Cooking on Kilimanjaro

I'm currently in my second year of physician assistant school at the the University of Iowa doing clinical rotations. In January, I will be doing a foreign rotation in Tanzania and am planning on climbing Mt Kilimanjaro while I'm there. This is the first of several posts that will discuss my preparation for the trek.

Official guides are required for climbing Mt Kilimanjaro by Tanzania law. The trekking companies that provide the guides also provide porters to carry the majority of all food, equipment, water, etc. Personally, I would much rather carry my own things. For me it is an important part of the experience and feeling of accomplishment in a successful climb. I'm in good shape and am training for the hike the same way I would for running a marathon (following a Marathon Training Calendar ) I'm also a bit of a disciple of light-weight backpacking and expect that the total weight of my pack (including food for 7 days, water, stove, tent, sleeping bag, etc.) will be under 30 pounds. I'm in the process of creating a gear list and will post it when complete.

I plan on creating my own dehydrated meals using Freezer Bag Cooking which I have had good success with on past backpacking trips. My favorite system for cooking freezer bag meals is with an alcohol stove. Specifically, the Caldera Keg™ System is my favorite. I made 7 homemade versions a few months back that work great. In a future post I may discuss how to make them, but unless you intend to make several it is usually cheaper just to buy one.

Freezer bag cooking has many advantages. It is much cheaper than store-bought dehydrated camping meals and allows for more selection and control of ingredients. Freezer bag meals are lighter than most conventional camping meals and allow for the use of extremely light-weight stove systems and minimal fuel use. But my favorite thing about them is that clean up only consists of licking your spoon clean. No more camping dishes! My wife and I have been using the cook book Freezer Bag Cooking: Trail Food Made Simple , but there are also many recipes that can be found on the web by simply Googling something like “freezer bag recipe”