VENTURING SKILLS LEVEL
The Venturing Skills Award requirements prepare a Venturer to participate in Venturing activities. In the Bushwalking section there is a requirement for planning menus for light weight cooking;
b) Bushwalking
3. The planning of a menu, including quantities, for the expedition. Using lightweight hike cooking methods, cook a sustaining well balanced meal. Knowledge of minimal impact techniques including the correct method of rubbish disposal and camp hygiene
But what does this mean? The Fieldbook for Australian Scouting (p.105-107) – Catering for lightweight activities [1] gives a rough introduction to menu planning, but it is very sparse when it comes to defining the sustaining and well balanced requirements. A more specific hiking resource is way the go to for this type of information. My go to is NOLS Cookery, 5th Edn [2].
It becomes evident pretty quickly that sustaining becomes a calculation of calories burned vs calories replaced, along with hydaration. The well balanced component is making sure that your menu provides nutrition along with the calories, and this ties in with standard menu practices such as food pyramids. In a more advanced menu the well balanced menu will also focus on energy provision as short term and long term energy availability, usually using the glycaemic index (GI), and can be as simple as eg. swapping fast burning sweets with nuts & fruit.
Having determined that we are calorie counting, how many calories are we using? A quick look at this chart based on Harvard Health, Calories burned in 30 minutes for people of three different weights [4] shows that calorie use is tied to both weight and activity undertaken.
| |
Calories burned in 30-minute activities
|
| Activities |
57kg person |
70kg person |
84kg person |
| Hiking: cross-country |
180 |
223 |
266 |
| Skiing: cross-country |
240 |
298 |
355 |
| Snow Shoeing |
240 |
298 |
355 |
| Running: 10 mph (6 min/mile) |
495 |
614 |
733 |
NOLS Cookery, 5th Edn [2] uses ‘pounds (of food) per person per day (ppppd)’ to determine available calories and gives us the following information to plan menus. ( There are other resources for these calculations, pick one that you can use.)
- Hot Day, Warm Night, Base Camp = 1.5 ppppd
(2500 – 3000 calories per person per day)
- Warm or cool Day and Night, Full Packs = 1.75 to 2 ppppd
(3000 – 3500 calories per person per day)
- Cool Day, Cold Night, hiking or skiing, Full Packs = 2 to 2.5 ppppd
(3500 – 4000 calories per person per day)
- Cold Day, Extreme Cold Night, Full Packs = 2.5 ppppd
(4000 – 5000 calories per person per day)
You then spread these calories across the day.
Breakfast: About 20-25% of calories
Lunch + Snacks: About 50-55% of calories
Dinner: 25-30% of calories
This means in order to demonstrate a menu with sustaining and well balanced meals, we need to include more than a rough plan. We need to determine the quantities and calories that the menu is providing via the meals. To go further, we could also calculate product weight to calories to help us choose which items to use in the menu.
For example; the following is a rough food plan and is not a menu.
Saturday Breakfast
– Porridge
– Muesli bars
Saturday Lunch
– Wraps, varied
– Muesli bars
Saturday Dinner
– Dehydrated meals
To convert this to a hiking menu you need to show quantities, the calories for those quantities, and estimate the calories for that meal. This allows you to see if your menu will sustain you for your activity. The fall back meal of one packet of 2 minute noodles and an up & go starts to look pretty poor at this point of planning.
Saturday Breakfast [301 cal]
– Porridge : 30g : 117 calories
– Carmens Muesli bar : 184 calories
Saturday Lunch [359]
– Wraps, varied : 175 calories? {this one needs a lot more detail}
– Carmens Muesli bar : 184 calories
Saturday Dinner [379 cal]
– Backpacker’s Pantry Dehydrated meal : 379 calories (average)
Total Calories (Sat): 1039 Calories … from a required minimum of 2500.
Looking at the calorie spread, Lunch needs a lot more calories to be 50%.
Having seen the calorie totals, and spread across the menu, we can see that we need to review the plan and increase the calorie count. We could do this by adding a desert to the dinner, and adding some well targeted snacks (fruit, nuts & chocolate?) to the lunch meal.
