Anyone done a tramping trip where they've starved / run out of food for more than a day or two?
(I must confess I've managed it on three occasions, each for two and a half to three days)
(1) Wrong side of a flooded river. (2) Missed a water taxi connection. (3) 7 day trans-alpine trip turned into 10 due to weather...
This post has been edited by the author on 17 July 2016 at 08:12.
yup, i was already running on empty, feeling sick, after a couple of ten hour days postholing through snow, couldnt eat dinner and no one left me any dinner on the last night, the last day i had a handful of scroggin, i had ten hours ahead of me , had to get over a mountain range through slushy snow.
the weather wasn't good, i was was so low in energy i avoided stopping because i was worried about being more susceptible to hypothermia with lower energy levels.
i was running on fat reserves most of the day, you cant get a lot of power once you run out of blood sugar... have to slow down for the reduced amount of energy output you can get from burning fat.
after that trip i was more careful about taking enough food.
Yeah I did a classic in the Tararuas in late November 2009.
I think I've told this tale before, but I started at Herepai (yes the hut pic in my profile) staggered around to Dundas, and lost a day there due to a storm.
Then I made it to Arete Biv just before the clag hit again and was stuck there another full day.
Then a bit of a scary trip over Waiohine Pinnacle in high winds and low cloud, and got stuck at Tarn Ridge for another four nights. Endless howling gales meant I just wasn't game to tackle Girdlestone and Mitre on my own, sight unseen.
Eventually I found that I had a bit of cell phone coverage up on the ridge line above the hut and phoned SAR. The guy in Masterton was VERY helpful and in the end we agreed on a plan for me to head down the steep spur from Pt 1393 (the one with the memorial cross) into the headwaters of the Waingawa. The forecast was crap for another week or two and the magic petrol-budgie was not an option. By now I had basically used up all my normal rations.
Got bluffed out twice in very poor visibility but after one of the hardest days tramping I've ever done, I eventually made it to Arete Forks. Whereupon immediately there was the most amazing downpour, storm and flood. Stayed up all night, light the fire to keep my spirits up and went out into the torrent every 30 mins or so to see how high the river was going to get. A long hungry night.
By now I was down to last bits of scrog and some chocolate. Fortunately the storm let up just on dawn, but the river was way too high to go downstream the easy way, so now it's an epic through endless windfall down to Cow Creek over the infamous 'traverse' track. Absolutely buggered when I get there.
Next day I'm down to fresh air, and I just can't face the 900m climb over Blue Range that would normally only take 2 -3 hours, the trip down the Waingawa to the road end is 8- 10 hours and too far, so I opt to cross the lowish Cow Creek Saddle and make my way out via the Ruamahunga, still a long day but mostly easy going. And more rubbish weather but fortunately mostly at my back.
And I'm definitely down to fat-burning. wayno is right ... you have absolutely no power left. There's a 200m climb over a bluff in the last hour and I recall plodding up and down it just one boot barely in front of the other.
Another odd thing was that all the stream water I drank tasted really peculiar, as if it was tainted with poison. And I couldn't face eating even the last few lumps of chocolate I still had. All up I was out for 11 days with only 5-6 days food and I lost 5kg.
This post has been edited by the author on 17 July 2016 at 09:34.
Out of interest, how many day's worth of extra rations do people take?
And what kind of food? Is it better just to lug along stuff that does not need heating up for eg... I usually take a bit of both. Instant porridge is at the top of my list.
This post has been edited by the author on 17 July 2016 at 09:38.
Usually I'd take one extra day's full ration, and some extra munchies I hope will last another 2 -3 days.
If you are not moving and in shelter you can probably last for weeks on very little food, but because of the extended forecast was so poor I didn't have that option and had to get out on my own steam.
On long trips (4 days+) I take 1kg if rice spare. Not exciting but enough for starvation rations for 5 days tramping or 10 in a warm hut/tent ... as I have confirmed, to my relief.
Weekends / long weekends generally take additional 1-2 days of rice+oats.
The hardest starve I did was a trip through the centre of Vancouver Island. Had just done a 20 something day kayak trip from Gold River north to the Klashkish then down the coast to Tofino. Car was still at Gold River. We caught a water taxi to the head of Bedwell Sound and headed north to the Gold River Highway. A good tran-alpine trip through the highest part of the island, skirting the side of the Golden Hinde. Figured on six days, took seven days food. End of day 5 we were camped on a little saddle in a blizzard, tent fly and sleeping bags had come out of the packs frozen solid, we had 2 days food left and were nearly halfway.
We got to the highway late on day 10, had done the last three days with a gulp of fresh air and a cup of cold water for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can plod all right without food, but as others have commented, you slow right down on the hills and it takes a hell of an effort to concentrate on tricky trans-alpine stuff and blizzard navigation. I was back in Tofino 10 years later and was introduced to outdoors people there as the crazy guy who did this crazy car shuttle trip through there in October.
This is a view of some of the country in summer, good weather:
http://explorington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/GoldenHinde-Screen-0816-1024x683.jpg
http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/184351.JPG
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7428/12371381203_4d18f5067e_c.jpg
This post has been edited by the author on 17 July 2016 at 19:46.
@ Ian_H
That's big country on an empty stomach!
your brain functions best on sugar or starch for energy, so thinking goes right out the door once your sugar stores are used up and you don't have a lot of those.. its so easy to give up once you run out of sugar stores, you feel so sluggish and lazy.
people vary a great deal as to how much energy they can get from fat.
aparently frequent snacking can interupt the fat burning mechanism and its adviseable to avoid eating for a couple of hours while exercising to stimulate the best fat burning.
and if its cold and you run out of sugar then you're more prone to hypothermia
The biggest thing, I think is your mental attitude in these situations, realising it's not all that bad. People are so used to always being warm and well fed, they start to freak out when they miss a meal or two even though they have energy stores under their belt sufficient for a week or more. In the past past people would have had to go without food for days at a time and still summon the mental and physical energy to get out and hunt/gather something to eat. You see stories in the media these days of people stuck in a dry hut on the wrong side of a river for 24 - 48 hours with only crackers and such like and they make out it was an emergency situation. Others have tried to cross the river in similar situations after 24 hours 'starving' and drowned themselves rather than waiting another day or two.
In my experience, you can plod up a big hill with a pack on not much slower than you would fuelled up, and maintain 'track time' on the flat, but all the short steep bits that you'd usually steam up bring you right down to your slowest plodding pace.
