Gluten-free Mountaineering up Mt. Rainier

Josh and several friends are climbing Mt. Rainier this summer. Mountaineering is about training your body for the physical demands you'll put on it and for providing it with the nutrients it needs to meet those demands. Because of my nutrition background and burgeoning culinary expertise, it was an interesting challenge for me to determine how many calories he needs, but it became more interesting because we had to design a mountaineering diet that was both light weight and gluten-free.

Most of the recommendations we've found for setting up a menu for backpacking include packing foods like oatmeal, bagels, or dehydrated meals like "beef stroganoff" or "chicken alfredo." Some sites also recommended consuming sports bars, energy bites, oatmeal, or crackers. These all make sense, because they're light weight and high in calories. On the other hand, they're off the menu for those with food allergies, particularly to those with gluten allergies. So, for us, we had to start from scratch. The other challenge is that since I've been working and taking classes full time, I haven't had time to dehydrate meals like I've done before. So, we had to plan his menu around the items that could all be purchased.

The first step in determining the menu for his gluten-free backpacking trip was to determine how many calories he would need. We estimated that he would need about 3000 calories per day, and over a four-day period, he would need about 12,000 calories total. This is based on the calorie needs calculator that can be found on the USDA website, ChooseMyPlate.gov.  We input his weight, height, and activity level, and it gives an estimate of the number of calories he would use up. Once we figured that out, then we started looking at dehydrated food options that were available at REI, because Josh works there.

After determining his caloric needs, we decided on a menu plan for Josh. He doesn't like to have a full stomach when he exercises or hikes, so we determined that he would eat just two full meals per day - at breakfast and at dinner. For lunch, he would eat a high energy bar and plan on snacking through the day. Because he needs about 3000 calories, I wanted to get him to eat as close to 1000 calories per meal and then to consume about 1000 calories in snacks. To do so, he has to eat two servings per meal, or the whole package of each dehydrated meal packet.

Breakfast - 600-900 calories
Lunch - 400 -600 calories
Dinner - 600-900 calories
Snacks - 900-1000 calories

Breakfast was challenging, because Josh can't eat oatmeal. You may think, well, there's always cream of rice. That's true. There are gluten-free hot cereals, but Josh doesn't particularly care for them. So, we opted for a gluten-free granola that we purchased from Whole Foods. We were remarkably impressed by the selection of gluten-free granola cereals at Whole Foods, which included Udis, Bakery on Main, Glutenfreeda, and Enjoy Life. There were also great flavors, such as peanut butter, cranberry orange, and chocolate. Josh selected Flax4Life's Hawaiian Pineapple, Coconut, and Mango. In addition to eating granola, Josh is also going to drink hot chocolate. This is to make up for the warming effects that enjoying a bowl of oatmeal would have.

1 cup granola - 420 calories
1/2 cup milk (rehydrated powdered milk) - 40 calories
hot chocolate - 130 calories

For lunch and snacks, Josh is going to eat several servings of
trail mix (700 calories per cup)
Clif Shot Bloks (200 calories per package)
Clif Shot Roks (270 calories)
Luna protein bars (190 alories)
Accel-gel (100 calories)
ready-to-eat salmon in pouches (234 calories)

I also regularly make protein cookies for Josh (containing vanilla whey protein, approximately 100 calories each), and he is taking a few of those, too.

We had to carefully read the labels, because there are hidden sources of gluten. Since there are varying levels of sensitivity to gluten and wheat, you should carefully investigate what foods are safe. One really good source for information about celiac disease is the University of Chicago website.

Dinner was also going to be interesting, because the hikers are relying on dehydrated meals. Well, fortunately, following a gluten-free diet isn't as foreign as it used to be, and there are now more foods available on the market. We were glad to see that there are even dehydrated meals made without wheat, though most of them are not certified gluten-free, unless you order them online. At REI, there were a few meals available, most of which were Natural High brand. Backpacker's Pantry had a few items too. The particular challenge was that even if the food itself wasn't a wheat food, such as a pasta, soy sauce and vegetable protein were often included in the ingredients. As a result, we couldn't choose them. We did find a few items: Himalyan lentils and rice, honey lime chicken, BBQ chicken and rice, and Louisiana beans and rice. These items are relatively low in calories - about 600 for the entire package - but they would be enough and probably be pretty filling, given the fiber. One challenge in using packaged dehydrated meals is that the sodium content is extremely high. It was pretty difficult to compensate for that, so we did our best to choose flavors that didn't have as much sodium but were still wheat and gluten-free.

Josh and his team should be pretty well set up for meals. It will be interesting to see how they do. The food weighed just over 5 lbs, and Josh divided them into resealable bags according to how he would use them. He plans on unpacking most of the food at the base camp, in favor of simply carrying the snacks when the team attempts the summit.

Climbing Up the Rock

Joshua and I have been together for almost 8 years now, and it sounds so weird to say. I have spent more time with him than I have in post-high school education. Anyway, enough reminiscing.

One of the things we vowed to each other when we wed 5 years ago was to keep our brains and our bodies in shape for each other. That might sound really shallow, but essentially, it was a vow to keep learning and doing things that we love doing together.

