What to eat on the hike? What products to take with you on a long summer camping trip.

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Many inexperienced hikers always have a big problem with what products to take on a hike and how to distribute them. Well, firstly, there are special layouts on the Internet, you can ask for help from experienced comrades on forums and thematic networks - they will definitely help. Now I’ll give you an example of how and what you can take and eat during the day for greater convenience on a hike.
For breakfast:
Porridge is a great start to the day. It is quite high in calories and stores well. Preference should be given to buckwheat, lentils, and rice - they have the highest energy value and optimal cooking time. You can also take semolina and an extra packet of condensed milk to create “milk”.
It is better to pour cereals into plastic bottles with a wide neck. If you still decide to carry cereal in a store-bought package, then a couple of additional bags on top of the main one will allow you not to collect it throughout your backpack. Another little trick is tape. By wrapping food packaging in several layers, you will get a durable and reliable option for transporting bulk items.
A little “sweet” would be an excellent addition to the main diet, because a hike without condensed milk is not a hike. It will, of course, lift your spirits and provide the necessary amount of glucose. Modern plastic packaging with lids is preferable to heavy iron cans.
For lunch:
Sandwiches with tea or coffee - this is what the second meal looks like for a traveler who does not have the opportunity to light a fire in the middle of the day. Food on a hike is significantly different from the diet in everyday life, and most often lunch is more like a “snack” to cheer yourself up and replenish your strength for the next push.
Uncooked smoked sausage, hard cheeses, and lard (optional) will perfectly satisfy your hunger and will not spoil on the way. All kinds of pates require iron containers, so they will not be the best option when choosing food. If you are “tired” of condensed milk for breakfast, you can treat yourself to some goat cheese, dates, crackers or light dry cookies for tea.
For dinner:
In the evening there will be a main meal with full cooking and romance around the fire. If there is no firewood, a camp burner with a gas cylinder will come to the rescue. The camp is already equipped, it’s time to prepare soup, pilaf or pasta, and here dry vegetables, dried mushrooms, dried meat, and lard will come in handy. If someone was carrying a couple of potatoes for soup, it's time to put them to use. But lovers of puree from this so familiar vegetable will have to be content with the packaged version.
If there is some food left after dinner, it can be eaten for breakfast. Don’t forget about hot tea (coffee) - the day is running out, the rush is over, it’s time to enjoy your favorite aromatic drink.
Sweets occupy a special place among food on a hike. Carrying chocolate with you is impractical, it melts. Nuts, candied fruits, kozinaki, condensed milk, and cookies are good substitutes.
As a rule, in a hiking group they eat together, therefore, having previously drawn up a menu and decided what food to take on a hike, everyone is assigned their “social load” of food.
So, a difficult task at first glance turned out to be not so impossible upon closer examination. Now you know what to take on a hike, which means you won’t go to waste. After all, as they say: “War is war, but lunch is on schedule”!

Tags: What, to take, on, a, hike, from, food, for, 1, day

What do I take with me on a weekend hike?

