Trail SaltSmoke & Chilli · Umami
Trail food is under-seasoned and everyone knows it, which is why half the people out there carry a bag of improvised spice. This is that bag, done properly, at a weight worth carrying.
Winter 2026UK first
Fuel for moving, not for camp.
A no-cook day of food for people who cover ground fast. One cold-soak main, two portions you can eat on the move. Sold by the day, not the pouch.
Evening
Cold-soak mainReady in 30 minutes in cold water
690kcal
4.5kcal/g
190ml water
On the move
Savoury portionFor the hours when you can't face anything sweet
380kcal
4.75kcal/g
0ml water
On the move
Sweet portionSlower carbohydrate than a gel, and it isn't frosting
380kcal
4.7kcal/g
0ml water
One day
Three components, about 300 g dry
1450kcal
4.6kcal/g
190ml water
These are the targets recipes have to hit before they make it into a pack. Figures on the finished product will be lab-tested, not calculated from ingredient labels, and printed on the front.
Why a day instead of a pouch
Nobody plans a fastpack by the pouch. You plan by the day — calories per day, grams per day, how much water you'll have to carry to make dinner work.
But every meal on the shelf is a hot dinner sold on its own, so the rest of the day is yours to work out from a spreadsheet and a supermarket. I got tired of doing that. This is the whole day — dinner, plus the two things you eat while you're actually moving.
Designed around cold water
Most pouches are hot meals that tolerate a cold soak. I started from the assumption that there's never any hot water.
That means bases that actually soften below 10 °C, fat added dry so the calories hold up, and enough salt to register after ten hours of sweating. It works in a Talenti tub or a freezer bag, because that's what people already carry.
- ≥ 4.3 kcal/gMy density floor. Anything under it and you're better off making your own.
- ≤ 30 minSoak time to edible in cold water. I test at 5 °C too, because streams are colder than kitchens.
- 1.5–2 gSodium across the day. Enough to trigger Canada's front-of-pack warning, which I'm fine with.
- ≤ 10 gPackaging per day. Paper outer, thin inner bags, no foil pouches to carry back out.
Four small things first
The day packs are a year of recipe work. Salt and the drink mix this winter, coffee and fat in early 2027. Each one fixes something worth fixing on its own, and making them is how I learn to do the rest properly.
Trail DrinkCarbs and salt, not just salt
Nearly every electrolyte brand went zero-sugar, which is fine for a desk and useless at hour six. This has 30 g of carbohydrate and 400 mg of sodium in a 500 ml bottle, because past a certain distance water isn't the thing you're short of.
Winter 2026UK first
Trail CoffeeWorks in cold water
Going stoveless costs you coffee, and that's the bit nobody wants to give up. Specialty instant that dissolves cold as well as hot. I don't roast or freeze-dry it — someone who does it properly makes it, and I'll tell you who.
Early 2027UK first
Trail FatFat and flavour, one sachet
Cold food runs short on calories and gets dull by about day five. A sachet of powdered fat and seasoning stirred into dinner deals with both. It has to disperse in cold water, which rules out anything you'd want to call a butter.
Early 2027UK first
Then the day packs
The full system — cold-soak main plus both on-the-move portions, in 3-day and 5-day packs — goes into production in British Columbia in spring 2027. The numbers at the top of this page are what the recipes have to hit before that happens.
Field notes
I test everything before I sell it and the results go here either way. Soak times, batches that didn't work, ideas that seemed clever in a kitchen and weren't on a hill.
-
Three bases in, two out. Couscous, refried beans and instant potato all soften in cold water inside half an hour. Rice and pasta don't, at any soak time I'd be willing to wait, so they're off the list for good.
-
Why Trail Fat isn't a butter. I wanted to make a pressed block. Then I remembered coconut oil sets around 24 °C and ghee at 35 °C, so a block dropped into a cold soak just sits there looking at you. It has to arrive already powdered, or already a paste.
-
Cold dispersion trials at 5 °C, six weeks of humidity testing on the seasoning blends, and a first honest verdict on whether any of it is still edible at hour twenty.
What this isn't, yet
Nothing on this page is on sale today. Salt and the drink mix go on sale in the UK this winter. Coffee and fat follow in early 2027. The day packs come after that, in Canada, in spring 2027.
I'm one person, not a company. I run ultras and do multi-day trips in the Coast Mountains, and I started this because I was sick of building every day of food from a spreadsheet and eating sweet things for ten hours straight. I test all of it on actual trips before anyone else gets it.
- Cold food below 5 °C is grim. Start the soak on the last descent rather than at camp.
- Cold-soaked rice and pasta don't work. They're not on the list and never will be.
- Trail Fat won't dissolve completely. Stir it hard and live with some texture.
- All of it costs more than making your own. Plenty of people should just make their own.
Hear when it's ready
One email when salt and the drink mix go on sale this winter, one when the rest does. I won't send anything else.
Heading somewhere cold and multi-day this winter? I'm sending samples out before any of it goes on sale. Free, no strings. All I want back is an honest account of what didn't work. hello@coastrangerations.com