Vegan Backpacking Food

This summer I went on a short trip to Colorado, and while I was there I backpacked for four days along a beautiful back-country trail. I’ve been backpacking before, but not as a vegan, so this was a new experience for me! After finishing the trail I spent one night camping in the Great Sand Dunes National Park, also with food that I brought on the trip.

Back-country camping and backpacking is a great experience that I hope everyone can enjoy. It helps me to re-center and re-charge for life in a small city. It also challenges me mentally and physically, and this trip in particular pushed my limits! The most challenging part for me was climbing Mount Antero, with a summit at 14,269 ft. To reach this altitude we spent two days camping above 11,000 ft, where the thin air limited our endurance. Practical, easy to prepare, and calorie-dense food in the back-country was very important to fuel me through these physical challenges. However, if you have never backpacked as a vegan before, it can be difficult to know what to pack, so I’d like to share what I ate while backpacking as a vegan!

Most importantly, backpacking requires food that doesn’t spoil in heat and is lightweight. Backpacking as a vegan is not harder than backpacking with animal based foods, but it does require some knowledge of what is available for vegans. For that reason I’ve listed my meals below, to show you exactly what I was eating.

It’s so important to know that if you are a backpacker, you can still enjoy your favorite hobby as a vegan. I hope that you are inspired by this post and find something useful for your next vegan adventure!

Dinner-time Meals:

1. Dehydrated Mashed Potatoes, packets of gravy mix, can of baked beans

2. Cans of vegan chili

3. Mexican style cooked beans, cooked rice, small can of ranchero style salsa, large burrito style flour tortillas

For dinner we also brought dehydrated TVP, which we added to the beans every night for extra calories and protein. We ate a variation of the 1st and 3rd meals listed here for the other two nights we were camping. The cooked beans and rice we found in plastic packaging at Whole Foods, which significantly lowered the weight compared to cans.

Note that we brought a small back-packing stove on this trip with us to boil water and heat the food for us. Specifically we rented the Trangia backpacking stove. I highly recommend renting or investing in one if you are going to be spending more than one night in the back-country!

Breakfast Food:

1. Packets of Instant Oatmeal

2. Bag of lightly salted mixed nuts

3. Bag of dried mixed berries

4. Jar of peanut butter

5. Fresh apples

Breakfast and Dinner are the most important meals for me when backpacking because I’m rarely very hungry in the heat of the day, so I made sure to pack calorie dense foods for breakfast. The mixed nuts and peanut butter in particular added a lot of calories for a small amount of volume and weight. In the morning I simply boiled the water and mixed it with the oatmeal, then I added the berries, nuts and peanut butter. Fresh apples also preserve well in heat/cold and are a delicious break from more processed foods.

Lunch/Snack Food:

1. Cliff Bars (check the ingredient list to makes sure the different flavors are vegan)

2. Fresh Carrots or Apples

3. Tortillas

4. Dry-packed Sun-dried Tomatoes (not for everyone, but I love to snack on these savory bites)

5. Peanut Butter

6. Mixed nuts/ Mixed dried berries

For lunch or for a snack during the hike I would eat a small amount of these foods. This was really important to help me finish the hike each day. Also, if I wasn’t hungry for breakfast I usually ate a cliff bar and a few handfuls of nuts and dried berries instead of the oatmeal. As you can see, there is a lot of repetition with these foods, which is ideal when back-packing. Although it’s not the tastiest to eat the same things over and over again, it’s important to do so to save space and minimize weight in the bag. Everything you bring you have to carry on your back, so you definitely don’t want to over-pack.

All this being said, it’s unlikely you will meet your calorie needs (this goes for non-vegans as well) while backpacking, simply because you are burning so many calories to hike every day. But you do need to eat as much food as possible. My absolute favorite thing on the trail was the mashed potatoes mixed with a good amount of vegan powdered gravy mix. However this was a treat, and the majority of my calories came from the nuts, peanut butter, Cliff bars, and beans.

Another option to consider is dehydrated meals made specifically for back-packing, which come in plastic bags that require adding hot water and waiting 15-30 minutes, depending on your elevation. We couldn’t find any of these meals in stores (all of the options contained animal products), but if you are from a larger city you may be able to find them. You can also order them online if you plan far enough in advance to make sure you will get them in time!

In particular, dehydrated hummus would have been excellent on this trip, even though it isn’t my personal favorite. I would have added it to my lunch-time tortillas with the carrots and sun-dried tomatoes.

Lastly, I want to mention that when we were driving around Colorado we used the Happy Cow app to find restaurants with vegan options. Although we had to drive through a few small towns while looking for lunch, eating out as vegans was not an issue. The highlight for us was Santana’s Vegan Grill in Colorado Springs, which had the most realistic vegan meats I have ever eaten. It was truly scary, but if you’re into fast food, this is a must try.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found something useful for you here! Adventure is out there, and don’t let being vegan stop you from exploring our remaining wilderness and public lands!

xo