Eating well in bear country

A lot of the advice about backpacking food that I've seen includes stuff like not using a lot of spices because the delicious smells attract bears. Which is true, unfortunately! Bears do love a good tasty meal. But, we've found a way to eat all sorts of delicious, savoury, spicy meals without attracting bears, and the key is to not need to do dishes.

Now, not doing dishes is kind of its own reward, but the reason this is important in bear country is because the food you've eaten isn't what attracts bears, that's inside your stomach... it's the food that was stuck to the inside of your pot and to your plate, which ends up in the wash water, which ends up dumped in the forest where the delicious smells of food linger. So we try to avoid wash water. Hiking stores sell those pre-packaged, "just add hot water" meals, but they're expensive, not very big, and there's a limited number of types. (Reviews also say some of them don't taste very good.) We make our own.

This post is not about recipes; this post is about principles. We recently did a 5 night hike, and had different delicious food for every meal, by using these principles.

Food cozies: inner cloth, mylar emergency blanket,
quilt batting, outer cloth.

The cooking method is "add hot water and wait" and cooking is done in a heavy duty freezer bag. Yes, they stand up to boiling water! The flimsy sandwich bags don't, but the heavy duty freezer bags do. We use the ~1 quart ("medium") size as they do a good job in holding one person's meal. Everything is pre-measured. If people in your group have very different food requirements, it helps to write their names on the bags. An insulated bag to put them in helps, both to protect your hands from burning, and in cooler weather, to keep your food hot. I made a couple of "food cozies" for our food, which are simple mylar-lined quilted bags.

Meal time involves boiling a pot of filtered water, putting the meal's freezer bag in the insulated bag, scooping some boiling water into the freezer bag, sealing it up, massaging the food periodically (and if it's a cold day, stuffing the food bag inside our jackets to warm us up and slow the food's heat loss) and adding more water if needed, until it's cooked. Cook time is often close to how long it takes to drink a thermal mug of hot chocolate, which is convenient. Then, we open the bags, eat with a spoon, seal up the empty dirty freezer bag, pack bags inside bags for our garbage which is kept in the bear cache with the food, lick the spoon really well, and put spoon in food cozy and both in the bear cache as well. Not only are there no dishes to wash, it's really fuel efficient by only needing to bring water to a boil - no boil time, no simmer time. (If you don't have a filter, you'll want to boil the water for a few minutes to purify it of course, as you do with your drinking water.)

So what kind of food can you cook using this method? Well, anything that has a boil time of under 5 minutes, or where the instructions literally are "add [to] hot water and wait." For backpacking we want dry, shelf-stable foods as well, of course.

So to put together a hot meal, we pick foods from the following categories:

A protein:

• pre-cooked meat: only for the first couple of days. I have used bacon bits or small pieces of bacon cooked crispy (especially in breakfasts), or chicken or pork sliced very small then cooked to brown.
• dried meat: jerky, dry pepperoni, landjaeger or other very dry sausage, broken into bite size pieces.
• freeze dried meat: expensive, but rehydrates into something with a texture most like fresh cooked.
• dry soy meat extender or protein powder. I prefer the one that's in little chunks, instead of protein powder, but either will work just fine for this purpose. 

Not a primary protein, but a good booster in addition to the above:

• whole egg powder: more of a specialty item, and might be harder to find. 
• whole milk or buttermilk powder.
• peanut butter powder: usually in the "health foods & supplements" section of the supermarket

A starch:

• minute rice
• couscous
• instant oatmeal
• ramen noodles
• instant mashed potatoes (the Idahoan pre-seasoned instant mashed potatoes are fantastic; the cheesy ones especially come with shelf-stable dry milk fat in them already.)
• small or thin pasta that has a cook time in the under 5 minute range should also work. 

A veggie:

• mixed dehydrated veggie bits from the grocery store bulk bins
• freeze-dried vegetables: rehydrates into something that looks and feels a bit fresher
• dried kelp: also rehydrates easily and holds its texture, so if you like that it's also a good vegetable addition.

A texture: one of the difficulties we encountered at first was, while the food was tasty, it was basically tasty mush. Adding in something chosen as much for texture as anything else turned out to be important.

• whole nuts
• mini dry shrimp
• dry anchovies
• kelp or jerky or sausage, from above lists

A spice mix: how do you want your meal seasoned? Have fun with this one. Explore your spice rack!

A thickener: potato starch. Unless you're using a potato base (which thickens itself up) or you want a soup, you'll probably want to thicken things up a little so the flavour sticks to the food. For this cooking method, potato starch is the best thickener we've found. It doesn't mess with the flavours, and you don't have to boil it to get it to thicken things.

