The Ultimate Guide to Healthy Hiking Snacks

What’s the secret to monster energy on every hike or climb? In a word, nutrition! Eating the right food before, during, and after your hike will make a huge difference in your comfort and endurance, so it’s important to pack plenty of healthy hiking snacks.

If you feel flat and tired on hikes or run out of steam, you’re not alone. Some common issues/questions that come up in my Facebook group:

• "Oh my gosh. I'm so hungry. I almost can't eat enough to keep myself going."

• "What is some food that is light, that is easy to carry, and that's also packed with energy?”

These are excellent questions. But before we dive in …

First, a quick disclaimer

It's really hard for me to give you specific recommendations on healthy hiking snacks (though I will share a few examples that seem to work for most people). And that's because everybody's body responds differently to food and exercise!

It's funny. I can drink undiluted sports drink and go for a hike and be just fine. And I have a friend who has all kinds of stomach trouble if she consumes anything sugary during her hikes.

So even more than specific food suggestions, I want to show you what kinds of things to eat and when. The tips below will help you to make good use of the fuel that's in your food — and also the fuel that's already stored in your body.

Once you know the basic guidelines, you can apply them to all kinds of situations.

Need more info on day-to-day diet for endurance athletes? Check out my Sports Nutrition Guide.

Don’t get hung up on Sports nutrition “rules”

When it comes to diet, endurance athletes are constantly bombarded by so-called rules. Some common ones …

• Don’t spike your blood sugar

• Avoid carbs, because they make you fat

• Everyone is actually dairy intolerant, even if you don’t know it

• It’s extremely important to become fat adapted

• “Unclean” food is poison

• If you’re not intermittent fasting for 18 hours a day, you will die sooner (probably of cancer)

• Modern humans are only evolved to eat food we kill or forage

And so on.

I have seen so much suffering happen when hikers and mountaineers decide they are going to stick to these rules instead of listening to their bodies. They will be bonking and lying on the ground — and still refuse an “unclean” piece of candy that might perk them up.

Here’s the thing. Each of these “rules” probably has some benefits for some people at some times. But none of them is a universal truth ordained by the great god(dess) in the sky.

For example, some people do really well on intermittent fasting and find it helps them to hike longer while eating less food (presumably through fat adaptation).

But by the same token, not everyone gets the same benefits on intermittent fasting. And some people are so miserable intermittent fasting that the benefits probably aren’t worth it.

Also, some people probably shouldn’t do intermittent fasting at all (for example, if you have a history of restrictive, disordered eating and are working on being more intuitive with your eating habits).

Look at sports nutrition as an experiment

Instead of adhering to fad diets and rigid rules, I encourage you to approach sports nutrition like a scientist. Make one change at a time and notice how you feel during your hikes and climbs.

Note that it may take you a few hikes to really feel into the results! So resist the temptation to change too many things too fast.

Also be open to the idea that works for you may break “the rules.”

A couple years ago, when Gale and I climbed Mount Olympus, our guide had also guided Mount Everest. Needless to say, we were insanely curious about what he would eat.

We kind of expected him to be eating raw superfoods the whole time. So imagine our shock when he pulled out a bag of Starburst and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! (He also ate those much-demonized instant backpacking meals.)

His take: “I’m a super healthy eater at home. But on trail, this is the stuff that works for me.”

Now, I’m not saying you should climb a mountain fueled entirely by peanut butter cups. Just that you should keep an open mind when it comes to sports nutrition.

What to Eat Before a Long Hike

Most people are most concerned with packing healthy hiking snacks for the climb itself. But what you eat before the hike can also boost your performance.

Right Before Your Hike: Hydration and a High-Carb Snack

About two hours before you start hiking or climbing:

• Drink 17-20 oz. of water or sports drink. Sip it over 30 minutes or so rather than chugging it down to give your body some time to absorb it!

Right before you take off:

• Drink another 10-12 ounces of fluid.

• Have high-carbohydrate snack like a banana, energy bar, or a piece of candy.

