Well, what we don't eat might be more the relevant issue. We don't eat enough, to begin with. It is hard to get food down anyway when one is high up, as cooking is time consuming work at a time when few feel like working very hard and stomachs are notoriously queasy at high altitudes. Compound that by burning more calories in a day than an average suburban fat farm and you start to get the picture. Climbers may sometimes burn as many as 10-12,000 calories in a day at extreme altitude (I heard that once... don't ask me where) so there is little hope that they will keep up on the intake on such days.

The point is that a climber goes to such places aware that eating is no longer about what one likes or what one feels one deserves. Food is fuel. Eating is one of your chores. Do your chores or you will lose too much weight, be useless to your team and be sent home to the land of all-you-can-eat salad bars. Not such a bad punishment really.

At Base Camp and advanced Base Camp, most of our food is "local" in that it is purchased in Kathmandu. Lots of rice, lentils, cabbage, potatoes, eggs, rice, curry fixins, rice, soups, rice and rice. At these camps, we employ cooks so that the climbers can concentrate on rest and re-hab when they are low down on the hill. We eat "family-style" as I've heard it called. That means that you come running when you hear Pasang or Pemba beating on a pan or else your "family" will eat yours and you'll get thinner.

For the higher camps, we'll bring food from the USA. We've benefited greatly from all our previous trips in this regard. We now know what to bring and what not to bring. We don't bring many things that boast about being good for us. These are usually too hard to eat at altitude and so are not really good for us. We don't bring many foods that say they are for camping and have pictures of backpackers on the container. High altitude flatulence is not to be encouraged... those tents are small. Breakfast up high might be a few oatmeal packets (if you are lucky, they are two years old and have riddles on them instead of the more current and dull dinosaur facts) and a hot chocolate or tea (if you are British). Pop Tarts don't really need a toaster, despite what the instructions say and can be reasonably crammed in at 27,000 feet.

Lunch is an all-day affair, usually stored in the pockets of a climbing suit so as to be reasonably malleable. Think about all the things you wanted to see in your lunch box as a kid. That is how we work during the day, although we can't usually get Twinkies and Ho Ho's in our pockets, the goal is to find snacks that will be appealing under hard conditions. Chocolate, nuts, string cheese, turkey jerkey, Pringles, Chex party mix, Cracker Jacks (the prize is a big plus), the odd Granola Bar and even some high-tech energy ooze, goo, or gel for the athlete hidden deep within a few of us. Don't forget cookies, crackers, and hard candies either. We will often keep a big jar of red licorice for the taking on the table of the mess tent. Snack. Eat desert first. Eat between meals. Ruin your appetite. Eat candy in bed. Snack some more. Don't share with the other kids. Try this type of living in an office building and you'll get booted right back to kindergarten, then come climbing where you'll fit in just fine.

Dinner in an upper camp might be any number of things that are prepared in less than about five minutes with only boiling water and a moderate amount of dirty pots (since you'll have just one). Figure you'll start with a cup of soup to get hot salty fluid in. Then open wide for some instant mashed potato or flavored rice or noodles. Follow this up with what we call "boil bags" or "retorts", essentially a canned meal in a bag that can be boiled and eaten. Then the cooking water is still clean and useful for the last hot chocolate or tea of the day. This menu might be wildly optimistic. Many accomplished high altitude climbers eat nary a thing while up high. They content themselves with getting enough snow melted for water bottles and hot drinks, and they come down to Base Camp when they are starving and spent.

Spend two and a half months at 17,000 feet and above in a cold environment subject to occasional abdominal distress (that'd be diarrhea), and you won't be jiggling much as you walk into US Customs on the trip home. Do your eating chores faithfully and you might be down to just muscle. Do less and you'll have used up the muscles too.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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