Packing List: Food Stash For 5 Day Helicopter Camping Trip

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We took a week long wilderness camping trip with the helicopter and created a 5 episode docu-series called Heading: NORTH! This was our first completely remote camping trip and our first time packing this much food! Below is a list of everything we brought for two people for 5 days, plus an extra day or two incase we got stranded. I’ve also shared our thoughts on these items, what worked and what didn’t, and what we might change for next time.

I don’t want to spoil the series, but we had more than enough food (you will find out why later in the release); however, we took a few too many snacks and not enough good breakfast options. Turns out we both HATE instant oatmeal LOL so we’re going to have to find a few new options for next time. I also think that our needs for the types of food we pack for our next trip will change based on the weather. We found our appetites a bit strange on this trip since it was very hot outside; we just wanted to drink water and gatorade instead of eat.

Overall though, the freeze dried meals were the correct choice! We will definitely be using them for our next one and look forward to trying out a few different brands. We also found one pouch with two servings a little small at times to share, so bringing things to supplement dinners (like nuts, granola bars, etc.) was helpful in filling our bellies after dinner.

Watch Heading: NORTH

Food List

Even though we were only planning on camping for 4 nights/5 days, we planned to have enough food for seven days JUST incase! We’ve been around the block enough times in the helicopter to know that weather is unpredictable and we could be stranded for longer than planned. This was supposed to be a fun trip and we didn’t want to starve if we needed to stay in the woods for an extra night or two.

Breakfast

Mountain House Breakfast Skillet

Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy

Mountain House Fried Rice

4 x Instant Original Oatmeal

2 x Instand Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

4 x Nature Vally Crunch Bars

1 Squeeze Peanut Butter

1 Small Nutella put into squeeze bottle

12 Street size flour tortillas

Lunch

2 x Good to Go Single Serving Chicken Pho

Mountain House Chicken Casserole

Tortillas and PB

Nuts, beef jerky, and dried fruit

Any extra freeze dried meal

Beverages

10 x tea bags

Instant coffee (both caf and decaf)

8 variety hot chocolate

Sugar

Powdered creamer

Powdered Gatorade

Tail Wind drink mix

Supper

Mountain House Mac and Cheese

Mountain House Beef Stroganoff

Mountain House Chicken and Dumplings

Good To Go New England Corn Chowdah

Mountain House Pad Thai

Good To Go Mushroom Risotto

Snacks

Salted almonds

Chocolate trail mix

Seeds and nuts trail mix

Peanut M&M’s

Dried Mangos

Beef Jerky

Dried tropical fruit mix

Peanut butter filled pretzels

Nerds big chewy

8 x fruit snacks

Mini Snickers

Mini Twix

Snack Bag

Since all of our food would be in bear canisters either away from our camp site, or tucked away in the helicopter while we travel, I wanted to have a snack bag system to keep us fed through the day and prevent the dreaded H-ANGER.

I took a freezer baggie and filled it with 2 bags of fruit snacks, 2 treats like a Twix or PB pretzels, a bag of trail mix or nuts, and a bag of dried fruit or beef jerky. The idea here was to have this bag on us through the day, and then refill it that evening for the following day. We brought enough variety between the different treats and trail mix that it didn’t get too boring.

Bear Canisters

Because we were up in Canadian wilderness, we needed to be black bear aware. We packed all of our food into two XL Bear Vault bear canisters. Along with our food we also kept anything that went in/on our body, so anything with a smell like sun screen and fly spray, lip balm, medication, etc. Those items were placed in their own Osprey 3L compression bags to keep things together and organized. We also included a few extra ziplock bags, some dog poop bags for our garbage, and an Opsak smell proof bag that we would put our garbage in. We’re in the wilderness here; there are no trash cans! It’s important to follow “leave no trace” guidelines and pack out what you bring in. The odor proof bag helped seal in any gross trash smells since it would be stored with our food. These can also be washed and reused.

We had a bit of a system here as well, one bear canister held lunch and supper, snacks, and hot chocolate, while the other held everything we would need at breakfast (breakfast foods, tea, and coffee) plus our toiletries and sunscreen. This system worked pretty well but I did get confused a few times and ended up just opening them both. Next time i’d like to pare down with enough supplies for one bear can OR mark the exterior so I know what’s in each one.

The Good, The Bad, and the DISGUSTING

What we liked, what we didn’t like, what we would have done differently.

Let’s start with the good. There were a few absolute winners when it came to our snack and dinner selections on this trip, and definitely a few things I’d change for next time, but we will talk about that after. First, bringing powdered Gatorade was SUCH a welcome addition to our food stash. The daytimes on our trip were very hot, almost too hot! If we hadn’t chosen those islands on the lake we probably would have had a very challenging time keeping cool. We mixed up a cup of Gatorade every-night with dinner to try and rehydrate after sweating all day and it was exactly what we needed. We also found having sugary treats, specifically Nerds Big Chew jelly beans, very handy if we became weak mid day with low blood sugar. It was a quick way to get some sugar in while we made our lunch.

Speaking of lunch, peanut butter on tortillas was our go-to lunch for most days. They were so quick, filling, and not very messy. It’s basically a PB sandwich that can’t be squished. Tortillas last a lot longer than bread plus they flat and take up less space; they will be coming with us again.

Other things that worked and we will bring next time:

Peanut M&M’s
Salted almonds
Peanut butter pretzels
Nature Valley Crunch bars (these are good with peanut butter).

We didn’t get to try all of our freeze dried meals, but here are some of the highlights:
Good To Go Mushroom Risotto
Mountain House Mac and Cheese
Mountain House Breakfast Skillet
Mountain House Chicken Casserole.

Now for the bad! Some of the meals didn’t quite rehydrate as well as some of the others. One night we had the Mountain House Chicken and Dumplings, which we cooked according to instructions and actually let it sit a little longer but the dumplings were still super hard and crunchy. It tasted good, but the texture wasn’t great. We also tried the Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy which I had high hopes for after someone said it was better than a restaurant, but we also found the texture of this one a bit off. The biscuits didn’t rehydrate and the rest felt a little like glue. It did TASTE amazing though!

Instant oatmeal seems to be a favourite among the outdoors crowd but OMG it’s disgusting, its like eating glue (clearly I have an issue with glue). Next time I’d swap out oatmeal for granola and powdered milk, or just bring real oatmeal and make it from scratch.

What i’d change

After looking at our experience on the islands and all the food we brought, there’s a few things I’d change for next time. We definitely brought too much, but we knew this because we prepared for seven days incase of weather.

First, we need to find a better solution for breakfast, whether that’s freeze dried eggs, from scratch oatmeal, or finding a cereal solution. Relying on oatmeal didn’t work for us and we actually dreaded having to eat it.

We had too much nuts and trail mix in the kit and we found ourselves sick of eating both. We did like having the almonds, the peanut M&M’s, the peanut butter pretzels, and dried mangos. The chocolate we brought was really good when we were craving it but most of it melted (except the peanut M&M’s) and it was a bit of a mess.

So that’s what we brought for food on our trip, what worked, what didn’t, and now we have a much better idea what we should and shouldn’t pack next time we do a trip like this!

No idea what this post is all about? Watch the entire helicopter travel series here:

Watch Heading: NORTH

Here’s how we pack and plan for a massive trip like this one: