Food Prep- FINAL

Here it is, the last post about food prep! WOOT!

After 4 stores and 8 or 9 hours out shopping, we filled the car!

I grossly underestimated the amount of time it was going to take to shop for, unpack, repackage and pack all of our backpacking food... I thought we could get it done if we spent Friday night and all day Saturday. I was WAY off. By 10:00 pm on Sunday night we accomplished packing ONE resupply bucket :) Now, granted we unpacked and repackaged everything, which were the most time consuming tasks, but still...!




Starting to unpack his food...

Halfway through unpacking

Here is a small example of the repackaging we did. In this picture I measured out and packed servings of granola with powdered soy milk. On the ziploc bag, I noted the flavor and how much water to add. I wish I would have taken a picture of all the bags of instant rice I made...there was a mountain of them!



16 bags of granola

So once we were ready to actually start packing up our resupply buckets, we started with our 8 day stretch between Muir Trail Ranch and our resupply at Mt Williamson Motel.  We knew that all the other resupplies, which are all 4-5 days, would be a breeze once we figured out our 8 day situation. Well, we could not fit 8 days of food in our bear cans. Not even with David's superb tetris skillz. We can't fit 7 either, but we're going with it. We exchanged several foods in David's can for either something that packed down smaller, like instant mashed potatoes or higher calorie foods like macadamia nuts and cashews. The majority of David's food for this 7 day stretch now consists of nuts, olive oil and instant mashed potatoes... To eliminate one additional day on the trail we rolled a short, half day of hiking (5 miles) into two other days. Which now brings our 8 day stretch to 7 days. We will have several long days in a row at 12+ miles per day, but hopefully by this point in the trip we'll be in good trail shape and it won't be a big deal.


We finished packing up our buckets on Thursday night! So much for getting it all done on Saturday, wishful thinking Kimburly! Turns out we needed to make a quick run to Walmart for a couple small items including camping toilet paper. After painstakingly  packing up the other resupplies, we unpacked them and calculated how many calories were in each bucket, then divided that number by how many days the food was to last. We hit our targets with every bucket except, not surprisingly, the Muir Trail Ranch/7 day bucket. Daveed is low on calories and so am I, but we'll have to make due.



All packed up! That's one of the bear cans on the right, with the black lid and red sticker on top, not very large considering the amount of food we wanted to fit in it!

Can see the floor again!

Took the Mt Williamson buckets (resupply #4) and Lone Pine post office box to my parent's house on Sunday, they will mail these out for us in mid-July. It's too soon to ship them before we leave for our trip. When we taped the buckets shut, Daveed said "Are we really doing this??! Should we check them one more time??". Well, it seemed we had our bucket game down, but I had to open and re-tape the Lone Pine post office box twice because I kept forgetting things... We will pick up the box at the Lone Pine post office when we finish the trail, so it's not really a "resupply" box as it only has a few items in it, including a jar of Speculoos cookie butter from Trader Joe's!!!!! Yummm. It also has a few toiletry items, $0.98 flip flops, and clean clothes.

Resupply #4- off to Mom and Dad's

Now all we have to do is take the other 6 buckets to the post office next week and ship em out! We have a ton of leftover food, which we will take with us on the trip and eat as we go! Although we wanted to fit everything we bought into our buckets, the reality was that pretty much nothing actually fit in our bear cans. We even have leftover candy bars! We really shouldn't need to do any grocery shopping, apart from fresh produce and meats, at all until we finish the JMT! That means we have enough leftover food for the first 2.5 weeks of our trip! :)

Our departure looms near...!!! Super excited! There are just a few things left to take care of before we leave! Cleaning the apt is one of those things, albeit one of the not so fun things. Assembling the trad gear and sorting the rest of our climbing gear is another thing that needs to be done. I also need to dig out my swimsuit...it's somewhere in the depths of my closet.

We hit the road in 8 days!!!!

Goodbye Big Red

Our first stop on our shopping extravaganza on Saturday was REI. Daveed needed to buy some freeze dried meals. I brought along Big Red to make sure she was fitted properly since my back has still been giving me grief... All the muscles of my mid and lower back were strained really bad 4 weeks ago on a hike that was only 6 miles... couldn't walk, couldn't sleep, was in major pain for a week+!

