Winter Cooking on the Trail
Winter weather makes everything outside more difficult. Even simple tasks like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth can become a major feet when it’s -30 outside. When it’s that cold outside it’s too cold to work without gloves and jackets but at the same time those bulky clothes make it just as hard to move around. After working a few winters in Alaska as a dog musher here are some things I learned about working and mainly cooking on the trail in extremely cold weather.
In winter months your body uses much more energy than in the warmer summer months. You want to be aware of this so that you can plan your diet accordingly. A well thought out diet can make your trip much more enjoyable. You are going to want to have lots of foods that are high in fat. Fat has almost double the calories of carbohydrates and are great for storing energy.
When picking out your food there is one major thing you will want to ask your self, will it freeze? If you haven’t spent much time in cold weather you may simply over look this important fact. Foods that are high in fat that you may take hiking in the summer months may not work well in cold weather. Foods like peanut better will freeze solid and be nothing but dead weight in your bag. You will also want to think about your gear freez ing too. Any kind of electronics and batteries will be about useless in a matter of hours. Keep batteries on an inside pocket next to your body to help keep them warm.
When cooking in the winter months you have a lot of forces working against you. One such force is the fact that it takes much longer to cook foods in the winter. You will need to almost double the time that any recipe calls for. The best idea for winter cooking is to have all your meals prepared at home. After you have fixed and cooked your meals you will want to get them vacuumed sealed so that they are air tight. When you are ready to eat all you need to do is boil some water and drop the bag in for 10 to 15 minutes. This acts like a backcountry microwave. It’s not perfect but its better than trying to fix meals by hand in the cold. It also allows you to bring food you would other wise
leave at home.
Cold wind can also be an annoying force that tries to keeps your food from you as long as possible too. These cold winds can drain an aluminum pot of its heat very quickly. A good idea is to dig a hole in the snow to set the stove in pot in. You will also want to keep you pot covered and have a wind screen around the stove even when it in the hole. This will help keep every little bit of heat near the stove.
Being in the cold can be demanding enough but standing around in the cold doing nothing is even more trying. A cook spends a lot of time outside just standing outside in the cold. A simple thing you can do to help keep you warm while cooking is to bring an extra piece of insulation like you sleep on. Cut a small 19 by 19 inch square so that you have something to sit and stand on while you are cooking. This will act as a barrier from the cold frozen ground. Don’t use your
sleeping pad for this as you will want that dry as possible for a good nights sleep.
As I said before, batteries will freeze quickly if not stored properly. Because of this, most traditional means of artificial light don’t make the cut. These other forms of flash lights will only last a few hours before the freeze out. Your best bet is to buy what is known as a miner’s headlamp. Musher’s use the on the Iditarod Trail, some of the roughest winter weather out there. These lamps have a battery pack that runs off 4 D batteries. You can store this pack in your
inner pocket to help keep your batteries warm and last longer. This pack, if used with regulation, should last up to a week.
