Your meals and food on your Mountain Leader expeditions both for training and assessment expedition have a lot of boxes to tick: lightweight, portable, nutritious, easy to cook when the weather is poor and on a small stove, tasty and hopefully inspiring. Planning and preparing these meals is part of the process, and we really enjoy seeing the range of cuisines that candidates bring on their expeditions.
Here for your inspiration, and having done a fair few expeditions in their time, Alex and Hati from the Beyond the Edge team have shared their Mountain Leader expeditions meal plans.
Hati’s Expedition Meal Plan
ML Expedition Cuisine on a Budget
Costs can stack up on Mountain Leader expeditions, especially when you start to enter the realms of buying good quality, lightweight expedition kit. Preferring to spend my money on nice gear, I tend to avoid buying dehydrated meals where I can for expeditions and invest my time instead. I have been known to carry fresh vegetables, but they spoil quickly and are hard to store so usually best eaten on day one.
Hati in the Alps above Chamonix
My criteria for any expedition food is:
- Inexpensive
- Vegetarian
- Dense in protein, carbohydrates and fat
- Tasty treats for when I’m tired
- Minimal cleanup
- Minimal disposable packaging
For my cooking set up, I usually use a Alpkit 900ml titanium pot with a sit-on-top gas stove (Soto Windbreaker), although I’m currently trying out a Jetboil (will report back). I always bring ridiculous antique cutlery, currently I’m using an extra long silver spoon.
Hati’s weird silver spoon and Alex’s normal spoon
I pack all my meals in sandwich bags, usually two days per sandwich bag, and then wash them to use again when I get home.
Expedition food
On the first morning of Mountain Leader expeditions I eat a big exciting breakfast and make sandwiches/boiled eggs for lunch.
I’ll start with dinner as I usually reuse any dinner packaging for breakfast so that I don’t have to carry or wash a bowl. If this seems unpleasant, take a plastic bowl or cook breakfast in your pan.
Dinner
Couscous with stock cube, harissa spices, cashews, almonds, dried apricots, raisins and dried vegetables if I have any. Cook and eat in Alpkit Pot.
Pudding – a sachet of birds custard with chocolate added (you can pour water directly into the bag).
One of my selection of fancy teas (I do not scrimp on tea).
If I’m a bit cold, I boil drinking water in the evening and pour it into a Nalgene which I use as a hot water bottle.
Breakfast
Coffee! Here I do not hold back. Coffee bags (biodegradable) for shorter expeditions, Aeropress and filter coffee for longer trips.
Porridge with vanilla protein powder, raisins, peanuts, chia seeds (other seeds available). I make this in the Birds Custard packet from the evening before to save washing up.
Lunch
Instead of lunch I have snacks throughout the day, generally I don’t plan to cook at lunch. Snacks might include:
Dried Medjool dates (okay they’re not cheap, but they great when you need a boost of enthusiasm).
Dehydrated whole bananas (hard to find in the UK!.
Trail mix or dry-roasted peanuts.
Flapjack (homemade, Alex has a good recipe).
If it’s hot I add electrolytes to my water.
And then back to dinner!
Hati
Another Birds custard pudding on the OMM
Alex’s Mountain Leader Meals
On Mountain Leader expeditions I tend to either go for quick, convenient and light or if I feel I’ll have a bit more time in camp I like to make an effort to cook a meal from separate healthy ingredients.
The quick and convenient option will a XL Firepot. My favourites being Dal and Rice with Spinach or Porcini Mushroom Risotto usually bought from Alpkit. or Base Camp Food. Water is boiled in a Fire Maple Petrel 600ml with a MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe.
If I’m in the mood for cooking it might be onions, garlic and leeks with rice or pasta. Maybe I’ll add a tin of tuna or mackerel for some protein. For convenience when cooking I’ll use a lower more stable stove such as the Kovea Spider and cook in the excellent MSR Titan Kettle 1400ml (a bigger wider pot is easier to cook in).
I’ll eat straight from the packet or pan with a MSR Titan Spoon and drink my soup/tea/coffee from a GSI Mug.
Doves Farm Digestives, Firepot and Miso Soup.
No pudding!
When I arrive in camp on my Mountain Leader expeditions and after I’ve put up my tent I’ll actively start re-hydrating. A pint of green tea and/or miso soup. Then the Firepot. Maybe more green tea. I’ll use the empty Firepot pouch for rubbish during the rest of the expedition.
Snacks and lunch will be mixed salted nuts, an apple or two, Naked bars and/or flapjack. In winter I like to bring a big slab of fruit and nut chocolate. I usually stash a couple of Clif bars for those late in the day energy dips.
On my last ML training I took some Doves Farm digestive biscuits and a big slab of Black Bomber cheddar which was a very tasty combination.
Another ML Expedition, another Firepot Porcini Mushroom Risotto
I’ve never managed to find a Mountain Leader expeditions breakfast I particularly enjoy. If it’s an ML assessment and I’m out for three days I sometimes I’ll have another Firepot for breakfast; the second day of the ML assessment is always a long day so I’ll want to load up on the calories. If it’s one night I’ll often have a Clif bar or similar with a apple (it’s nice have a bit of fresh food). Or I might just eat whatever snacks I’ve got left over.
While I do tend to go for the Firepot meals I occasionally get adventurous and try other brands; the Norwegian brand Real Turmat is very tasty. I’ve also enjoyed LYO Expedition and Summit to Eat.
All these lovely meals are available from Base Camps Foods. – use the code BeyondtheEdge10 for 10% discount.
Alex
Beyond the Edge Ltd is based in Sheffield: two hours by train from London and within easy travelling distance from Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham and other Northern towns and cities.
We are one of the UKs most experienced providers of climbing, walking, scrambling, mountaineering and navigation training courses.
Most of our courses are run in the nearby Peak District National Park which has some of the finest climbing, bouldering, walking and hiking in the world.
