toboggan should be widest in the middle and taper towards the end, much like a coffin shape. This shape allows the toboggan to be turned easier than if it were of uniform width the whole length.

Inexpensive plastic sled hauling firewood

The overall length is more dependent on the amount of time you'll be on trail, but typically a 8-12 foot toboggan is used for back country trips.  There are two main materials to choose from: the more traditional wood or the modern HDPE (plastic).  Both are flexible, durable and make a great toboggan.  The wood requires a bit more care and more maintenance than the HDPE but flows more smoothly and has the advantage of being easily repairable (much like the difference between plastic and wood/canvas canoes). The plastic toboggans on the other hand are more forgiving of abuse and can be rolled up and packed into the back of a truck, whereas a wood toboggan is sometimes an unruly piece of gear to get around.  
As with any gear there is a wide spectrum of options fitting most needs and price ranges. For years I used the $40 hardware store "expedition" toboggan (the orange beauty in the picture above), which although the plastic gets brittle at sub-zero temperatures and is too short for long trips, they do pull nicely and have the added benefit of being easily replaceable.  Ultimately, if you go to far down the worm hole researching gear, you may find yourself sitting at home in front of your computer burning your eye balls reading forum posts while waiting to find that perfect toboggan, where as if you just would have strapped you gear to a upturned folding card table and started puling you'd be out enjoying the thrill of winter on trail.