After plotting this out over the course of a few months, the food has finally come together. We'll be in the water at Sawbill this Saturday and pulling out the following Friday:

Left to right and top to bottom you got:
- Breakfast: 2 days pancakes, 2 days bacon/egg/cheese tacos, 1 day oatmeal and 2 bags of coffee
- Snacks/Lunch: fish breading and oil, sausage/cheese/crackers, 4 lbs trail mix, 30 candy bars/M&Ms, 18 small beef jerky baggies and a 100 clif bars
- Dinner: steaks & potatoes the first night (not shown), 3 nights of mountain house meals (the cans shown will be repackaged tonight), 2 nights of soft shell chicken tacos
- Desserts: 2 raspberry crumbles, chocolate mocha cheesecake, chocolate mousse pie, blueberry cobbler

Only thing left to pick up is the cheese. Pretty basic fare and I probably overpacked but for my first time doing this and being responsible for 6 guys, I wanted to play it safe. Overall, I'm pretty pumped with how it came together. I'm sure we're gonna be sick of the clif bars by Tuesday, but whatever. I got a great deal on ebay for 100 of them at $75. :) Note on the second pic: Only one bucket has food. The other is kitchen supplies/stove.

pretty dang good job, looks like you got everything covered. I can here ya from experence that packing the food for a group is no easy task.

Awesome! Great job, feel proud of yourself. Revel in the silence and/or yummy sounds as your crew scarf down the deliciousness. Don't worry about too many clif bars, you've got plenty of flavors to choose from...filling, tasty goodness that gives you energy...oh and fiber! Need that too! Enjoy your trip.

Great job! In the past, I packed full meals for both lunch and dinner. That was almost always too much. We always ended up snacking for one meal or the other. I like your plan better.

Looks Good!

Looks like you will be eating well! I just got done packing food for a 4 day backpacking trip with my wife. Our food looks pretty slim by comparison, but that's backpacking.

Looks good - give us a review after the trip. You'll be fine with the Clif Bars, but, yes, when you get out you'll want a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake :).

Looks great...I've been doing our group food for a few years now. I have a few comments and a question. Are you drinking straight black coffee and only water on your trip? I don't see sugar or creamer or any other drink mixes.Is that the plastic bottle of Redhot? It's good your repacking the MH meals, your can also remove the bacon from the boxes and repackage 3 bottles of pancake mix to ziplock bags and then rinse out one container after use. I see a lot of sugar ( candy and cliff bars) and a ton of salt (MH meals and jerky), but no extras.... Fruit, Bread, etc... Or any extra meals!

We just finished prepping our food for our trip..... Food for 2 people for 10 days fits in a 60 liter barrel.....including steak, chicken breasts, ham steaks, then we start into the dehydrated meals including crab and shrimp seafood burritos, tuna taco rice, and chili Mac to list a few. Biscuits/fry breads, meals with extra added vegetables, rice and noodles and dessert are a must with most meals. Just food for thought! We like to eat and eat well.

Just a side note.... In my calculations based off your picture you better catch a bunch of fish because in my opinion you don't have enough food.

I don't think we'll be too dependent on fish. From a snack/lunch standpoint, each guy will have 5 candy bars, 20 clif bars, 3 small beef jerky bags and 2 snack baggies of trail mix. That's before the sausage/cheese/cracker, which there isn't much of but it'll be a "nice to have" for 2 days.

One thing I intentionally omitted is any food the last day (Friday). On Thursday we'll pack up our base camp and head back to Alton for the night. Get up early on Friday, pack up and head out, get cleaned up then grab a bite somewhere on the road. If we have any snacks left, that'll be all we get for the short paddle out.

No criticism intended - since I am guilty still years after my "first time" but unless you don't catch fish and maybe even if you do, you'll have a lot left over. We just never eat as much as I plan - not close. I just plan all the meals like you and then delete one dinner in 5 and one breakfast in 5 - and still could easily not go hungry for several more days.

quote billconner: "No criticism intended - since I am guilty still years after my "first time" but unless you don't catch fish and maybe even if you do, you'll have a lot left over. We just never eat as much as I plan - not close. I just plan all the meals like you and then delete one dinner in 5 and one breakfast in 5 - and still could easily not go hungry for several more days."

Yeah, I assumed we'd have more than needed. Not something I'm really worried about since we're base camping. It'll be a pain lugging the barrel out there but using the buckets helps split the load a bit. One of the buckets is dedicated to the clif bars which are pretty heavy on their own.

Good job for the first time. Every group is different, eats differently. You'll be able to adjust amounts up or down for the next time. Take notes right after or during the trip, otherwise you will forget what changes you wanted to make. It a continual fine tuning process, enjoy it. I've packed food for 30+ high school groups, we carried in a TON of food.

I consider us "mental" when it comes to our food. Here is our food pic for 10 days minus small tortillas. Our food for 2 people weighs 40 lbs. We don't base camp, we hang tight every few days or else we are on the move doing a loop of some sort. We come home with extra food, that is fine with me, the GG vapor trail barrel harness makes any weight a breeze. I plan an extra meal just in case something goes awry in addition to fish fry.

One of my first week-long backpacking trips, one of my mates scarfed up the rest of the gorp for a snack. I told him it was for lunch the next day and got the shrug. I should have known to bring extra for him. On a 12 mile hike to our next lean-to, we stopped and broke for lunch. Well, we needed that gorp besides our meal (he wanted to know where the gorp was) i know i felt depleted. It was a long hike and I felt weary...I vowed never again.

The last BWCA trip we took, we brought home our extra meal, jerky, gorp etc. At our take out (Sawbill) we rummaged thru the barrel like bears. We ate well, but after 90 miles in 10 days, we all lost about 8 lbs. Your trip is quite different, base camping doesn't burn the same calories as portaging many miles, but I wouldn't want to wake up on the last day to zero food...but that's just us...been there, done that. I have tripped with diabetics, everyone has their own needs. Make sure your crew are cool with no food the last day and its all good.

I base camp as well and it has taken me several years to trim down our food to an amount we actually eat. I think 100 clif bars is ALOT of weight lol. I hope you have a great trip.

Let us know how close your planning was. I would say for a first time effort if you come back with one meal too much or went slightly hungry at the end you did fantastic and will be able to adjust accordingly next trip.

Everyone metabolizes differently and needs a different caloric intake daily. Only you can know your trip partners eating habits.

Hey all,

Wanted to report back on this. We had pretty much the perfect amount of food. After the last night's dinner, our remaining food included 6-8 clif bars, some jerky and trail mix left over. Probably should plan a little extra next time in the event we get stuck an extra day because of weather. The chicken tacos were a huge hit. Highly recommend them to anyone considering it. So easy and so good. Next time will try to "gussy it up" a bit with some onion and other things to add. Also couldn't be happier with the 60L barrel and CCS barrel pack (the green one) and 2 5-gal buckets with gamma seal lids.

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback and replies to my many posts here as I planned this out. You were all extremely helpful.