My Not So Secret Life as a Canoeist
By: Elle How
Tags: Backcountry, Filters, Fire, Cooking, Camping

Part 2 – Food and Fire

In the first part of this series you learned how to set up a tent. In this segment I will explain how to

Set the menu Purify water Cook meals Set up the fire

Photo by Myles Tan on Unsplash

Part Two: Food and Fire

Once the route and length of time are chosen for a back-country canoe trip, the next step is deciding on the menu.

The trip menu is dependent on the estimated length of the trip. From your arrival at your put-in to your take-out (where the trip ends). On this trip we chose to do a loop, it means we start and end at the same place.

Meal Planner

The meals are not the same as regular meals. You need to watch the weight of your packs. Meat and vegetables will only stay fresh for so long. These are the reasons why back-country canoeists bring dehydrated meals.

A list is made of the number of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks required. We ensure there is variety for each meal.

Here is a sample of meals for a 4 Day canoe trip:

We bring more fresh food on a short trip. With the sausages we will have tomatoes, green peppers and potatoes all fried up together.

Some canoeists will opt to purchase dehydrated meals, whereas my partner chooses to make our food.

He begins this process a couple of weeks to a month in advance, so it gives time for the food to be cooked and then dehydrated. He selects some meals from backcountry canoeing enthusiasts online. He uses recipes he has tried before.

We can do anything from a beef stew to a nacho bowl. Where we dehydrated the salsa and sour cream. It really is dependent on the length of the trip. We use TVP – textured vegetable protein as a meat replacement, which can be purchased at bulk food stores. It will pick up the flavors of the meals and is easier to hydrated than chicken or beef.

This means when you want to eat, the food must be re-hydrated before you can cook it. To re-hydrate you must cover the dry food with water and leave it until the water is almost all soaked up. Then you can reheat the food, adding more water if you feel the food has not completely hydrated.

After a while all the food seems to taste the same. At this point, you look at food for what it really is, an energy source.

Treats are a huge incentive and calories are not a concern, since we burn between 5000–8000 calories per day.

On a 14–18 day trip we bring more dehydrated meals.

How to Get & Filter Drinking Water at Your Campsite

It is good to have a stable area to get your water from shore. We look for a nice rock ledge. A place where you can lean over the water, that is about a foot or two deep, to get clean water. Our choice is to be on a site that is far from swamps.

You require enough for drinking and cooking.

We have a water filtration system that can be purchased online or from a camping store. The system we use is called a gravity system. This is how we use it and how the pieces fit together.

It has a 2-litre bag( also called a bladder), which has ‘Dirty Water’ marked on it. The bladder is used to scoop the water from the lake, or the river, that you will then filter. There is a small hose that fits at the bottom of the ‘Dirty Water’ bag and the hose attaches to the top of the filter. The next step is to attach the long hose to the bottom of the filter and then to the top of the bag which will hold your clean filtered water.

We hang the ‘Dirty Water’ bag on a tree branch about six feet off the ground and the bottom bag on the ground.

Other canoeists use a variety of systems, including just purchasing purification tablets for drinking water.

We use about 8–10 litres (2–3 gallons)for rehydrating our food and our water for the day. We repeat this process 5 or 6 times each day. We leave a full bag of clean water at the end of the day to be used in the morning.

Photo by Gary Sandoz on Unsplash

Firewood and Cooking on a Portable Stove

If we are going to camp on a well used site, we will grab wood from the shore on our way. It is cut in pieces that fit into the canoe.

When gathering wood, we look for dead wood that has fallen onto the ground. We gather old branches. We cut up the larger pieces with a folding saw we bring for that purpose. Cedar burns best, so we look for pieces of it.

We do not cut down healthy trees or branches with new growth, because it’s still green and will not burn properly.

There is usually a lot of birch bark on the forest floor. If I see big pieces while we are on a portage I will pick them up and put it in my pocket until we get to camp.

Each campsite has a firepit , which consists of a ring of rocks. If the fire pit has too many ashes in it, we will clean it out and sometimes rearrange the rocks so it burns better. We also try to arrange our fires so they will not get blown out by the wind. However if it is too windy, or rainy, we will not have a fire.

Sometimes we will have a tarp setup by the fire pit so we can stay dry while we cook and eat. We make sure the tarp does not get burnt by the flames, so it must not be directly above the flame.

Our Stove

We use a backcountry camp stove for most of our cooking. There are a variety of them ranging from $80-$200. Stoves are 3–4 inches high with a single burner. A small camping pot will fit on top. It weighs approximately 3 oz. They typically fit in your hand. The fuel canisters are small as well. They weigh from 110g-45g (4–16 oz) and screw onto the hose from the stove or directly onto the stove if there is no hose.

Make sure you talk to someone at the store or watch a video from the stove company on how to use it properly.

Photo by Brandi Redd on Unsplash

Camping Stove Fuel

We would bring a 225g canister with us for a 4 day trip. We use the firepit to heat the water or cook, but in bad weather sometimes a fire is not possible, so a stove is great.

Wind Protection

Some canoeists buy a windscreen made specially for the stoves.

We also try to make sure there is not much wind around the stove or you will waste a lot of fuel.

The pots and pans

We use a set of pots and pans from camping stores. They are light-weight and stack together in a bag. It usually consists of a small and a large pot, 2 plastic bowls, handles that clip onto the pots, a small frying pan. Fork/spoon and a spoon and spatula.

Photo by Yann Allegre on Unsplash

Preparing for Sleep

Before it gets dark you need to look for a tree to hang your food. There are critters and larger animals that will take it all if you do not store it in a proper manner. We even store our toothpaste in the bear barrel. The barrel has to be high enough that a 6–7 foot bear cannot touch it from the ground, thus you need to throw a rope with a rock tied at one end over a branch about 15–20 feet off of the ground.

We never eat food in or around our tent, it is just not a smart idea to do.

Turning in

Once we eat dinner, we wash our dishes by the fire, then rinse them in the collapsible bucket. We then throw out the dirty water about 150 ft away from the waters edge. We make sure we do not throw the water near our tent. We also brush our teeth.

We clean up the campsite and put everything away. We pack all our food, dishes, toothbrushes and toothpaste into the bear barrel and take it to the tree where we have the rope hanging down. Next I attach the rope to the barrel with a clamp and lift the barrel while my partner pulls the rope to move the barrel up into the tree.

After everything is done, sometimes we will go out fishing or sit around the fire talking. We also bring a travel set of dominoes to play, too.

We have headlamps -flashlights that attach to your head- they help to see in the dark. When you are away from the fire, it can be quite dark, so you need to see the ground if you are walking around your campsite. You do not want to trip over tree roots, rocks or falling into the water.

When we are ready for bed, we put out the fire and get into our tent to go to sleep.

We leave our water bottles and footwear outside the tent. At times if it is too cold we will sleep with our toques on.

Usually we have a wonderful night’s sleep.

In 5 years I have never had an issue, but sometimes you will hear little animals. Most sniff around and leave. I keep a whistle in the tent for that purpose. Once something got too close and I blew the whistle. It left.

Elle

Follow me on Part Three : Breakfast and Packing up