ADVENTUREinPROGRESS

It's Memorial Day here in the United States, the traditional start of summer, at least for us northern states. In years past this was our first weekend camping of the season. This year we kicked it up a notch, took advantage of the early spring and did our first weekend of backpacking in April. 

We're gone again this weekend to backpack in the Bigelow Preserve. Damien took today off work to finish getting us all packed up. Good thing too, it was a busy week of summer in the Tougas household. But we are almost all ready to go. Packs, food, gear and it looks to be gorgeous weekend to boot. 

One thing we're packing is our favorite trail treat - chocolate chews.

About

We make these energy bars for most of our weekend hikes and bring them along for backpacking trips also. We snack on them during our breaks. The combined feel-good effect of the cocoa, the chewy texture and concentrated calories makes for a great little snack. Everyone who has eaten them - friends and family joining us on hikes, have loved them. All natural, all goodness.

These first appeared at FIMBY as truffles but for hiking we smoosh them into a plastic rectangle container and cut them into squares. Ideally we'd like a nice titanium container but for now we use what we have.

These are quite soft and do need to be stored and served from a container. If you put them into baggies they will just squish up and be less than appetizing.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dried fruit - raisins, prunes, apricots, cranberries or dates
• 3/4 cup almonds
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1/4 cup soymilk
• 1/2 cup fair trade cocoa
• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1 - 2 tsp almond extract

Directions

1. In a food processor chop dried fruit and almonds into a fine chunky meal.
2. Pour in tahini and milk and mix well.
3. Add cocoa, coconut and almond extract. Mix well, scrapping the sides of the bowl often.
4. Transfer mixture into a small container and press down firmly with a spatula or your hands.
5. Refrigerate till ready to pack.
6. On the trail, cut into squares.

Notes

These can be made ahead of time and keep well in the fridge. They'll keep well on the trail also for a couple days. When they're not refrigerated though they will get stick-to-your-fingers soft in warm weather.

Recently, one of our readers asked us the following question:

We live in the Canadian prairies, though not too far from the Rocky Mountains (about 3 hrs).  We are avid campers, but we cannot convince ourselves to start hiking with our 4 and 6 yr old kids, though we talk about it all the time.  The prairies have cougars and the mountains have bear and cougar.  Did this type of wildlife have any bearing on your decision to hike in the mountains of Maine? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Where we live here in Maine, the only wild animal that we really have to worry about is black bears. While they can be dangerous, the more we read and learn, the less we fear them. In fact, we are all looking forward to the day when we get to see one on an excursion. Any wildlife besides squirrels would be nice... perhaps having 3 energetic kids on the trail contributes significantly to us not seeing much of anything.

When it comes to more dangerous animals such as grizzlies and cougars, we are not really in the position to speak with any authority on the matter. What I do know is that the more you learn, the better off you will be. Educating yourself from reputable sources will go a long way towards creating a healty fear (respect) and give you the tools you need to be more confident in the backcountry. To help out towards this end, I forwarded the question on to someone I with much more experience than I.

Ryan Jordan is the founder and CEO of Backpacking Light (http://www.backpackinglight.com/). Follow Ryan at http://www.ryanjordan.com or via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/bigskyry. An Eagle Scout and former BSA High Adventure Program Director, Jordan lectures regularly to and trains Scouting leadership, outdoor education leaders, search and rescue organizations, and land management agency staff about the gear and skills required to go light while maintaining an appropriate balance of safety and comfort. This is what he had to say:

Your fear of grizzly bears is both healthy, and warranted, especially with kids. It's your protective nature kicking in. And that protective nature on behalf of grizzly bears is why we have conflict with them in the wilderness.

They need to eat, so they will raid caches of human food if given the opportunity. We can control that by having impeccable food preparation and storage practices in our camp.

But it's the bear attacks that I cannot control that cause some worry. So we try to minimize the risks of those happening, too.

The worst cases are when we surprise a bear. They don't cope real well with surprises and their protective response kicks in. The most dangerous human-bear conflicts occur when we surprise a bear (or worse, a momma bear and cubs) while hiking along the trail. As long as we make noise, we minimize (but do not necessarily) eliminate the chance of a surprise encounter. These surprise encounters are the ones I fear the most when hiking with kids, so I will often hike at the front, so I can be the one to confront the bear, rather than those who are less experienced.

The main question I ask when faced with the prospect of taking kids into grizzly bear country include: How much strength do I have in the rest of the party in case of a bear attack? Bears don't usually attack parties of 3 or more, and the reason attacks occur on parties of 2 is primarily because those 2 are split up by quite a bit of distance at the time of the attack.

Thus, I'd feel pretty comfortable with two adults and two kids if we all stayed together, and I might not worry at all if I could convince another family to come with me! That would be a lot more fun, too! There is strength in numbers and that is the best asset in grizzly country.

The worst case scenario of course, is the night time predatory attack where a grizzly bear wants to hunt you down and eat you. Fortunately, these are very rare occurrences, and while they do make for good campfire stories, the chance that they are happening is so infinitesimally low that it would be irresponsible for me to warn you about it and not warn you about the risk we take every day by the way we live and work, and the impacts that a stress-ridden, first-world lifestyle has on everything from emotional well being to heart disease.

Therein lies the primary reason I like to visit Wild Places, and the grizzly bear is a large part of that. It's a big, beautiful animal that deserves our respect. It's quite a sight to observe one in the wild, and you'd not be experiencing wilderness living to its fullest without that experience. It changes you.

Great advice, thanks Ryan!

Update 2010-05-25: I was recently reminded of a blog post that I read a while time ago called The Great Fear. A very worthwhile read, and very relevant to this topic.