Keep reading for suggestions on my favorite high-carb snacks and sports drinks.

Avoid high-fat and high-fiber snacks a few hours before the hike unless you know that you tolerate them well during exercise.

Optional: Carbo Loading for long hikes

If your hike or climb is going to be a long, hard one (say, more than 3 hours), you can do what's called carbo-loading. Yes, it's exactly like what you learned about in high school track.

During endurance events, your body relies on a form of carbohydrate called glycogen for fuel. Glycogen is stored in the muscles. Small amounts are also held in the liver.

Normally during exercise, you deplete your glycogen stores in about 90 minutes. When this happens you “bonk” and feel suddenly sore and tired. The good news: for longer hikes, it’s possible to boost your glycogen storage (and delay bonking) through a process called carbo loading.

To carbo load, simply eat more carbohydrates in the days leading up to your hike or climb. At the same time, practice tapering by decreasing your physical activity. This combination of more carbs and less exercise stimulates glycogen storage. Men can actually double their normal glycogen stores through carbo loading, while women see smaller but still significant benefits.

How much carbohydrates should you consume during carbo loading? A good benchmark to shoot for is 4.5 grams per pound of body weight per day. Not everyone can tolerate this amount of carbs, so adjust downward if you notice indigestion or other issues.

Note that carbo loading will raise your daily calorie intake for a few days. This is OK; you will probably burn off the extra energy on your hike. It’s also normal to experience some weight gain during carbo loading, because glycogen storage requires water. Again, this should dissipate after your big day.

Important: Consult your doctor before carbo loading if you have diabetes or any other condition that is impacted by diet.

What to Eat During a Long Hike

Everybody’s body behaves a little differently on trail. You will probably even notice differences from hike to hike!

To find the best hiking snacks for you, remember to act like a scientist and make small adjustments over time.

Here are a few guidelines to use as a starting point.

Eat carbs for sustained energy

Carbohydrates have a bad rap among the healthy eating crowd. However, it’s important to realize that they’re the easiest thing for your muscles to convert to energy.

It’s also important to realize that not all carbohydrates digest at the same rate. Some digest quickly and give you a short-but-fast energy hit. Others are more “sustained release.”

The speed at which carbs digest and enter your blood stream is called the glycemic index, or GI. To learn more about this subject, I suggest the following articles from Harvard Medical School:

• A Guide to Good Carbs: The Glycemic Index

• Glycemic Index for 100 Foods

To evaluate GI, you can use the following framework:

• <70 = high glycemic index

• 56–69 = moderate glycemic index

• <55 = low glycemic index

Note that adding fat or protein to a carb will usually lower its glycemic index. (For example, adding cheese to a pizza crust, sunflower seeds to dried fruit, or olive oil to sweet potato chips will slow down digestion.)

Generally, eating moderate-to-low glycemic index foods will keep your energy level steady and sustained. However, I also like to have a few high-glycemic index foods on hand for quick energy in a pinch.

My favorite healthy hiking snacks

During your hike, keep plenty of high-carbohydrate hiking snacks handy. (This is a good reason to wear pants with pockets or a backpack with pockets on the hip belt.)

Some of my favorite energy-rich hiking snacks:

• Pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter
• Dried fruit (add nuts, seeds, or dark chocolate for sustained energy)
• Sweet potato, banana, or plantain chips (avoid palm oil if you have environmental concerns)
• Dark chocolate
• Honey Stinger energy chews, energy gels, and waffles (for fast energy during intense exercise)
• Peppermint Patties (my guilty pleasure)
• Fritos (very clean, just three ingredients!)
• Larabars (very clean, don't melt or freeze)
• Bobo's Oat Bars (hearty and satisfying, gluten-free)
• Cold pizza slices

Note that not all of these “healthy hiking snacks” would be healthy in the context of a normal work day. For example, I probably wouldn’t gorge on peanut butter pretzel nuggets in my cubicle.

However, these all work well on trail because they’re rich in carbohydrates that your body can easily break down into glucose.

