Tramping Food NZ — What to Eat and How to Plan Meals for a Multi-Day Tramp
Tramping Food NZ — What to Eat and How to Plan Meals for a Multi-Day Tramp
Food is the fuel that makes multi-day tramping possible — and getting your food planning wrong creates problems that are hard to fix on the track. Too little food and you run low on energy on day three. Too much and your pack weighs more than it needs to. The wrong foods and you are eating cold, bland, heavy meals in cold huts after a long day. Good food planning for tramping is not complicated, but it is worth doing before you leave the trailhead.
How Many Calories Do You Need Tramping?
A typical tramper covering 15-25km per day on mixed terrain will burn between 3,000 and 4,500 calories. The exact figure depends on your weight, fitness level, pack weight, terrain, and conditions. As a practical rule:
- Easy day (flat terrain, short distance): ~2,800-3,200 calories
- Moderate day (mixed terrain, 15-20km): ~3,200-3,800 calories
- Hard day (alpine terrain, significant elevation, 20km+): ~3,800-4,500 calories
Most trampers underestimate how much they need on hard days. Running out of energy on an alpine crossing like the Kepler ridge or the Tongariro Crossing is not just unpleasant — it is a safety issue. Build in a small calorie buffer, particularly for hard days.
The Food Weight Target
Target 500-800g of food per person per day. At 500g per day you are carrying lightweight, calorie-dense food with minimal moisture. At 800g per day you have more variety and volume. Most experienced trampers land at around 600-700g per day for a good balance of weight and satisfaction.
Multiply your daily target by your trip length to get your total food weight. A 4-day Heaphy Track at 650g per day = 2.6kg of food. A 3-day Routeburn at 650g per day = 1.95kg. This is a meaningful portion of your total pack weight — worth optimising.
Food by Meal Type
Breakfast
Breakfast needs to be quick, calorie-dense, and require minimal cooking time when you are groggy and want to get on the track. Best options: instant oats or muesli with powdered milk (just add boiling water), granola bars, nut butter on crackers, or a lightweight instant porridge sachet. Aim for 600-800 calories for breakfast on active days.
Lunch and Snacks
Most trampers eat on the move or at brief stops — which means lunch is really a series of snacks spread through the day. No-cook foods are best: crackers with hard cheese or salami, nut butter sachets, mixed nuts and dried fruit (trail mix), energy bars, and chocolate. These are also your emergency food reserves if a day runs longer than expected.
Pack your snacks in an accessible hip belt pocket or top of your pack — not buried in the main compartment. You want to eat without stopping to unpack.
Dinner
Dinner is the hot meal at the end of the day — the one you most look forward to after 20km on your feet. Freeze-dried and dehydrated meals are the gold standard for tramping dinners: lightweight (80-120g dry weight), quick to prepare (boiling water + 10 minutes), and genuinely high in calories (500-700 calories per serve). Many trampers add extra instant mashed potato, cheese, or coconut cream to boost the calorie count further.
Home-dried meals (pasta, couscous, instant noodles with dried vegetables and powdered sauce) are cheaper and work well. Take five minutes at home before the trip to portion and bag your evening meals — it makes hut cooking far simpler.
High-Calorie Foods Worth Knowing
- Nuts and nut butter: ~600 calories per 100g. Best calorie-per-gram option available.
- Salami and hard cheese: ~400-500 calories per 100g. Keeps for 3-5 days without refrigeration.
- Dark chocolate: ~540 calories per 100g. Morale food that also matters.
- Instant noodles: ~450 calories per pack. Light and easy to prepare.
- Couscous: ~380 calories per 100g. Cooks in 5 minutes with boiling water.
- Dried mango/apricots: ~270-300 calories per 100g. Good for on-track snacking.
Freeze-Dried vs Home-Prepared Meals
Freeze-dried meals are the most convenient option — ready in 10 minutes with just boiling water, minimal cleanup, and packaged to the exact calorie content. They are more expensive per meal than making your own. For occasional trampers, the convenience is usually worth it. For regular trampers doing multiple trips a year, home-preparing your own dehydrated meals (a food dehydrator is a worthwhile investment) brings the per-meal cost down considerably.
Both work well. The key requirement is hot water — which means a reliable stove.
Stove and Cookware
For Great Walk hut tramping, DOC huts provide gas cookers — you do not need your own stove. For camping, tramping outside the Great Walk network, or any backcountry route, bring your own.
The MSR PocketRocket 2 at 74g is the benchmark lightweight canister stove — fast, reliable, and compatible with any pot. The Jetboil Flash is faster still and more fuel-efficient if you mainly cook freeze-dried meals (boiling water is 80% of what you do at a hut). For alpine conditions where cold temperatures reduce canister pressure, the MSR WhisperLite liquid-fuel stove is the most reliable option.
Browse our camping stoves and cookware range, or read the full buying guide at Camping Stoves NZ — The Complete Guide.
Food Planning Tips
- Plan and weigh at home. Lay out all your food before the trip, weigh it, and adjust if it is over target.
- Remove excess packaging. Decant crackers, trail mix, and snacks into zip-lock bags. Remove cardboard boxes from meals.
- Label your meals. Mark each bag clearly (Day 2 Dinner, Day 3 Lunch etc) so you don't eat tomorrow's lunch today.
- Pack a buffer. Always carry one extra day's food as emergency rations, particularly on remote routes.
- Leave no trace. Pack out all food waste — burying or burning is not appropriate in DOC managed areas.
See our hiking packs range for the right pack to carry your supplies.
