Ghaz, I would love to hear what your food list is, no cooking… No coffee? Lordy… Not sure that’s possible!
Depends on the season and duration of the hike - e.g. you don’t want biltong a few days into a summer hike, but tinned/sachet tuna holds reasonably well in a pack for a surprisingly long time. Let’s put it this way - most people use hot water for one of the following foods:
- Two minute noodles - which are not great at the best of times
- Rehydrated meals - which are super expensive and taste like cardboard
- Oats - one of the few good uses of a gas stove
- Tea/coffee/soup - which is nice, but the time spent enjoying these is not even 20 minutes a day
Upside of not having the 1kg+ of cooking gear plus the space it takes is you can use that extra space and weight to carry something nicer to eat instead. For a one night hike that can be almost anything - left over Kessler chops from last night’s supper, hamburgers etc. For longer hikes the food has to be a bit more boring because it obviously can’t be kept cool.
The natural progression, though, is to use a smaller lighter pack and just do harder hikes with the extra energy. On my 107h51 Drakensberg Grand Traverse in 2015, my food for the trip was roughly:
4x packets of chips
1x rice crackers
1x salticrax
1x cheese triangles
1x liquorish
5x rehyrdrate
Biltong and tuna for protein
1x pack of dried apples
5x nut/seed bars
There might have been more, but I think that was more-or-less everything. The longer the hike, the more this becomes relevant.
As with all things in life, though, what really matters is finding the balance between achieving what you set out to do and actually enjoying it. For me, the concept of doing a big day hike or covering a lot of ground in a weekend means I can hike more often - some people only do a few big trips a year, so what works for them is completely different. In my mind, I’ve barely done any hiking this year, but I’ve probably done more trips this year than most people will do over a few years. My hiking trips so far this year are as follows:
- Taking my running club up to the top of Tugela Falls for the weekend
- 2 day hike up Rhino Peak
- A solo day hike from Mahai Campsite up Crows Nest and past Tugela Falls
- Hike up Cockscomb in the Eastern Cape
- Trail run up Iron Crown in Limpopo
- Day hike up Mhlwazini Peak via Grays Pass
- Hike up Groot Winterberg in the Eastern Cape
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