Move Over, Snickers: These Bougie Trail Snacks Are Our New Faves

Snacking is the secret pleasure of backpacking, but it can also feel like the biggest chore. During a day of long miles and steep climbs, calories are as important as the right shoes, the fuel that makes it all possible. But how many Clif Bars, Snickers, Haribos, and peanuts can one human stand? After 10,000 miles, I’ve lost the ability to stomach those hiker standards very often. I forever crave something novel.

So in trail town grocery stores, or when thinking about resupply boxes before a long hike, I’m always on the hunt for a new snack, a new texture or taste that entertains me as I literally move through my day. These additions are mutable, of course, though some have stuck with me, little treats I tell fellow travelers about around the night’s cookpot or when we’re in the aisles together, trying to decide what food we’re putting in our packs for the next several hundred miles.

Below are the five best hiking snacks that I’ve discovered recently, listed chronologically for how I consume them during the day. These are all small businesses to one degree or another, so don’t expect them in a trailside convenience store. You may need to order them online in advance of your hike, or, if you’re lucky enough to have someone mail you supplies from home, have them add it to your tab. Food is a joy of long-distance treks and day hikes alike; here’s what’s providing so much of it for me lately.

no normal’s Coffee Paste

Gummies, powders, gels, bars, and, of course, coffee: If there is a way to transport caffeine on trail, I’ve tried it. Or at least so I thought until a friend sent me a link to no normal coffee, a Zurich startup squeezing ultra-concentrated coffee paste and a touch of beet sugar into a big black metal tube. The strategy, founders Philippe Greinacher and Alexander Häberlin told Daily Coffee News in June, stems from Switzerland’s postwar prepper strategy, where innovations with shelf-stable foods were safeguards for potential invasion.

On trail in the Swiss Alps and on the beach in Africa, the pair longed for coffee that tasted better than flakes of the acrid instant stuff and didn’t need much water. They got it right. Though the paste works well dissolved in hot or cold water, I find myself taking tiny sips straight from the tube before an arduous climb or a long haul, the stinging bitterness soon dissolving into a subtle sweetness. It works as a spread, too. At $18 a tube, it’s pricier than Folgers Instant but cheaper than the new wave of niche instant brands. And the satisfaction of swilling coffee from a tube in front of strangers? Priceless.

Best Buckin’ Jerky

During my first thru-hike, I had been a vegetarian for a decade. But nearly every account of on-trail nutrition I read referenced the supremacy of jerky as a lightweight vehicle for protein and flavor. So my wife, Tina, and I bought boxes and boxes of vegan jerky, devouring it along the length of the Appalachian Trail with near-religious devotion. It tasted, I must admit now, like salty cardboard, but twice as tough. There have since been remarkable advances in meatless jerky, from Pan’s incredible mushrooms to Louisville Vegan Jerky Company’s textured soy protein. But I have recently been on a meat jerky tear, trying to find a brand that has the strongest flavors without filling me with preservatives or the dregs of the butcher-shop’s wastebin.

I finally found it in Best Buckin’ Jerky, the rightfully named company of San Antonio meat-curing fiend Joli Phillips. A former spa manager in Santa Fe and catering company owner in Austin, Phillips is on a few parallel missions. First, she wants to buck the notion that jerky is a manly domain. Though her husband, Adam, is a professional chef, he is only her taste-tester.

“This gal doesn’t sit side-saddle,” as her website proclaims. (She partners with Girlstart, too, an organization linking girls with STEM educations.) Second, using specifically chosen and especially lean cuts of beef, she aims to create thin and tender strips of jerky with piquant flavors. Inspired by Ruth’s Chris steakhouse, her Cowgirl flavor melts in your mouth like carpaccio. And loaded with bird’s eye chilis, Phillips’ Khaw Keirl version kicks harder than any jerky I’ve yet to find in a grocery store. I’ll be ordering a box before my thru-hikes this fall, and it will certainly taste better than the cardboard in which it arrives.