When planning your snacks, budget about 30-60 grams of carbohydrate per hour. While hiking, I usually stop every 60 minutes and eat. By contrast, some people do just fine eating only when they feel hungry. Again, experiment and see what works for you.

hydrate regularly

Staying well hydrated is essential to good hiking performance! Your ideal fluid intake during hiking will depend on:

• Your size (bigger people need to replace more fluid)

• How much you’re sweating (determined by the outside temperature)

• How hard you’re working

• Your altitude (the dry, cold air at high altitude causes more evaporation from your lungs with each breath)

The National Athletic Trainer’s Association recommends taking in 7–10 ounces of fluid every 10 to 20 minutes during exercise. When you do the math, this is a huge range in fluid intake! That’s because it’s meant to cover a wide range of scenarios.

As a hiker, I find that I usually do well on about 16 ounces (half a Nalgene bottle) per hour. I like to stop 1–2 times an hour for a drink break. Of course, every human is different, and every hike is different. So listen your body and drink more often if you need to.

Hydration bladders allow you to drink more often. The downside is that it’s hard to keep track of how much you’re drinking. It’s also easier to run out of water. If you carry a bladder, stop and check the level once in a while to make sure you’re keeping up with your hydration.

Add sports drink to your water

This is especially important on longer hikes — and any time you are sweating a lot!

Sweating depletes chemicals called electrolytes in your blood, which include sodium (most important) but also potassium and magnesium.

Electrolytes help to regulate the movement of water in and out of your cells. Depleting your electrolyte levels can lead to a potentially life-threatening condition called exercise-induced hyponatremia.

(I have had hyponatremia, and believe me, it is no fun. It ended with a trip to the emergency room after throwing up on my mom.)

Drinking straight water won’t replace electrolytes. In fact, it can actually dilute electrolyte levels in your blood, making things worse. You need to replace electrolytes through food or sports drinks.

If you go the sport drink route, here are some of my favorites:

• My favorite sports drink for a very demanding hike is powdered Gatorade Thirst Quencher drink mix. It has glucose and electrolytes added, which can give you a little energy boost! (Drinking your calories is the fastest way to get energy to your muscles.) You can buy Gatorade mix in bulk or in single-serving packets, which are great for backpacking.
• Willing to pay a little extra for a super clean endurance drink? Check out Nuun Endurance powdered drink mix. In addition to be organic and non-GMO, it has more electrolytes than Gatorade. Available in bulk or single serve packets.
• If you prefer a drink with no added sugar, check out Nuun Sport electrolyte tablets, which supply electrolytes with minimal added sugar.

When mixing your sports drinks, aim for a concentration of about 6–8% for maximum absorption speed. For reference, 1 mL of water weighs about one gram. So aim for 60 to 80 grams of carbohydrates per lite of water for the ideal concentration.

Sports drinks can make a mess in your hydration bladder, so clean it carefully after each use.

Avoiding Digestive Distress (aka Pooping Your Pants)

If you've ever had stomach distress during your aerobic workouts — things like cramps, diarrhea, or nausea — you’re not alone!

Whenever you're exercising moderately, your digestion pretty much works like normal. Hiking is an endurance sport, so you should mostly be going at a conversational pace!

But when you push harder (effort level 7 on a 1-10 scale), your digestion slows way down. That's because your body diverts blood away from your internal organs and toward your working muscles. It also pulls more blood to the surface of your skin to help release heat and regulate your temperature.

When you're exercising at this level, your stomach stops releasing partially digested food into your intestines (gastric emptying). So anything you eat just sits in your stomach and sloshes around. (Blech.)

Your intestines (notably your colon) also lose tone, which is what sometimes causes that poopy-pants feeling or actual diarrhea.

If this sounds familiar, know that digestive distress does tend to improve with training. While you're working on it, try eating smaller meals more frequently as you hike.