A fat: in cold weather or for very long days, you'll probably be wanting some fat to help keep your furnace going to stay warm. A dab of a solid fat such as butter, lard, or coconut oil added to the meal with the hot water will help there. Choose your fat depending on the expected temperatures, and make sure your container won't leak if it liquefies. You can also bring a bottle of olive oil, but keep in mind that stuff has a tendency to creep everywhere, so pack to protect the rest of your stuff.

A garnish: who doesn't like a garnish?

• crispy fried onions
• freeze dried chives
• fresh green onion (for a first day meal)

A spice kit:

• salt and pepper. If you've been working (sweating) hard, you'll probably want to add salt to your meal. 
• tabasco sauce, because those little bottles may be glass, but they're tough, and it's a small luxury we like to have. 
• extra potato starch, in case one of the meals didn't get quite enough added to it.

We also leave fresh apples, oranges, or other reasonably long-lived fruit in a cooler in the car for the end of the hike. For a longer hike, like the 5-day one we did recently, we also brought a carrot each, just to have something fresh after a few days. If you leave them whole and with the skin on, they last quite a long time, and they aren't prone to bruising or squishing.

Still want a recipe? Ok fine, here's one:

Dry chicken (either cooked, jerky, or freeze dried)
Soy meat extender
Peanut butter powder
Buttermilk powder
Coconut milk powder
Shredded coconut
Plain ramen noodles
Mixed dehydrated veggies
Blanched salted peanuts
Cayenne
Coriander
Cumin
Red pepper flakes
Potato starch
Salt

Voila! a vaguely thai-ish peanut chicken noodley dish. Totally not actually thai, but peanutty, spicy, coconutty, filling, and tasty.

How (and how not) to plan a successful group hike

A well planned and well executed group hike can be a ton of fun, but a poorly planned or poorly run group hike can be anywhere from frustrating or stressful to outright deadly. Some of these tips apply to hikes with your usual hiking group as well, but in this post I'm focusing on hikes with more than 3-4 people (sometimes a lot more) in a group which is made up of people who don't usually hike together, who have different experience levels, and which is planned by 1-3 core people.

Alex, Nienke, and I have planned several very successful group hikes, and the three of us have also, individually and together, participated in various group hikes organized by other people, some of which were less successful. There are a few defining characteristics that really make a group hike successful: planning, expectations, and group cohesion.

The first step, before even issuing the invitation, is planning. If you're planning a group hike, you must make a plan and communicate that plan.

DO have a core group or primary planner who is responsible for the hike plan.
DO NOT suggest or invite people to a group hike and hope the planning happens, somehow.

Somebody has to do the planning. If you don't want to do it, then don't suggest the activity. If you want to do the activity, then step up and do the planning. Sure, you might have an invitee who is good at hike planning, and who will ultimately make sure things go reasonably well, but they will probably not be happy about it and will probably choose to not hike with you again. This happened to us. We're not hiking with that group again, although we might invite some of the members on one of our group hikes in the future.

DO choose a specific trail and route.
DO NOT tell the group "we'll figure out which trail to take when we get there."
DO NOT poll people about which trail they want to do.

There are a couple of reasons for this, and the first and most important one is safety. Keep in mind that some of the best hiking has some of the worst phone service, especially in a mountainous region like BC. If you haven't chosen which trail and route you're going to take before you go, how can you tell your responsible person your itinerary before you head out, and therefore how can SAR know where to look for you if something bad happens and you don't come back at the end of the day? We've done many hikes where we lost cel phone service long before we reach the trailhead, and those are in popular parks.

The second reason is because different trails have different lengths and difficulty levels, and different people have different fitness and skill levels, and trying to negotiate all that at the trailhead is a bad idea. Some people might get railroaded into doing hikes that are beyond their ability, which can be dangerous and is no fun at all for the struggling hiker. Some people get really hung up on their first choice and spend the entire hike at some level of grumpy if their choice, which is obviously better, wasn't the one the group chose, and they don't have fun either (and neither do the people around them, even if it's a quiet level of grumpy). Polling people beforehand just moves that negotiation, and there's no way to tell if somebody you try to accommodate is even going to show up. Pick a trail right from the start and announce it when you invite people.

There will be people who don't like the trail you have chosen. That's fine! They can go on a different hike, or plan their own. Before one very successful group hike we planned, one invitee told us the trail we had chosen was no good and terrible and we wouldn't have fun. He didn't go; we had a great time.