Ulyanovsk region | Topic author: Ulyanovskaya


WHAT IS IT WORTH AND WHAT IS NOT WORTH BRINGING ON A SUMMER HIKE (FROM FOOD) So, you should NOT take on a summer hike:
- sausage (boiled and salami); - soft cheeses; - processed cheeses; - cottage cheese, sour cream and any other dairy products; - instant soups in the form of briquettes (they require a lot of water to prepare them); - cereals that require a lot of water for cooking (wheat, semolina); - any canned food in plastic or glass containers; - packaged juices, sweet water and other drinks. These drinks do not quench your thirst. You will drink spring water while hiking; - quickly perishable fruits and vegetables (bananas, avocado, pineapple, soft tomatoes, melon, watermelon and others; - any chocolate with a cocoa content of less than 60% (it will simply melt); - fresh butter (it should be melted if it contains necessity); - legumes (peas, corn, beans). They cause bloating and require a lot of time to cook; - eggs, even if they are boiled; - ready-made salads (we are talking about pre-chopped vegetables, even if they are not seasoned with sauce); - mayonnaise, ketchup and other seasonings and sauces (except mustard); - any confectionery (except candies, cookies and biscuits). All these products are included in the list as those that are not recommended to take on a long summer hike. You can make an exception based on what you eat on the first day.
Now let's talk about what products to take on a hot hike:
- raw smoked sausage (the harder the better); - hard cheeses (Parmesan, Russian); - cereals that cook quickly (buckwheat, rice, millet); - pasta; - hard vegetables and fruits (apples, hard tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges, lemon); - dried fruits and nuts (dried apricots, figs, dates, raisins, all types of nuts); - packaged portioned instant soups (if digestion allows: mivina and the like); - mustard in a resealable tube; - canned food (fish, meat, vegetables, pates); - condensed milk (it’s more convenient to take it in a tube); - cocoa, coffee, tea of ​​all types; - bread, crackers; - cookies without cream and chocolate; - dark chocolate with a cocoa content of more than 60% (milk chocolate is also possible for the first two days); - sugar, salt, spices; - sweets: cozenaki, halva, candied fruits, lollipops, Turkish delight; - garlic, onion; - egg powder and milk powder; - salted lard (in limited quantities, like all fats in the heat). From all the products listed above, you can leave a good menu and eat well throughout the entire trip. And if you manage to come across a village during your trek, you can always buy fresh meat and have a feast.
#CampingKitchen

Organizing meals on a hike is a whole science. The layout (as the nutrition plan is usually called) depends on many factors: the nature of the hike (hiking, horseback, water, mountain), its location, the local climate, the number of days, the composition of participants, and so on. What food to take on a hike is one of the main issues that should be decided long before the hike itself. After all, the more food you take with you, the heavier the backpack, and the less, the higher the likelihood that the food will run out at the most inopportune moment.

When choosing food to take with you on a hike, you should take into account a number of factors:

  • Location of the hike;
  • The climate is in place;
  • Nature of the hike;
  • Number of participants in the trip;
  • Preferences of the participants of the trip.

When making a list of food for a camping trip, you should immediately decide who will cook it, how many meals are planned per day, and then write down the products for each day and for each meal. Typically, when camping, you eat three times a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast on the hike

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You need to stock up on strength, so in the morning: buckwheat, rice, oatmeal, wheat, etc. To save time, you can buy instant porridge or cook it yourself.

Don't forget about something sweet in the morning, because the glucose level in the body must be at the proper level. Jams and jams are suitable (you can season porridge with them), cookies, crackers, condensed milk, dried fruits.

Lunch on the hike

Lunch on a hike is usually more like this, because you have to continue the journey until sunset. Everything that can be prepared very quickly is used, preferably without starting a fire: canned food (meat, fish, pate), sandwiches, vegetables and other “cold” dishes.


To save time, if you want to have something more substantial for lunch, you can cook the meat and sauce in the morning and eat it cold, or make other preparations. You can also prepare the dish in advance and put it in a thermos if you take it with you on a hike.

Dinner on the hike

The main meal of the day on a hike is dinner. The main one, the most interesting and delicious. Dinner on the hike is already in the camp set up for the night, so you have enough time to prepare a full meal. For example, it could be soup, porridge or pasta with meat, pilaf, baked potatoes or shish kebab.


During a camp dinner, the food must be hot and satisfying, because if you go to bed hungry, you are guaranteed a cold and sleepless night.

Don't forget about tea before bed - it can be brewed from herbs and leaves that you collected along the way on your hike.

Food for a hike for one day and food for a hike for two or three days are completely different products. If you are going for just one day, you can get by with only packed rations or, conversely, only have dinner, but have a grand meal with several courses. After all, you won’t remain particularly hungry in one day. Another thing is a few days.

Here is an approximate list of products for one person on a hike that lasts a week:

  • Buckwheat, rice, oatmeal, wheat and other cereals – 1 kg;
  • Canned food – 2 cans;
  • Stew – 1 can;
  • Meat or fish - 200 g;
  • Dried vegetables and mushrooms – 300 g;
  • Nuts and dried fruits – 300 g;
  • Tea coffee;
  • Sugar;
  • Sweets;
  • Spices.