RISKS: Also review your menu to see if you have any food poisoning or allergy risks. Could you eliminate or reduce these with a menu change?
eg. Dry (fermented) salami is considered shelf stable and can be kept unopened and refrigerated for up to a year, heat treated salami requires refrigeration.
Hydration
Everyone is different, and will have differing hydration requirements; as a general rule ensure all group members carry at least 3-4 litres per person per day. This is variable depending on the environment, the weather, and personal fitness.
How much water should I carry?
This question is a bit like asking ‘How long is a piece of string?’ In other words, a difficult question to answer that depends on many factors. However, it is a question you should be able to answer as you gain experience as a hiker. The factors that you need to consider include:
* How long is the hike? Is this just a short half day hike or a longer multiday hike?
* How far to the next guaranteed water source?
* How hot is it?
* Are you just drinking the water or will you also need water for cooking?
* How hard are you going to be exerting yourself?
* How exposed to the elements are you?
— Australian Hiker Water and Hiking: How much and how to carry [4]
This means that in your hike plan, and risk assessment, you need to have a plan for drinking & cooking water:
• How much water do you need carry? For drinking, cooking, and washing up/cleaning.
• What are you carrying the water in? eg. a single hydration bladder, what happens if it leaks?
• Where are your refills coming from? eg. tanks, creeks & rivers, a well
• Purification – based on the refill locations, are there local risks? What is the appropriate purification method?
• Avoid hyponatremia, do not drink too much water that you dilute your electrolyte levels. If you are hiking in hot and/or humid conditions include electrolyte mixes in your menu (use the real sports versions, don’t use the soft drinks).
EXPEDITION LEVEL
Preparation and Training. [5]
List information in the appendix about the area and where you got it.
List your practice hikes, bike rides, canoe training, selection and checking of essential equipment for this particular trip, meetings with your examiner, menu preparation, buying, packing food, practice cooking, use of stoves, gaining permission:- ‘Activity Notification’ and ‘Authority to Participate’ forms, camping, access permits with the people contacted.
At expedition level we should also be starting to look at some more tricks;
Fresh food for the first day or so to avoid issues with too much dehydrated food. This can also be looked at when re-provisioning on long expeditions, is it practical to have fresh food at the food resupply?
Weight – remove your packaging before you go. Premix into snap lock bags?
Weight – fuel use calculations
Emergency food allocation
Energy release from the food choices; balanced and not promoting ‘sugar crash’
Leave no trace principles.
Menu and Ration List. [5]
List your meals and the quantities
As with the Venturing Skills, but you may consider combining meals for your expedition team and bulk catering. Add another column alongside the calories for weight. Could you optimise the menu by different food choices?
FOOD LIST i.e. cooked evening meal – 3 courses (soup – main – sweets)
• should in general NOT include canned or bottled foods
• encourage experimentation with foods & menus other than dehydrated foods.
• water points – known & proposed.
• food points if for an extended hike of more than 5 days.
(BRANCH VENTURER SCOUT COUNCIL POLICY MANUAL, PM D7 via [5])
If you are still including canned or bottled foods at this point, you would want them to be luxuries! As you get more confident, try new methods – have you tried to dehydrate your own food? How about pre-building meals that you just add water to, experimenting with new recipies?
Water Purification
Understand the filter and chemical purification options available to you [6,7,8]. Determine which one, or combination, is best suited to your expedition. Work with your examiner on this as they will probably have kit that you can borrow.
REFERENCES:
[1] Catering for your outdoor activity, pages 101-114 in Scout Association of Australia (2008) Fieldbook for Australian Scouting, (4th Edn. reprinted 2012)
[2] Claudia Pearson (2004) NOLS Cookery, 5th Edn.
[3] Calories burned in 30 minutes for people of three different weights (Published: July, 2004, Updated: August 13, 2018) [Harvard Health]
[4] Water and Hiking: How much and how to carry [Australian Hiker]
[5] THE EXPEDITION ACTIVITY REPORT (A Guide for Venturers, Leaders and Examiners)
Scouts Australia – Victorian Branch Yarra Batman Zone Venturer Scout Council {Note: Document currently being reviewed}
[6] Water and Hiking: Filtration [Australian Hiker]
[7] Water Purification [Trail Hiking Australia]
[8] How to treat drinking water [Lotsafreshair]
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