DO choose a date.
DO NOT poll people about the date to try and find one that works for everybody.

This applies to all kinds of group activity planning, actually. It takes forever to narrow down dates, and the people causing the most trouble with settling on a date don't even come half the time anyway. Pick a date that works for you and stands a good chance of working for a reasonable number of people in the group you're planning to invite and that is preferably no less than two weeks after you invite them, and announce it when you invite people.

DO choose a specific, well defined meeting place.
DO NOT name an entire park or large general area as a meeting place.

In a group hike there are often people who only know the one person who invited them. Make it as easy as possible for them to find the group by naming a landmark or other really obvious specific thing that people can gather around. This could be the map board at the trailhead, a specific corner of a specific parking lot, or anything easily identifiable to somebody not familiar with the area.

DO research the trail; its length, elevation gain, estimated completion time, and difficulty level in particular.
DO NOT go only by the name of a popular trail that people are talking about all the time or that you saw in a list of great hikes.

The Grouse Grind is one of the worst for this in the Vancouver area: it's very popular, it seems short, and it's a lot more difficult than people who haven't hiked it realize. Sure, it's under 3km long and some fit people do it in less than an hour. But it is steep enough that most of it is effectively a staircase, and the terrain isn't exactly beginner friendly. On top of that, because there's a resort at the top, many people head up with no food or water and end up in trouble half way up because it's actually a very strenuous hike. SAR helps people off that 3km long, transit accessible trail all the time.

Likewise, make sure the trail descriptions you're using for planning have all four stats listed above, plus a detailed description. Some trails show up on "hikes to do in [region]" lists together when they are extremely, dangerously different, with only a passing comment about how much they differ from the easy hikes on the list. For example, this article starts with 5 hikes in the 2-hr range then drops in Hanes Valley right after them. Hanes Valley is a long, hard, full day (on the order of 10 hours) in very challenging terrain, is only open in summer and early autumn, is a one-way uphill hike because it's not really safe to go down the steep boulder field, and people get lost there regularly. The article simply says "scenic, but extremely difficult."

DO have a map for the hike area and a compass.
DO NOT assume the trail is so well-marked that you won't need a map.

The trail may well be well-marked. There may also be trail junctions, and if you take a wrong turn you may end up doing a much different well-marked hike than you had planned.

Best is to have a 1:50,000 or 1:20,000 scale topographic map with hiking trails marked. If one of those is not available for your hike area, government topo maps are always available but do not have hiking trails marked. Parks will often have trail maps on their pamphlets, but those may or may not have topographic information and their usefulness varies widely. The pamphlet holder attached to the trailhead map board may or may not be empty, if it exists at all, so you can't count on picking up a map when you get there.

So that's planning. The second factor in a successful group hike is expectation. This means that the hikers should know in advance what they've signed up for.

DO be specific in your invitation, especially about the length and difficulty of the trail.
DO NOT assume everybody in the group is familiar with the trail you're planning.
DO NOT surprise people on hike day by not telling them what the trail is ahead of time.

This is where you give people enough information to opt in or out, for schedule, interest, travel, or ability reasons. In order to do this, you can use the packing list and introduction we wrote for one of our group hikes. Feel free to copy this document, fill in your hike details, and share it with your group.

Hike organizers should pay special attention to the things the document says they will do during the hike, and make sure they do those things.

One of those things is the third factor in a successful group hike: group cohesion.

DO take steps to make sure the group stays together or regroups frequently.
DO NOT assume somebody lagging will catch up when you take a break.
DO NOT assume somebody hurrying on ahead will be at the lunch spot waiting for you.
DO NOT take an optional side trip or extension that is beyond the skill level of one of the members of the group, and leave that one person alone.

This means actively monitoring how spread out the group is, and calling on the fastest members of the group to stop periodically and let the slower members catch up and have a rest before moving on. This means regularly making sure the entire group is present and accounted for. This might mean that one of the organizers hikes at the very back of the group to make sure the slowest person isn't left behind—without rushing them beyond their ability or shaming them for being slow. This means even if a person says they'll be ok alone, you still keep the group together. Your group is only as fast as its slowest member.

This is about the safety of each person in your hiking group.

In the news article linked at the top of this post (and from other articles about the same search), a group hike had split into a faster and slower group. Fine so far, if not ideal. One member of the faster group was unable to keep up, and they left her behind, assuming she would meet the slower group and rejoin them at the top. She was never found. Either the faster group should have slowed down so they could stay together, or the faster group should have split into two safe size groups, so that nobody was left hiking alone. Splitting a group isn't fundamentally unsafe provided each group has enough experienced hikers committed to keeping those groups together. However, since group hikes are often social events, keeping the entire group together is the best option. If you want a faster group hike, invite people who you know have a faster pace so the entire group can do a faster hike.