When making your hiking grocery list, don't forget about water! It’s not always possible to find a body of water on a hike where you can get drinking water. The best thing to do is to find such places on the map in advance, mark them on your route and find out how suitable the water there is for consumption.

Remember that any hike is a pleasure, new beautiful landscapes, pleasant company and a great mood. Therefore, food should only complement it and not be the main purpose of the trip. And don’t forget – you will have to carry everything you want to take on a hike.

On a weekend trip, you can take with you, in general, any food, except perishable and frozen ones. But with a longer route you will have to think twice.

Criteria for choosing products for a hike

Duration of storage. Food for a hike must be stored for a sufficiently long time without refrigeration, so many products are automatically eliminated.

Easy and quick to prepare. While camping, you don’t have time to cook complex dishes, and besides, doing it over a fire is usually problematic.

Food should be high in calories, but at the same time light in weight. Here it is worth mentioning the edible part of the products, it is important that it is large. The rule here is as little water as possible, as much dry matter as possible. For example, dried vegetables are much lighter than fresh ones with the same calorie content; stewed meat contains much more water than freeze-dried meat. Therefore, on long and difficult routes we give preference to the latter.

Taste qualities. Food on a hike should not only be nutritious, but also tasty and varied. Tasty food is easier to digest. And with a rather limited set of products, various spices will add variety.

Products you can take on a long hike

Cereals. Now there is a huge variety of cereals. The main criterion when choosing cereals is the cooking time. You should not take pearl barley, beans, chickpeas with you. In addition to traditional cereals: rice, buckwheat, millet, oatmeal, you can take lentils with you (they cook quickly and have a lot of protein). The semolina is taken in agreement with the other participants; its minus quickly burns if you don’t watch it. Various instant cereals have appeared on sale, as well as in portioned packages. As practice shows, such porridges are very convenient: after packaged ones, you don’t need to wash the porridge for a long time, and the speed of preparation when traveling is always a plus. Some porridges can simply be poured with boiling water directly in bowls, which becomes relevant in conditions of lack of water.

Pasta. When going on a hike, only pasta made from durum wheat is taken, because... they are less likely to boil and burn. Preference should be given to horns and feathers; spaghetti still has to be broken. Vermicelli burns quickly, so it is only used in soup.

Concentrated soups in bags. Convenient, fast, easy to prepare,To increase nutritional properties, it is better to take a supplement. The topping is taken depending on the type of soup: cereal orvermicelli, dried vegetables are also good.

Freeze-dried meat. In its nutritional properties it is significantly superior to stew, but it is quite expensive, so it is advisable to take it on long and difficult routes. An alternative is to dry the meat yourself. This meat can be stored for up to 1 month.

Dried vegetables. They add variety to the diet and are also a source of vitamins and microelements. Good both in soups and meat porridges.

Canned fish. A cheaper alternative to stew, and also diversifies the diet. It is better to take high-quality canned food, where there is more fish than water.

Canned vegetables. They are rarely taken and only in tin cans; glass is not welcome on a hike.

Stew. It makes sense to take on a hike only stewed meat prepared in accordance with GOST. By far the best stew is Belarusian. And read the ingredients carefully; there should be nothing in the stew except meat and spices. Before making a bulk purchase, it is better to buy one jar to try.

Sausage. Only raw smoked! In the mountains it lives up to two weeks without any problems.

Cheese. In summer, it is preferable to take hard, odorless cheeses (for example Lambert, Oltermani), as well as smoked. However, smoked and salty cheeses make you thirsty. In winter, preference is given to processed cheeses.

Salo. It stores quite well and also has high nutritional value.

Bread. Rusks or biscuits are used as bread. Crackers taste better. Biscuits are lighter, but require more careful packaging and careful handling. In the first days of the hike or if there are shops along the route, it is permissible to go on fresh bread. But it is still necessary to have a supply of crackers.

Condensed milk or powdered milk. It is taken depending on the weight of the backpacks. Powdered milk is lighter and more compact, but condensed milk tastes better. Used to prepare milk porridges.

