Food Provisions; The upside of burning 7,000 calories a day.

We have made arrangements for Grajales Expeditions to pack our provisions into base camp and provide all meals while we are there. As Ty and I are a self-guided team, we will be responsible for any meals above base camp. Our strategy for these meals will closely mirror that used on Denali.

It starts with a two gallon Ziploc bag. Each bag will contain a dinner and a breakfast.
Dinner:
A freeze-dried Mountain House meal for two (though we each eat a complete packet). These are lightweight, yet 500 calories solid. The Chicken with mashed potatoes is hands down the best. On Denali we learned to thaw individual cheese packets in our arm pits, then add them to the meal for cheesy mashed potatoes! Num num num. I'm not sure what we will be prepping with our arm pits on Aconcagua, as the warm summer climate down low will spoil cheese.
A packet of instant soup (chicken or onion), candy bar, Cocoa, and a Sweet and Salty Peanut Bar.

Breakfast:
Two packets of instant oatmeal, Cocoa, Starbucks instant coffee, freeze dried banana chips, trail mix.

 Then we build a lunch for each day inside a one gallon Ziploc bag. These consist of beef jerky, a Cliff Bar, freeze dried pineapple slice, candy bar, Gatorade, potato chips (crushed), fruit leather, and trail mix.

We place the lunch bag inside the two gallon bag to create a complete day's rations for one Climber. Each morning we will take out a fresh set of meals, remove the lunch bag to somewhere accessible on our packs, eat the breakfast items, then stow the remaining dinner items for later that day. As bags are emptied they can be compressed tightly within each other to conserve space. Any leftover food items from each day are consolidated in a two gallon bag. This provides important backup in the event we are forced to dig in and supplies run low.

All told, a day's rations weighs about 2 pounds, and constitutes approximately 5,000 calories. We will probably burn more than that each day. On similar rations I lost 17 pounds climbing Denali, and I was fairly lean going into it. But the converging factors of load weights, and an ability to ingest more calories argue against a climber adding still more to his rations since most climbers suffer a loss of appetite as they reach into higher altitudes. For myself it has always amounted to forced feeding any time I am above 16,000 feet. This factor stands in direct opposition to the bodie's needs. Aside from the obvious and ferocious caloric burn rate that accompanies such strenuous endeavors, there is also a steep runnup of a climber's metabolism owing to altitude. Someone told me once that a climber at Denali's high camp (17,500 ft) would burn 7,000 calories a day lying in her sleeping bag. Such a place might make an ideal site for a weight loss clinic!