Mountain Meals

As we turn our thoughts and efforts to holiday meals and time with friends and family, I reminisce about those other holidays, the ones we share in the mountains. After all, any time in the mountains is a holiday, and it’s always better with friends and hearty camp cuisine. In the opening photo, Peter Hickner sautés marinated steak as Mark Valdez anticipates the meal ahead, transfixed by the intoxicating fragrance of sizzling juices and tender garlic. The magnificent granite spires of Dragontail and Colchuck Peaks watch over us.

On that day, five of us from our old tribe gathered at Colchuck Lake on September 25^th, ready for a new moon and a chance to see the Galactic Core of the Milky Way arc over Colchuck Peak. And in our plans for our five-night rendezvous, each of us was to be a master chef for a day as we vied to create our vision of mouth-watering outdoor cuisine on our designated night. We were inspired on this trip to celebrate and please each other.

And on our first night, we savored Peter’s tasty dinner, which I subsequently named ‘Marinated Steak Argentina.’ His savory creation was served with sauteed bell pepper and green beans atop a toasted tortilla, and of course, accompanied with a well-balanced Malbec, and later, the smooth bourbon of Basil Hayden. A fine opening meal indeed.

The next evening, Mark made his signature ramen and smoked turkey sausage stew with celery and carrots. It was a meal he introduced me to on another Milky Way galaxy quest, just two months earlier as we bivouacked among the boulders at Granite Mountain Lookout. So tasty at dinner, we had it again for breakfast as the sun crept over the eastern ridges.

We did not dine on freeze-dried meals. Those recent scratch-made meals reminded me of those we made so many years ago when we ventured into distant mountain ranges for days on end. Seattle’s Pike Place Market served as our meal provisions commissary for the specialty items in our larder. While we could get various powdered drinks, Kool-Aid type fruit drinks, iced tea, and Milkman just about anywhere, the same could not be said of the food items that provided the substantial fuel and sustenance for lengthy mountain journeys. 

Fortunately, my early mountain companions were well experienced at this kind of sourcing, procuring links of landjeager sausage (a German-style smoked semi-dried pork & beef sausage) and beef jerky at Don and Joe’s Meats. And from the next stall over at Pike Place Fish (where they are famous for throwing large salmon from the iced displays to the sales counter) lengthy strips of amazing smoked salmon jerky. With ingredients like these, we did not lack flavor.

The various dried fruits and fruit leathers all came from other small specialty shops in the market. We also packed dried ramen noodles, tomato paste, tins of sardines, and smoked mussels in olive oil, instant oatmeal, Wasa Brod crackers, Sailor Crackers, a fruit, nut, and candy gorp. The trick was to keep meals and snacks simple, nutritious, and reasonably interesting for however long we traveled, sometimes up to two weeks.

Meal making with our little blowtorches, the MSR Model 9 gas-fired stoves, could be a sometimes-frustrating experience, but we made do, even finding ways to fry up fillets of mountain lake trout, breaded with cornmeal and herbs. And when the newer WhisperLite model arrived, with a burner more suited to simmering, everything got even easier.

The mountains make each meal unique, the time of day, the expansive, starkly beautiful venues, the ever-changing weather, and treasured hardy companions. The unifying theme is that we’re all so glad to be together, sharing a meal in those special places, dining on the rocks in the halls of granite mountain kings.