You can also try different foods. Some people do a little better with the really simple sugars, goos, and candies that are easy to digest. You can also try adding lightly sugared drink mix in your water. (Sugar dissolved in fluids reaches your blood stream much faster than food.) Keep your drinks really diluted at first, then gradually make it stronger if things go well.

If you're going to hike at high altitude, eat less fat for the first few days.

Your digestion doesn't work as efficiently whenever you're up high (above 10,000 ft. or so).

That's because you need a lot of oxygen to digest food and convert it into energy. And at altitude, you have less oxygen circulating in your blood than you do at sea level.

Burning fat requires more oxygen than burning sugar. So at first, it's a good idea to keep your hiking snacks low-fat.

If your digestion is doing all right after a day or two of hiking,  gradually reintroduce fat, because it's an important fuel source.

But if your stomach goes in knots after you eat, stick to a low-fat diet until you acclimatize. (Most people who struggle with altitude sickness start feeling better around day 3.)

What to Eat After a long Hike

Do you feel tired, flat, and foggy for the rest of the day after a hike? If so, you may need to tweak your nutrition to improve recovery.

The recovery window

When you stop exercising, there’s a magic window of about 30 minutes where your body is primed to quickly absorb nutrients. Eating a high-carb, high-protein snack within 30 minutes of reaching the trailhead can kickstart your recovery and decrease your recovery time.

• Carbs starts rebuilding the glycogen stores in your muscles that you’ve just depleted.

• Protein helps to repair the damage and microtrauma to your muscle fibers. (This repair process is part of the training effect and ultimately makes you stronger.)

Eating for recovery is especially important on a multi-day backpacking trip. Because you have to be able to get up the next day and hike again, you absolutely must replenish your glycogen and start repairing your muscles once you hit camp.

What should you eat as a recovery snack? A classic among runners is chocolate milk. If you don’t have a cooler, try leaving a chocolate milk drink box in a shaded part of your car. For backpackers, check out chocolate milk powdered mix.

Other good recovery snacks include:

• Trail mix with fruit and nuts

• Energy or granola bar

• Peanut-butter pretzel nuggets

• Toast with peanut butter

• Pizza with cheese

• Cheese and crackers

For the Rest of the Day

Every two hours, have another high-carb, high-protein snack or meal. Continue this pattern for four to six hours (longer if you're feeling really starved). If that feels excessive, remember that you may be burning several thousand calories on a long hike or climb.

A Quick Word for Vegetarians

Endurance athletes need lots of protein, especially during recovery periods. This presents a challenge for vegetarians, because most plant-based proteins are incomplete, meaning they don't contain all of the amino acids needed by the body.

However, vegetarians can create a complete protein by combining legumes or nuts with grains:

• Beans and rice

• Peanut butter on a whole-wheat cracker

• Hummus and pita bread

You don’t even have to eat your legumes and grains in the same meal. Just make sure you get plenty of both throughout the day.

Egg, dairy, and soy provide complete proteins (if your vegetarian diet includes them). Quinoa isn’t a complete protein by scientific standards, but it’s very close.

Finally, Listen to Your Body

Hiking and climbing are great exercises for weight loss and overall health.

But on trail days, don't worry about calories. Just eat when you're hungry. Your body will often tell you what it's craving.

Case in point: When I ran my first marathon, I had been a vegetarian for six years. And I had never cheated. I was a really good vegetarian.

But when I got to the finish line, and my mom was standing there. And she said, "Let's go out to eat. What do you want to eat?"

And I said, "A hamburger."

The salt, the meat, the protein, the bun. My body wanted it all! And it told me so strongly that I actually did go and eat a hamburger. (And then went back to being a vegetarian for a few more years.)

So listen to your body after a big workout. It will often tell you what you it needs for recovery.

So there you have ‘em. The best healthy hiking snacks for before, during, and after your workout.

Got questions? The Facebook Group is also a great place to ask questions and share ideas, so feel free to hop in and join the conversation.

Until next time, happy hiking (and snacking).

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Originally published August 13, 2018. Updated June 4, 2020.