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.