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Monday, March 31, 2014
Looking wintery in the Cairngorms ... but melting
If conditions stay the way they are, it'll be more valley hiking than peak bagging in the Cairngorms. Check out the beautiful pics on Chris Townsend's blog. I hope I get some of that weather too!
Friday, March 28, 2014
Update on route and timing
Ben Nevis, seen from this webcam this morning.
Here's the approximate route I'm planning. More detail becomes cumbersome to redraw in Google maps, so this will have to do.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Food strategy
I guess that I'll be using something like 3500 - 4000 calories per day, of which 2000 are base caloric needs and about another 2000 from a day's hiking. Because there's only so much volume and weight I want to carry, one kilogram a day is the maximum I'll carry. That works out at about 400 calories/100g and thus I will be getting the majority of my calories from fat (which is probably always true...). Fresh produce and the like are definitely not possible, canned stuff or anything else with a lot of liquid is impossible too. Leaves really dense and dehydrated foods. I pass on ready-made hiking meals: they cost a lot and don't taste great, besides, it'll be somewhat hard to resupply. So, here's my planned daily ration:
Total per day:
Trail Mix 100g
Bars 3-4 (150g)
Cheese 200g
Meat 200g
Crackers 100g
Rice/Potato Mash 100g
chocolate 100g
Inst soup 2, 50g
Inst. Coffee (2 spoons)/infusion
Coconut Oil 50g
Total: 1050gr
I'll prepare one warm meal a day in the evening based on the rice and instant mashed potatoes. The other stuff will be eaten as snacks throughout the day. I will make instant coffee or tea for breakfast but not prepare any cereals etc - I just don't like that stuff much, although it would be easy to bring some instant milk. Maybe I'll bring some vitamins for nutrients, but since it's after all just a couple of weeks, it's probably not a big problem.
The menu makes me long for a decent meal and a beer before I've even started ;-)