Three Tries to the Summit

When there's a mountain in your backyard, of course a hiker is going to want to climb it. Living in Metro Vancouver, and especially in those cities within Metro Vancouver that back up against the mountains north of the urban area, there are lots of backyard mountains to climb. Burke Summit, in Pinecone Burke Provincial Park, is one of those mountains.

Our first attempt was in mid-June and was in some ways intended to be a scouting hike, although if we could get to Burke Summit safely we would go for it. The chosen day started out rainy and miserable, so the four people on this hike put on our rain gear and pack covers, and headed out to explore the mountain.

Rainy day salmonberries
photo by Rhonda

Not far up South Slope Trail, shortly before where we'd consider our first snack break, we encountered bushes loaded with salmonberries in all the salmonberry colours: yellow, orange, pink, nearly red, and multiple hues shading each drupe. We ate at least a granola bar's worth of salmonberries each without ever stepping off the trail, so that became our snack break.

(Please note: some provincial parks prohibit "harvesting of natural resources", aka foraging for berries, mushrooms, or other edibles, picking flowers, collecting rocks, or otherwise removing any material from the park that is not human-sourced garbage. Check the park's info page to find out if berry picking is prohibited before you go. Pinecone Burke Provincial Park does not prohibit foraging as of 2016.)

Between the rain falling from the sky and the former rain collected on the leaves we pushed through along the trail, it wasn't long before we were soaked through even with our rain gear. The streams were running high -- not as high as spring snowmelt, but definitely higher than on our second and third attempts. After sloshing through some streams, Alex commented that his new water resistant shoes didn't help much when the water poured in at the ankles. My shoes, being entirely not water resistant, didn't keep any water out... but also didn't keep water in once filled through the ankle, so I spent less time squelching after each stream crossing.

After crossing Coho Creek, Alex changed into his more waterproof pants, and (discovered later) dropped one of his hiking poles' world protectors from his pants pockets. (Some people call them tip protectors, but let's be honest, tungsten carbide doesn't need protecting. Everything else needs protecting from them.)

It was slippery, it was muddy, it was wet, and, fortunately, it was not a particularly cold day. Even so, when we reached the junction in the Ted Kay lakes area, we located Burke Summit Ridge Trail leading to Burke mountain's north summit, then turned away. There was envy of Nienke's butt pad when we sat down for lunch near the lakes because she had a dry insulated pad to sit on, while the rest of us sat on cold wet rocks. After lunch, we followed the loop out past the ski resort ruins and down the old logging road to return us to the trailhead. (Many trail descriptions for this area send you up the logging road and ignore the much prettier South Slope trail, which we prefer to use on the way up.)

Everybody thinks blackberries are tasty
photo by Rhonda

The rain stopped on our way down, mostly, and where the powerline crosses the logging road, we had a bit of sun and discovered some pacific (trailing) blackberries -- BC's native blackberry. They were just coming ripe on that one sunny slope, and we tasted a few. We also discovered that we weren't the only ones enjoying them.

Our second attempt was in early July, and this time there were only three of us. In addition to trying for Burke Summit, we wanted to do some wilderness camping, the sort where there are no services whatsoever.

(Please note: some provincial parks limit backcountry camping to established tent pads only. Please check the park's info page before you go, and respect that limit where it exists. Pinecone Burke Provincial Park does not limit camping on Burke mountain as of 2016, but asks that campers select sites for minimal impact.)

We had spotted a good site to pitch a tent on the previous attempt, where a fairly large area of rock was exposed, there was a level spot, and we would trample minimal plant life while camping. The first day's hiking was easy, as we walked up the same trail for a few hours, then set up camp. At Coho Creek, where Alex had lost his world protector on the previous, very wet trip, a short search of the area revealed it sitting out in plain view, black plastic on dark brown soil.

Setting up the bear cache
photo by Nienke

One of the difficulties came about when trying to set up the bear cache. At an established backcountry campsite, there is often a steel box bear cache for storing your food, but here we had to hang it from a tree, out of reach of a bear. Since we had spotted a black bear's footprint while hiking up, we knew that this would be important, even if we had climbed well above the majority of the ripe blueberries. After many (many, many) tries, followed by getting the throwing weight stuck in the tree and only getting it down after resigning ourselves to cutting the rope, we finally got the rope over a suitable branch, and prepared it for the PVC drybag that held our food.