Instant soups. They are good in the mountains or when there is no time to cook a full meal, they also save when there is not enough water. However, you should not plan all lunches on the route with them only, if the area allows you to better prepare a full lunch.

Tea, coffee, cocoa, jelly. Various options for drinks that can be successfully prepared on the go. The main thing is to pack well.

Dried fruits, nuts. We take it both in our pocket and for preparing sweet cereals for breakfast.

Cookies and waffles. The product is not fussy when traveling, but it requires careful packaging because it crumbles easily.

Chocolate. You can take any chocolate with you, except porous. It should be stored carefully, because... melts in the heat.

Lokum, marshmallows, marmalade. It’s a nice addition that all products tolerate camping conditions well.

Dryers, bagels. Good as a snack on the route.

Candies. In summer, it is better to abstain from chocolates, because... They easily melt into an inedible mass. It is better to take several types of caramel and candies and always in wrappers.

Halva. It is more convenient when packaged in packs; it is more difficult to store by weight.

Spices and dried herbs. Allows you to make food less bland and more varied. Can be added to porridge, soups, tea (cinnamon, cloves).

Onion garlic. The main antiviral agents on a hike. They are used to prevent colds and also as a seasoning for meat menus.

Salt, sugar. It is better to take two types of sugar: lump sugar for tea, and loose sugar for porridge. Salt is taken in a jar, preferably with a screw-on lid.

Freeze-dried products. There is a wide variety, but it is better to try at home before going camping. The downside is the roads, so they are justified on difficult mountain routes.

These are the main products that you take on a hike. Based on them, the menu and layout are compiled.

Eating well while hiking is double the pleasure. There is an appetite in the fresh air, a blissful primitive feeling of recuperation after a hard day, and a legitimate opportunity to relax. However, in addition to pleasure, good food at the bivouac is also a guarantee of full-fledged work for the participants on the route. A well-fed tourist is an energetic tourist!

There is a simple rule: for a hike to go well, you need to spend twice as much time organizing it as the hike itself lasts. That is, if you are going camping over the weekend, it is wise to start preparing for it as early as Tuesday. And if you are going on a hike for two weeks, then preparation should begin a month in advance. Even if you are going on a hike with an instructor from a club, check in advance how their club organizes meals, what you need to take with you, and what the club will purchase. If you go camping with friends, you will have to turn on the collective mind. Better yet, follow a simple and effective algorithm. We will try to compile it.

Preparing for the hike

The first thing to start with is the distribution of roles. If there are four or five of you, then everyone will get the main position and even more than one:

    Commander (Admiral for watermen); Navigator-cartographer - developer of route details; Logistician - responsible for tickets and transfers; The caretaker is responsible for food, cargo and bivouacs.

If there are more of you, then everyone will still have a responsible job - someone will be in charge of camp construction, someone will be responsible for photography, someone will be responsible for medicine, etc. But the hero of our today’s review will be the caretaker, since the team cannot be without him; it is on him that ultimately depends on how nourishing and tasty you will eat on the route. Therefore, you need to choose a person who is thrifty, economical and strong in spirit.

So, you have been chosen as the Caretaker (yes, there is a first time for everything, you were considered the most worthy candidate for this role, get used to it!) and the first thing you need to do is draw up Layout.

Making a trip plan

This is the most important thing, so we will describe step by step what we count first and what then.

Calculation of calorie intake while hiking

First, you need to realize how active the hike will be and, based on this, estimate the number of calories a person needs per day.

    For a hiking trip across the plain with one or two overnight stays, or for a leisurely mattress rafting along a quiet river - 2500 kilocalories per day is enough; For a bicycle trip or hiking trip for 5-8 days on gentle terrain - 3000 kilocalories per day; For a long hike, kayak rafting of the 3rd category of difficulty (Karelia, Ural), or a bike ride on difficult terrain (fords, sandstones) - 3500 kilocalories per day; For a 7-10 day hiking trip in the highlands (difficulty category 1-3), mountaineering camps with their own meals - 4000 kilocalories per day; For water, ski and hiking trips of high difficulty categories (4-6), long expeditions, high-altitude ascents from 1B and winter hikes of any duration - 5000 kilocalories per day.