shār’s “Original” Trail Mix

Spend long enough on trail, and the G in GORP—that is, good ol’ raisins and peanuts—sublimates into “gross.” As the name implies, that two-ingredient blend is a standby and the basis for endless attempts to augment trail mix with most anything you can imagine, from M&Ms and almonds to peanut butter cups and Beer Nuts. Browsing the grocery store’s trail mix zone, I sometimes get the sense that manufacturers suss out their surpluses and simply dump whatever’s there into bags. I do not get this sense from Peter Rushford, a former pro skier turned gear guru who has spent the past decade trying to find his perfect trail mix, one that balanced salt and sweetness, crunch and chew, nutrition and taste. The quest led to shār, his Austin-based company that, simply put, makes the best trail mix I’ve ever eaten. And there are no peanuts or raisins.

Instead, his “original” nine-ingredient blend pairs four whole nuts with coconut slivers and three fruits dried just to the point of chewiness—blueberries, cranberries, and incredible Montmorency cherries. Oh, and there’s chocolate from a 160-year-old San Francisco chocolatier. Rushford was so careful in his quest to create the perfect trail mix that each ingredient sports a brief biography, and all the packaging forgoes plastic. As a small company with big ambitions, shār isn’t cheap, but the stuff is potent; I downed a small bag midway during a recent six-summit day, and I had energy to finish the hike without more food.

Honey Mama’s Cocoa Truffle Bars

I have a possibly unhealthy ritual on long trails: Every night, whether tucked into a tent or spread out under the stars, I take a few puffs from a joint, massage my tired legs as deeply as possible, and eat an entire candy bar. The problem, of course, isn’t the puffs; it’s the fact that Snickers and Skors are rafts of corn syrup, sugar, and palm or sunflower oil. Maybe that’s not the best for a body that’s walked 30 miles—with plans to repeat it in the morning. I was relieved, then, to stumble upon Honey Mama’s Cocoa Truffle Bars three years ago on the Pacific Crest Trail. I began lining my food bag with enough of the paper-wrapped wonders to make it to the next town. My ritual feels a bit more reasonable now.

In a previous life, Portland, Oregon, native Christy Goldsby ran a traditional bakery with her family. While helping a friend negotiate a health struggle, though, she began searching for a dessert that didn’t skimp on the indulgence of a cake or brownie but offered up better nutrition. Her truffle bars became a Pacific Northwest hit that have since hit refrigerated shelves nationwide. Always starting with honey and coconut oil, Goldsby makes rich treats with surprising or comforting flavor profiles—tahini and tangerine, for instance, or coconut, pecan, and cocoa. My favorites? Lemon Blueberry and Peanut Butter Cup. Though cooled in the store, they stay soft and safe for several days on trail, giving you the uncanny sense that you’re somehow downing brownie batter in the tent. That’s not just the indica talking, bro.

LMNT’s Chocolate Caramel Hydration Mix, Served Hot

If I stay somewhere swanky on trail, I tend to leave with a half-dozen tea bags, pilfered from the hotel lobby or the breakfast spread. When the weather turns toward winter, I turn into the tent-bound version of the Sleepytime Tea bear, its living room and red stocking cap swapped for my Dyneema confines and a blaze-orange beanie. You can guess the tea’s upshot: I inevitably crawl out of my cozy lair at least once per night, losing whatever warmth I’d gained. The new play, though, is a packet of LMNT’s Chocolate Caramel powder, especially formulated to be enjoyed hot. Simply drop it in eight ounces of warm water and swirl. That’s not enough water to send me outside past hiker midnight, and it serves a crucial purpose: replacing some of the day’s electrolytes without giving me a late-night sugar buzz.

LMNT is passionate, above all, about salt. “Stay Salty,” reads one company slogan. Another? “Salty AF.” Cofounder Robb Wolf has even inveighed against the FDA’s dietary advice regarding sodium, writing that the link between sodium and blood pressure rests on “conjecture.” LMNT uses three ingredients—salt, potassium citrate from Aspergillus niger, and magnesium malate—to deliver electrolytes in several flavors with less than 10 calories. (If you favor their science but not LMNT’s cost, they offer their recipes online for free, too.) The ones meant to be taken hot work as my new nightcap. Drinking salty water with a touch of cocoa powder from a titanium pot? Surprisingly delicious.