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My favourite trail food for long dayhikes is leftover pizza. The bigger problem I find on those outings is drinking enough--I take lemonade/peach tea powder to mix in with stream water, which makes it much more palatable.

For me a long day hike is 7-12 hours. On these, I quite happily subsist on toasted bagels generously smeared with PB, Cliff bars, a small thermos of tea, and plenty of H2O.

If the hike is at altitude, I'll usually bring along a salami to pump up the calorie count.

After the hike, it's beer & pizza or a nice steak.

I used to love cold pizza... and then came the staph food poisoning incident.

Loss of appetite at altitude?

'ere...

sounds like you need some changes
Try gorp but change it==cashews, craisins, and reeses pieces.
nuts that you like.
dried fruit do it yourself in the oven. try pineapple.
summer sausage and hard cheese.
A baggie full of some kind of cereal you can eat dry. frosted shedded wheat. fiber one
Rubbermaid container with fresh veggies. take some salt packets.
snickers works for my wife.

FortMental wrote:A good salami is hard to beat.

The cold pizza thing I've tried a few times and wanted to puke after trying to eat some of those times, so I've developed a natural repulsion/resistance to future pizza options on the trail.


One thing I noticed some of my hiking friends carry is those energy drinks-monsters, and others. It seems they are effective, or are they? Maybe they are just a marketing hoax.

Darija wrote: Maybe they are just a marketing hoax.

They are as effective as caffeine pills.

sweet, fruity type bagel with peanut butter and jelly or honey

regular or everything type bagel with some good cheese

hummus and/or pesto with naan

italian dried salami

Grapes are my new favorite trail food...even on long backpacking trips. Put them at the top of the pack (or the top of the bear cannister) and you only smash a few. They are somewhat bulky, though, if space is an issue. Double bag if you're worried about leakage.

They're even better when you're a little dehydrated - they stay cool in the pack and are really refreshing. Plus, they don't make your fingers sticky.

A good apple or an orange has saved my sanity on a few occasions.

FortMental wrote:

JasonH wrote:

FortMental wrote:A good salami is hard to beat.

I was wondering when someone would get that....

A Sharks fan. Go figure.

We are classy.

I agree with no2haven. Grapes are my favorite trail food right now. They are a little bit heavy but sooo refreshing and a nice bit of flavor.

I also eat a lot of frozen pizza. I like using thin crust frozen pizzas (ones with BBQ sauce are the best, imo) because the thicker crust ones are usually really dry and make you drink all your water.

This stuff is good. Never tried it until backpacking this summer and I found it to be much better than average trail mix.

Darija wrote:There are limitations with the food you can pack, because you want to go as light as possible.

Agreed but if there's one thing I've learned about climbing it's that I enjoy the climb more taking food I can eat at altitude rather than just packing something that's light. I find the advantage of traveling lighter much less than that of carrying food I enjoy eating. Even on Denali I've carried in 2 pounds of peanut butter and rolls instead of some dehydrated crap I don't enjoy.