Pumping water
photo by Rhonda

A second difficulty came about as soon as we stopped moving. There were bugs everywhere. It was our first time using the 10L water storage bag that we now routinely carry, and sitting still by the pond pumping was not tolerable for long, even with bug repellent. But it had to be done, and we eventually got that water bag filled with safe filtered water, then hung it from a tree for easy container filling. Virtually every action that didn't involve walking faster than an amble was punctuated by swats at the insects swarming around us. Alex compared it to the Northwest Territories, although they weren't all big biting flies.

The next morning, we had an admittedly slow start, and eventually headed toward the summit with day packs, leaving our tents and overnight gear where we had camped, and our food (other than the lunches and snacks we were carrying) up in the tree. The trail was only a couple of kilometres on the map and we thought we could make it there and back no problem. This time we easily passed Dennett Peak, the first of the three peaks leading to Burke Summit, and headed toward Pika Peak, the second peak.  The terrain between the two peaks turned out to be challenging and in some places very steep; we were very glad we hadn't tried it on our first, rainy attempt. Pika Peak itself was extremely steep and rocky, suitable for mountaineering but not hiking; fortunately, the trail went around the east side of the peak instead of trying to climb to the top. As we hiked, we discussed our turnaround time, the time which would allow us to get back to the trailhead by our planned hike end time, so we could contact our responsible person and let them know we were safe and they didn't have to call Search and Rescue for us.

We reached a boulder field on Pika Peak very close to our turnaround time, so we decided to have lunch (and swat at bugs) there and head back. The terrain was proving to be quite a bit more challenging than the first part of the hike, and we knew we wouldn't get to Burke Summit and back in time on this day. On the way back, we packed up our camp, reloaded our overnight bags, refilled our water, and hiked out, reaching the trailhead almost exactly when we had planned to.

After those two attempts, we were determined to make it to Burke Summit, and we now had a pretty solid idea of what to expect.

Refreshing a sign
photo by Alex

Our third attempt was at the very end of July, and we planned it as an epic day hike, with a start time of 7:30AM at the trailhead, and an end time before sunset (which that day was 8:50PM). From the trailhead, we powered up the now familiar trail past Dennett Peak, pausing only for snacks and trail maintenance. Alex had his folding saw, new on this trip, and he removed a small tree that had fallen across the trail. My machete took care of branches on a much larger tree, making it possible to climb over the trunk without going way off trail to get around it. A sharpie touched up the faded corrugated plastic signs which somebody had put up to replace the original painted wood signs, which in many cases were lying on the ground nearby, broken and rotting.

We made excellent time to Pika peak, scaled the boulder field, and headed into new territory. The terrain between Pika and Burke summit was even more challenging, and we knew we had made the right decision to turn back on the previous attempt. The final approach to Burke Summit was, as described in the trail description, bushwhacking while following flagging tape. (Lest you think our previous hikes were poorly planned, that trail description was published after our second attempt, and most trail descriptions for Burke Summit only go to South Summit, aka Dennett Peak, with no time estimate given for the "optional extension" to North Summit, if they mention it at all. North summit is challenging enough that it's something you plan a hike around; we do not consider it an optional extension the way we would something that only takes an extra hour or so.) The summit itself — once we found it, and not the rock we initially thought was the summit — was a granite knob with lovely views. We had enough time to relax there for a little while, take photos, and eat lunch, but not for too long, before we had to start back.

View from the summit
photo by Rhonda

The hike back was no easier; being a ridgetop hike with three peaks, we hiked up, then down, then up, then down, then up to get to the peak, followed by hiking down, then up, then down, then up, then down to get back to the trailhead. And, hiking down is not easier, and is sometimes harder, than hiking up!

On top of the long, strenuous hike back, while getting off the granite knob that was the peak, Alex went first down a section that was steep enough to make butt sliding the safest option — and started sliding before he was ready to. One of his hiking poles caught on a rock, and while they are strong, they are not built to have somebody's entire body weight landing on them. The bottom segment bent by almost 90 degrees, and Alex had to make the trek back with only one pole.

This last hike was well planned and executed: apart from the bent pole, everything went as expected, we finally reached Burke Mountain's North summit, and we made it back to the trailhead with a half hour to spare before sunset, very close to the 13 hours we had budgeted. We consider all three hikes to be well planned with the information we had at the time of each hike, and well executed with appropriate abort points given time and trail conditions.