As a foodie, it's easy to become enthralled in activities that draw me into different circles, leaving Josh behind. At the same time, as an outdoor enthusiast, Josh could meet friends who enjoy hiking a little more than I do. It's easy for us to say, "Okay, see you back home." We work hard not to let that happen, so I try to accompany him on as many outdoor things as he does for me at restaurants and markets. I am working off quite a deficit, you see.

Well, a few weekends ago Joshua had the opportunity to do the Marmot Rock Out hosted to woo REI employees. He kindly took me with him to 8 Mile Campground, Leavenworth, WA. I was a little bit skeptical, because I'm not a "gear junkie" who has a different sleeping bag for different weather conditions (who wants to camp in snow anyway?) or bicycles for asphalt conditions. But, I went along, because he loves being outdoors, and I love seeing him happy. Lucky for me, karma was on my side, and I had a great time.

We joined the bouldering group from the camp out and headed out to some "problems" less than a mile from our campsite. I haven't bouldered before, so I was pretty nervous. Bouldering is skillfully clambering up rocks without ropes to catch you if you fall, so you're not climbing very high. Several experienced climbers schlepped "crash pads" to cushion a climber's crash, and I eyed the puffy pads with some skepticism. What if I bounced off?

I decided to climb up a side of one of the rock problems everyone else was trying. This rock was wedged into the side of a hill, so it had a flat-ish face and a lumpy side. I crawled around on the lumpy side. Josh decided he could go up the flat face. What he hung onto, I'll never know. I stared at the face for a few minutes and then resumed my scramble up the side. After successfully climbing the extremely rocky staircase, I decided to try an actual problem.

Josh directed me to a side problem, and he helped me get my first step. I got about halfway up the problem -- it was probably 15 feet tall - I got seriously stuck. I was all spread-eagled on the wall with no idea of how to shift my weight. Then I heard it: people had stopped climbing their problems and had begun staring at me. "Move your right hand to that hold there." "Shift your left foot up here." And so forth. It's both incredibly intimidating and inspiring to finish a climb when a dozen REI staff members are staring and your -ahem - feet and legs and suggesting different ways to accomplish the climb. I tried to listen for Josh's voice, and gradually, he and a few others guided me up the rest of the rock. Several tense minutes that were each an hour long, I summitted my first bouldering rock and experienced a rush of adrenaline that I think you would feel if you won a race or accomplished something you were pretty sure you were going to fail.

Well, that accomplishment achieved something Josh had really been hoping for: I loved climbing. It was extremely challenging, and I'm going along slowly to avoid injuring my shoulder, but I really look forward to each climbing trip. Okay, we've only been on one other with Ingrid and JoJo.

The other is that I have found the climbing community to be extremely giving and close-knit. When we were at the Marmot Rock Out, a celebrity climber, Beth Rodden, joined the camp to help promote the product and unify the campers. She shared her incredible story with us, and I was struck by how the community of climbers gathered around her when she had to become re-motivated to climb. I also found her to be a humble woman who loved climbing but also enjoyed hearing from us. We had the rare opportunity to take her to Seattle after the camp trip and explore some of the dairy free and gluten free bakeries around the city, because that was an interest she and I shared. We were also blessed by the generosity of one pair of climbers/REI employees working in Santa Fe, Amanda and Derek, who gave me a gift certificate for climbing shoes. They encouraged me to continue going up and enjoying myself. What a community.

Last weekend, we went on our second climbing adventure. This time, we drove south to Tacoma and met up with Ingrid, a dear friend of Josh from high school. She and her boyfriend JoJo are climbers who have adventured all over the place. JoJo is also a climbing instructor at the local climbing gym. Ingrid is an occupational therapist whose knowledge of body mechanics makes her a talented climber. JoJo and Ingrid took the afternoon to help me learn the basics of climbing - like tying your harness and belaying - while Josh encouraged me to stretch myself in a weird craggy climb. He kindly took some candid pictures of me as well.

It's so fun to have an activity that we both enjoy fully. Although I'm not a marriage expert, I think that has been the key to our marriage so far. Keep doing things we both enjoy, and do those activities that the other loves just as much as you enjoy your hobbies. Seek out new activities that you can share. Support each others dreams. Date.

Hiking in the Northwest with Joshua

Joshua's goal for this summer was to GET OUTDOORS, and he has taken me along on some good hikes. We found a website that essentially talked about making sure you prioritize those activities that will help to refresh your soul, and for Josh, it includes being outdoors.

So, here's the summary of the hikes we've done:

Little Si

Tiger Mountain

Mt. Si

A glacier on Mt. Rainier

A few other random trails

Something that I find a little strange is that you can hear the interstate no matter how far into the trail you've hiked. Josh theorized that electric cars might cut down on the sound, but the noise of moving parts can't really be eliminated. I think that's just part of hiking near the city. The great thing is that most of the hikes were only 1 hour away. Very accessible.

I have really enjoyed the fact that Josh works for REI now, because he knows all sorts of random information about proper clothing to wear when we go hiking. Maybe next summer we'll get new shirts or something so you can tell that we went on several hikes and wore different "outfits" rather than simply looking like we did all of this in one day.

Josh has had the opportunity to go on a few more trainings for REI hosted by different clothing companies, so he comes back each day with a new "favorite" brand. I think we've settled on what we'll purchase, so we'll be debuting our clothes soon!