So after a couple more light hikes with Big Red and my back still bothering me, I brought her in to get checked out. Our friend from the gym, Tim the Englishman, was working in the gear section when we went in and he spent almost 2 hours working with me to get fitted with the right pack. He was super patient and let me do and pack whatever I wanted to test out the fit and feel of the packs. Bless his heart. At the end of our 2 hour session and 4 packs later, I returned Big Red and walked out with the Osprey Aura 65L pack in a pretty green color. The Aura is the "ultra light" version of Big Red (Ariel 65L). The Aura weighs about 1 lb 4 oz less than Big Red! Which is HUGE! The main difference in the fit for me is the back part of the Aura. It's all mesh, no lumbar bump- which is what was killing my back on Big Red. The frame is also different. It curves around my torso for an awesome fit and feel. If you had wide hips it probably wouldn't feel good, so lucky for me I have boyish hips and a sort of narrow torso, so it wraps around me and fits great!

The Aura has a lighter duty suspension and hip belt, which in part is what makes it weigh less. Consequently, it also means that it can only handle a load of 30-35 lbs (hence its "ultra light" status). Big Red's beefy suspension and back structure allowed for a load of 50+ lbs. My goal for my pack weight has always been under 30, with my ultimate goal, fully loaded, being 28 lbs (or less!!). I think I can achieve it especially with the 1 lb+ weight savings of the pack in and of itself...

So, in this post, I say goodbye to Big Red. It's been a good ride although you rubbed me the wrong way towards the end...literally. And I welcome and introduce Verde to the family of backpacks. Lets go on some adventures and get to know each other.

Food Prep (and so it begins...)

Food prep post one of only two, I promise! I can't wait until we get out on the road so I can start posting pictures and other stories about things besides food and clothes!

But! The prep is all part of it. The food prep has been interesting and at times, has made me laugh. The sheer amount of food that gets all stacked up is amusing to me for some reason. I guess it just seems so ridiculous. We are prepping 28 days worth of food and about tripling the calories we would normally consume in a day. It ends up being a lot of food!



I found many gluten free items on Amazon for a cheaper price than I've found at Woodman's. I was able to sign up for Amazon Prime for free and get free shipping on pretty much everything! Those orange boxes (6 in total) are 72 bags of gluten free "ramen noodle" type soups!

Gluten Free Noms, All Ordered on Amazon!

REI was having their annual sale over Memorial Day weekend, which included a discount savings on Clif Bars, I ordered 30!!

Clif Bars, Gluten Free Bars and Drink Mix Packets

I think I kind of over did it on purchasing drink mix packets...I was thinking I'd want a few packets per day since I'm not sure how the water will taste on the trail, but they take up too much space and add too much weight. Instead of having 3 or 4 per day, I'm bringing 1 per day.

This weekend David and I will be buying the rest of the food we need and repackaging it, then sorting and packing it into our resupply buckets. Pictures and last post about food to follow!


Other things we've been doing to prep for the trip include training at the gym! I think I might do a whole post on training... We started working with Jim from the gym last week. He's helping to get us strong and fit for our trip. Using a combination of strength and VO2 max work, Jim's plan will have us strong and our muscles using and storing oxygen efficiently. Sorry Jim, I probably said that backwards or something, but I think that's what increasing your VO2 max is...? I forgot what you told us :)  The workouts have been super intense- neither of us has ever actually "trained" like this before- but they have been awesome. We make a lot of try hard noises during the workouts and we're sore for several days afterwards, but we're feeling strong! More to come on this in a later post. Maybe I'll even post a video of us working out on Instagram (ksuesbackpacks), if I can figure out how to do a video.

We've been continuing to do training hikes as well as going to the Red. They all contribute to our base fitness and have helped with continued test driving of our gear. At this point, we're all set! I even got to try out my rain pants a couple weeks ago when we got rained on at Lapham Peak! They were great!



Other things we're continuing to do to prep- reading! Blogs and backpacking articles and a big thank you to Grant from my work for lending me these books for Montana and Wyoming! Can't wait to dig in and read them...just need to find the time!