Of course, few people count accurately down to calories, but it’s not that difficult to roughly estimate the energy efficiency of your menu, knowing the basic calorie content of foods.

Let's agree right away - we are not going on a hike to lose weight. And in order to see with your own eyes all the possible beauty and improve your skills. Therefore, let’s forget about diets and eat as much calories as possible, so as not to become weak and not slow anyone down. If anyone wants to lose weight, you can take emergency duty.

For example, from high-calorie drinks - cocoa with milk powder. One two-hundred-gram mug - immediately 255 kilocalories! Tea with sugar and lemon - 80. Below are some popular high-calorie foods. The number of calories is indicated per 100 grams of raw product, not subjected to either cooking or drying. In addition to dried fruits, the weight is already in dried form):

Product Calorie content, kcal Product Calorie content, kcal Product Calorie content, kcal
Hazelnut 701 Ghee 885 Pike 83
Cashew nuts 647 Sunflower oil 889 Kozinaki 576
Peanut 555 Diluted milk powder 58 Chocolate (any) 550
Dried apricots 270 Hard cheese 460 Sugar 377
Prunes 262 Beef 191 Oatmeal cookies 430
Raisin 285 Pork 218 Halva 519
Oatmeal 358 Chicken 161 Iris 384
Cornflakes 345 Potato 57 Caramel 285
Buckwheat 175 Carrot 29 Drying 335
Lentils 284 Onion 41 Rye bread 210
Semolina 77 Garlic 103 Wheat bread 246
Salami sausage 576 Hot Maggi mug 304 Egg powder 545
Salted lard 797 Roach (if caught by ear) 108

We pay special attention to foods rich in fats (lard, smoked sausage, butter, cheese) - there are always not enough of them on a hike, and fatty acids are necessary for the body to nourish cells. Protein foods (nuts, chocolate, cocoa, milk, meat) are important for muscle recovery. Carbohydrates (vegetables, cereals, dried fruits, sweets) are a source of energy. Everything is needed! Next, let’s estimate the diet.

Diet while hiking

Breakfast and dinner are usually cooked over a fire or burner on any camping trip. But there is a difference with lunch. If the hike is easy, of a recreational nature, then it is possible to take a lunch break of an hour and a half during the day, cook a full-fledged soup or fish soup (if the hike is on water). On a more difficult hike, walking time 6-8-10 hours a day, spending so much time preparing lunch is an unaffordable luxury. And you will become heavy from eating too much, it will be difficult to walk. In this case, it makes sense to quickly boil water in jet boilers for lunch, make tea and brew instant soup from a bag directly into mugs - it’s not very high in calories, but is quickly absorbed. To go with it, give everyone a sandwich with high-calorie, high-fat salami or lard. And 50 grams of kozinaki or chocolate is enough to restore strength.

And sometimes it is not possible to boil water, for example, during technical mountaineering or difficult ski trips. In this case, you will have to make do with water or tea from a thermos, nuts, chocolate and sandwiches.

Calculating the weight of food for a hike

Here you need to proceed from the capabilities of the participants. Typically, personal belongings (sleeping bag, clothes, KLMN, first aid kit, tools, gadgets) weigh from 6 to 10 kilograms. A two- or three-person tent weighs 2-4 kilograms. A public first aid kit weighs about 1.5 kilograms. Jetboy - 400 grams, large gas cylinder - 450 grams, burner - from 100 to 300 grams. Plus ropes, iron, safety systems, boats and oars... all this is shared by everyone. Human strength is not unlimited, and even the most pumped up elk will lose strength in a few days if a backpack of 30 kilograms or more is hung on it.

In a ski trip with a sled and on a bicycle trip, the situation with weight, although not as critical as in a hiking trip, there is still a weight limit; you also have to spin the bike with your feet and drag the sled behind you.

But hikers and climbers on expeditions need to approach the issue of weight especially carefully.

If you are going for two weeks or more, and you plan to return along the same trail, it is wise to make some kind of food stash in advance in the middle of the route, and make caches along the way back.


