Hydration: Drink Early and Often
Possibly no other factor is as important to your comfort and well-being on a CMC trip than proper hydration. Becoming dehydrated during a trip will impair your energy level. Dehydration can also lead to altitude sickness.
Many people generally don't drink enough water and are thus typically in a slight state of dehydration. It takes approximately one hour for the body to absorb one-half liter of water. As a result, you shouldn't count on warding off dehydration merely by guzzling lots of water the morning of the hike. The excess water not absorbed by your body will merely pass through as urine. Some experts suggest drinking more water several days ahead of a strenuous trip. Regardless of the nature of your trip, do not expect to become properly hydrated the morning of the trip.
Far too often people also don't drink enough water during a trip. Always bring more water than you think you'll need, and keep it handy - not buried in the bottom of your pack. Drink before you're feeling thirsty. If you're not regularly stopping to urinate during your trip, you aren't drinking enough water.
Water containers with narrow tubes or openings can freeze on cold-weather trips; use a wide-mouth bottle filled with hot water, and cover your bottle with insulation such as a thick sock or a commercial container.
Not all fluids are equal for hydration purposes. Alcoholic and caffeinated drinks are diuretics (i.e., they increase the loss of fluids in waste). For fluids taken during the trip, sports beverages can be beneficial, because they provide a source of energy and replenish salts lost through sweat.
Back to top Nutrition: Eat Right and Often
As with fluids, nutrition becomes increasingly important as your activity becomes more strenuous. For all CMC activities, be sure to eat breakfast the morning of the trip. Otherwise you'll be "running on fumes" in no time flat, even on the easiest of trips. Your diet in the days prior to your activity can also affect your energy levels. People on reduced diets can expect to be weaker than they otherwise might be, while those who have had good dinners the night before (e.g., "carbo-loading") will have good head starts on the energy they need to get through the day.
What you eat is important. Foods high in carbohydrates (bagels, oatmeal, yogurt, pancakes, fruit, etc.) are ideal for breakfast. Foods high in fat can take too long for your body to break down into usable energy. Many people elect to use special sport or energy bars on CMC trips, but the advantages of these bars diminish with less strenuous activity. A good sandwich for lunch can be just as nutritious - not to mention less expensive and much more enjoyable - than a couple of energy bars.
Be sure to snack frequently on your trip. More often than not, lunch is taken at the halfway point of the trip, but you use most of your energy just arriving to this point (often you're traveling uphill until lunch, then downhill from there). Snack frequently to sustain your energy levels during the most strenuous part of your trip. As with lack of water, lack of food can promote altitude sickness.
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