Snacks for walks and hikes: what to pack so you don’t run out of steam

Out on the hills, hunger doesn’t feel the way it does at your desk. Your stomach stays quiet, but your legs start to feel heavy, you slow down, and on the last climb you’re tempted to turn back. By the time you notice, it’s usually too late, and you drag yourself the rest of the way.

That’s why the food you pack matters more than you might think. It’s not just about taste, but also about when to eat, how much you can carry and what will keep for a few hours in the warm.

Why you run out of energy sooner than you expect

Walking uphill isn’t as demanding as running, but it goes on all day. Your body uses energy slowly but steadily, and breakfast won’t keep you going for long. If you don’t top up along the way, you’ll probably run out of steam just where you need it most: on the final climb or on the walk back to the car.

On top of that, you usually don’t feel much like eating while you’re on the move. Hunger stays quiet even when you ought to be eating something. So don’t wait for your stomach to rumble – snack little and often.

How often to eat

Rather than one big lunch at the summit, it’s better to eat small amounts roughly every hour to hour and a half. Your stomach won’t feel overfull, the climbs will feel less of a slog and your energy will stay steady.

For endurance exercise lasting more than an hour, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate an hour. That’s more than you need for a stroll, but on a full-day ridge walk with plenty of ascent – in the Lake District, Eryri (Snowdonia) or the Wicklow Mountains, say – you’ll come close to it. To give you an idea: 30 grams of carbohydrate is roughly one banana plus one energy bar.

Eat before you’re hungry, and drink before you’re thirsty.

What to pack in your rucksack

A good snack for the hills is light, doesn’t get squashed in your rucksack, doesn’t go off in the warm, and can be eaten standing up, without cutlery. Here’s what works for us:

• Bread and cheese. Ideally wholemeal bread or a baguette with a hard cheese such as Cheddar. This will be your main meal of the day, best eaten somewhere around the halfway point.
• Nuts and dried fruit. A lot of energy in a small space. A handful is enough; a bigger portion takes a long time to digest.
• Fresh fruit. An apple will last all day; a banana is best eaten in the morning, before it goes brown.
• Energy bars. For a quick snack between stops. Choose bars where you know what you’re eating: a short ingredient list and no added sugars.
• Something salty. Crackers or pretzels. When you sweat in the heat, your body needs salt as well as water.

Leave behind anything that goes off quickly in the warm, such as mayonnaise-based salads, soft cheeses or yoghurts. The same goes for milk chocolate, unless you fancy scraping it off the wrapper at the summit.

How much to drink

On a hike, drinking matters as much as eating – in summer perhaps even more. As a rough guide, allow 0.4 to 0.8 litres an hour, depending on your pace and the weather. More in the heat and on the climbs. Drink little and often, in small sips, rather than all at once when you stop. On longer routes, an electrolyte drink is useful too.

When a bar makes sense – and when it doesn’t

An energy bar is no substitute for lunch. It’s a quick snack for the moments when you don’t want to stop and take your rucksack off. That’s why it’s worth knowing what’s in it.

One gfBar ORIGINAL bar has 129 kcal, 12.5 g of carbohydrate and 5.5 g of fibre. Half of the filling is dried wild blueberries, and its sweetness comes only from the blueberries and dates. It also contains 40 mg of caffeine from guarana – roughly half an espresso. That makes it a good fit for the final climb or the walk back, when your pace starts to drop in the afternoon. There’s more on guarana and caffeine in How guarana works in energy bars.

gfBar ORIGINAL: Contains caffeine (140 mg/100 g, 40 mg per bar, 80 mg per box). Not recommended for children or pregnant or breastfeeding women.

Every box holds two bars: one for the way up and one for the way down. After a full day on the hills, when you fancy something more substantial, gfBar PROTEIN is a good choice, with 6.2 g of protein per bar. You’ll find both flavours in the gfBar POWER pack.

If you’re walking with children, take caffeine-free bars for them: COCOA or COCONUT. We’ve written about what to give children as a snack, and what not to, in Snacks for kids: what works, what doesn’t, and which gfBar goes in the lunchbox.

And one more tip for summer: the coating is real chocolate, and real chocolate softens in the heat. So don’t keep the bars in the side pocket of your rucksack, where the sun beats down, but in the middle, among your clothes, where they stay in the shade.

What your rucksack shouldn’t be without

• water – at least 1.5 litres for a half-day walk, more in the heat
• your main meal, such as bread and cheese
• something to nibble along the way: nuts, dried fruit, bars
• fruit for the start of the walk
• something salty
• one spare bar that you only eat if you really need it

That last one is the one most often forgotten. The walk takes longer than planned, the shortcut turns out to be the long way round, and the bus pulls away just as you get there. A bar in your rucksack weighs next to nothing, and when its moment comes, you’ll be glad of it.

If you’d like to know where fatigue comes from during exercise and how to manage it, read Fatigue in sport: where it comes from and what to do before, during and after training.