According to experience, the optimal starting weight of a backpack on a hiking trip for a man is 15-20 kilograms. For a girl - 12-16 kilograms. This means that all products must weigh 3-5 kg ​​per participant. For the entire trip.

You can lighten the weight of food by doing two things:

    Competent choice of products. Drying heavy foods before going on a hike.

There is a separate article about drying food. As for weight, you will have to once again review the list of desired products and exclude from it those that are too heavy. Alas, halva, sherbet, vegetable oil and any canned food are not designed to be carried on your back for a long time. It is better to replace them with lighter kozinaki, ghee, powdered milk and dried meat.

Nutrition with ready-made sublimates

A separate topic is ready-made sublimates. Yes, it's convenient. But, unfortunately, domestic products are still far from ideal - they are not particularly tasty and the resulting portions are small. You won’t die of hunger, but you won’t gain any strength either. Much more balanced products are made by European companies; the choice of our employees is food from the Norwegian manufacturer REAL or the German manufacturer Trek"N eat. But they are not cheap, comparable to lunch in a good restaurant. If you have never taken them on a hike, take them for a day or two , try to see if this food is enough for you. The calorie content of one serving is from 450 to 600 kcal. For a simple or short hike, this is what you need. But for a long winter hike, you need something more nutritious.


Preparing food for future use

It's basically drying. The activity is not difficult, but quite time-consuming, so it is better to distribute it among all participants in the hike. If someone has an electric dryer or an oven with an air fryer, let them dry meat and vegetables. The rest will take on the task of making crackers, preparing energy candies, etc.

I will share the recipe for energy candies. Take 100 grams of kumquat or dried lemon, prunes, dried apricots, 50 grams of hazelnuts, cashews and walnuts. 100 grams of honey. Grind dried fruits and nuts in a blender or meat grinder, mix with honey. Then we roll everything into a sausage and put it in the refrigerator for an hour. Cut the sausage into pieces, wrap each one in foil or baking paper - voila! One such candy the size of a matchbox invigorates better than any energy drink!

Trek menu

Now that we have decided what we will eat and when, we can easily create a hiking menu. For example:

Day 1

    Breakfast: oatmeal with dried milk, cheese, caramel, dried fruits and nuts, cocoa or coffee, dry foods - 1400 kcal Lunch: instant soup - 1 mug, one sandwich with lard, one sandwich with cheese, tea, chocolate - 1200 kcal Dinner: lagman with beef, butter and vegetables, crackers, garlic, tea, cookies - 1500 kcal.

Day 2

    Breakfast: corn flakes with dried milk, cheese, toffee, dried fruits and nuts, cocoa or coffee, cookies - 1200 kcal Lunch: instant soup - 1 mug, one sandwich with salami, dried cottage cheese (kurut), tea, kozinaki - 1300 kcal Dinner: thick lentil soup with pork, crackers, garlic, tea, sushi - 1500 kcal

And so on. The foods that weigh the most need to be eaten on the first day of the hike (in our example, on the first day, the main dish is lagman, which includes a 100-gram bag of tomato paste taken inadvertently).


Vegetarians, religious groups and allergy sufferers on the hike

The presence of food prohibitions and preferences should be found out from the participants at the very beginning of the calculations. Without waiting for them to starve themselves because they cannot eat what you have already put on the menu. So, through a survey, we found out that in our group of 12 people there are two Muslims (do not eat pork), two lacto-vegetarians (do not eat meat), one categorically does not eat buckwheat porridge, and one does not eat corn flakes. What to do? It is necessary to make sure that everyone is well-fed without violence against their body and beliefs, and this is the task of the caretaker.

The problem with pork is easiest - although it is the most high-calorie meat, beef and lamb are not far behind. We simply exclude the pig from the menu completely, and don’t give lard to the two kids for a snack; we replace it, for example, with “kazy” horse sausage - by the way, an excellent product, if you find it at the market or among the natives, it has more calories than lard.

There are also no problems with single people who don’t like buckwheat or cereal - on the days when these products are planned on the menu, we simply give them a separate package of instant oatmeal. And we compensate for the small calorie deficit that has arisen with an additional piece of cheese and a handful of dried fruits.