Cooking on the Appalachian Trail

The Appalachian Trail is a 2175 mile hiking trail that run along the Appalachian Mountains through 14 states from Georgia to Maine. It begins at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends with a 5-mile uphill climb of Mount Katahdin in Maine. My grandfather has hiked the entire trail, and following his example, my dad and I decided to spend 4 days hiking 30 miles of the trail in Georgia. We started at Springer Mountain and ended at a little place called Neel's Gap, 30 miles later.

Being the cook I am, I found it interesting as we prepared meals along the way. Most of the time, while we would hike, we were eating granola bars and trail mix. But once we made camp for the night, we'd usually have a hot meal. The picture you see below is of our stove. It's very lightweight (on the trail you have to carry everything on your back, so the lighter you pack the better) and cooks via gas. It would heat up very quickly and cook the food very fast.
Our meals had to be lightweight, easy to cook, but also filling and nutritious. I found these pasta dishes that you can heat up over the stove, but their are also ones that are in little baggies that you just add water to, plus we saw other hikers with freeze-dried food (like vegetables). We also went with the quick and easy favorite of Ramen noodles. Boy were those good after a long day of hiking, especially when the night was a little chilly.

And finally, what meal would be complete without dessert. Oh, we brought mini Snickers bars, Almond Joys, and Baby Ruth's, but those only go so far. So, I brought pudding! Now, you need milk for pudding and obviously there is none on the trail. So the next best thing is powdered milk. Boy did we love the pudding. Chocolate and sugar free (me being the health nut had to get the sugar free kind). Delish! Now, you need to cool it. Well, our campsite was right by the stream, so we just stuck the bowl in the water! My dad called it "God's refrigerator."

So, that's my cooking installment from the AT. I couldn't even go a week without cooking something and then blogging about it!