This is the 4th article in a series produced in partnership with Kananaskis Mountain Rescue, and in particular, thanks to Morgen Funston of KPMR for her wisdom and suggestions.
We’re not a dieticians or nutritionists, and this page isn’t about gluten or organics or GMOs.
You need fuel
Being in the outdoors is an energy consuming business. Here are the ranges of calorie burn rates for a few of the activities we do in K-Country. The ranges given account for variance in intensity, body weight and duration:
Hiking: 300 – 600 cal/hr 900-4,500 cal/day
Rock Climbing: 400 – 800/hr 1,200-5,000/day
Mountain Biking: 500 – 800/hr 2,500-6,000/day
Horseback Riding: 250 – 375/hr 1,200-2,000/day
Canoeing/Kayaking: 200 – 1,000/hr 2,000-6,000/day
Cross Country Skiing: 400 – 900/hr 2,000-4,500/day
Snowshoeing: 450 – 800/hr 2,500-3,500/day
You can see the calorie burn rates for other activities here.
Those numbers are huge. A sedentary job like an office worker burns all of 40 calories per hour. That low-cal salad thing you eat every Thursday just won’t cut it while out having fun on Saturday burning 10-20 times the calories. Not in an office job? Here’s an interesting link comparing calorie burn rates of other occupations.
How is eating related to safety?
What happens if you don’t take in enough calories while out in the wilderness? Well, having experienced it, the first thing that starts to go is your energy level, followed closely by your ability to focus mentally and make good decisions. This is why the Kananaskis Mountain Rescue folks worry about this stuff. It’s why eating properly is a part of safety in the outdoors. A failure to eat properly through the day, leads to a higher likelihood that things will go south on you at the end of the day. The “low energy” leads to slips, trips and falls. The “mental fatigue” leads to poor decisions on everything including route choices, failure to take breaks and an urge to hurry up at the end of the day. This seriously boosts your risk of accidents.
We have been in the wilderness with folks who know this is coming. They keep a caffeine-laden energy drink for late in the day to combat the expected fatigue. With all due respect to Red Bull, amping up on caffeine when you’re fried because you didn’t eat properly exacerbates the problem, and doesn’t “give you wings.” If you drink it, do your “Red Bulls” before lunch.
Get fueled, stay fueled
“Eating properly” has to do with recognizing you’re going to be burning calories like mad, then compensating for that by carrying with you enough nutrition rich, calorically dense food to keep you fuelled through the day.
That doesn’t mean “energy bars”. We used to hike regularly with a friend whose hiking lunch was 2 Clif bars (500 calories) and a 1-litre Gatorade (80 calories). While there’s nothing wrong with either, that’s just not enough to sustain you on a day when you’re burning 3,000 calories. Clif and other similar bars are awesome to keep in your emergency and snack kit, but they are not a meal replacement in the outdoors.
Our friend also erred in rarely eating breakfast – again, something you can get away with during a low-calorie burn mid-week day, but will bite you on an adventurous day. Make sure to start your day with a good “something” to help you get through that morning.
Hydration considerations
We sweat in most of the outdoor activity we do, even in the winter, but the jury remains out on whether we do so enough to warrant replacing electrolytes. A good balanced lunch has all of the sodium and magnesium that you need. A banana has 8x the potassium of G2, so have one for breakfast. Magically, your need for extra electrolytes through the day vanishes.
Water is almost always good enough. On this page, we wrote to carry 1.5 l/person per day at minimum. Fruit juices can push the sugar too high and lead to headaches, so need to be partaken in moderation, as do many sodas. But again, it’s a personal choice thing, so if you’re drinking enough water, feel free to have your G2 or tea or Kombucha or can of Coke or whatever turns your crank with lunch, because for the most part, fluids are fluids. You need fluids; dehydration is bad.
Kick it up
Being in the outdoors is the opportunity to take whatever it is you like to eat every day, and kick it up with extra things you also like to eat that increase the energy density. Some examples:
- If quinoa salads are your thing, and you eat them every day, good for you. But take that lightweight weekday salad and add things for the weekend like nuts, raisins, dates and chia seeds.
- If you’re a sandwich person, stop scrimping on the cheese and the meat and feel free to put a little mayo on it if that’s your thing.
- Climbing mountains and paddling rivers is the time to treat yourself to the horrible snacks you love but don’t eat because they’re “just calories”, so feel free to break out the chips and Cheetos.
Eat whatever you like to eat. In the wilderness, make it bigger and better to compensate for the fact that you’re almost certainly working way harder than you normally do.
A little nutrition science helps
In an ideal world, your best wilderness foods are high in protein, have moderate carbohydrates and sugars, and are lower in fat, simply because the fats (while calorically dense) take longer to convert to usable energy. The glucose packets that runners use are pure carbohydrates for instant energy. That’s probably a bit more “instant” than you need when you’re snowshoeing all day.
The famous GORP (which in the original form was “Good Ole Raisins and Peanuts” and dates back to 1910) is a great example of a tried and true lightweight, calorie-dense wilderness food: protein and fat from the peanuts, carbs from the raisins. The salt helps with your electrolytes, too. Some add chocolate chips or Smarties. Those push up the ratios of fats and sugars (and they melt on hot days), so we don’t do it, but if chocolate makes you happy, go for it. Remember: eat whatever you want, just make it bigger and better.
Fuel steadily
Smart, experienced wilderness people – like the Alberta Parks trail crews we work with – plan snack breaks into their day. On trail care days, most Parks crews make us stop for a small snack and water break around 10:45 am and 2:30 pm, in addition to the noon lunch break. This is where GORP and Clif bars and Sesame Snaps come in handy. Spreading your calories through the day is a good strategy to keep your energy up all day.
Stop. Sit. Snack. Sip.
Finally, if things aren’t going well in your day – you feel you’re lost, or late, have some sort of important decision to make, or having troubles of any kind – take the advice given regularly by Mountain Rescue when they get an emergency call: “Stop, Sit, Snack and Sip“. Slow down, sit down and grab your carb & sugar rich, Clif/granola/sesame snap/GORP snack. If you’re running low on snacks, feel free to dip into that emergency stash, because failure to do so could lead to an emergency. Munch for a bit and have some fluids. Sit for a bit longer. The fuel you just ate will have its magical, serotonin inducing calming and clarifying effects. We (and the Mountain Rescue staff) promise things will feel better, and you’ll be in a much better position to make the decision about what to do next.
In summary:
- Have a solid breakfast, and have a banana with it;
- Maximize “calorie density” for whatever food you carry;
- Carry balanced meals, making them more than you would normally have;
- Try to get your calories first from proteins, then carbs, and lastly fats;
- Calorie splurging is OK and in fact good;
- Consciously spread your eating through the day to regularly re-fuel
- Stop and re-fuel with carbs and fluids if you’re struggling for any reason.
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To see how this changes in the winter, head here –>
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