Food Dude

Tuna. Salami, cheese, and crackers. Tuna. Salami, cheese, and crackers. Frozen tuna. Salami, cheese, and crumbs of crackers. This has been the lunch menu for the past sixteen days and eight thousand feet, and my fellow climbing partners and I are ready to mutiny. We might have been content at lower elevations where the newness of the mountain filled our spirits and the thickness of the air filled our lungs, but those days are gone. This mountain has grown old and we, tired. The guides are wary of our restlessness, but what can they really do? Emeril would have a hard time making something of these four ordinarily fine lunch items. Doubly I curse the guiding company for spewing forth a glossy brochure that states: “We serve the finest mountain cuisine. Our guides pride themselves on their wonderful cooking skills.” I curse it once for calling this salami and tuna “cuisine” and a second time for using the term “cooking,” as neither are true. Right now that duplicitous brochure is resting on my kitchen table, next to a tossed salad, a barbequed chicken sandwich, and a glass of beer.

The guides find a scapegoat. They claim they do not choose the food, but rather there’s a guy back in Bellingham whose sole job is to purchase the meals for the big mountain expeditions. The clients are temporarily appeased, but the bitter irony has not been lost on me that for the past two weeks we have labored up the highest mountain in North America step by step in front of hundred pound sleds and beneath 50 pound packs, loads primarily comprised of the very food we despise. Before long, my teammates and I are well aware of the absurdity, and we galvanize through mutual disgust. Our common enemy: the “Food Dude” back in Bellingham.

For the past few nights I dreamed I sat him down, and once I’ve finished force-feeding him salami and dry crackers, asked the Food Dude just what in tarnation he was thinking. Had he ever been to Denali? How about camping? Car camping at least?

Food Dude, you done us dirty. They say an army travels on its stomach...and I say, so does a climbing team. First, we cannot overlook the sameness. The mountain is full of monotony. White clouds blend with the white glacier which swirls with the white blowing snow. We’re used to it: step after step, slowly and repetitively until our minds are machines. Fine. But, when we stop to refuel, variety reminds us we are human. Tuna. Salami, cheese, and crackers. Tuna. Salami, cheese, and crackers. Buzz, beep, clunk. Eskimos apparently have 50 words for snow, but even they have only one for salami.

Next, you made some ridiculously poor choices. Crackers? No one in his right mind brings crackers on a one day camping trip, never mind a three week excursion. I have a hard time getting them home from the grocery store in one piece. Even if we ensconced the crackers individually in their own little blanket of bubble wrap, there is no hope. Climbing a mountain requires many heavy, hard, oblong, sharp, and crushing items, being tossed, shoved, thrown, hammered, and spiked. It’s not the place for Waterford crystal or crackers. Also, there are twelve of us on this team. We divvy up all meals so everyone gets their fair and adequate share. How many crumbs and pulverized niblets equal one cracker? You do the math. Now try it at altitude.

What about the cans of tuna? Nice job choosing the dolphin safe variety, but Denali is cold. It was -10 degrees at 7,000’. Just because we’re going up the mountain doesn’t mean we’re getting closer to the sun. It’s cold up here. It’s Alaska. Tuna hockey pucks for lunch is not my idea of cuisine. The closest microwave is 70 miles below. There’s no defroster on Denali. So, we’re forced to sleep with the fishes! Yes, that’s right. We now are sleeping with the cans of tuna in our sleeping bags. I have no problem with all the other items I’ve made bedfellows with to keep warm—like our boot liners, socks, gloves, and water bottles—but, I draw the line at hard round cans of frozen fish. Nice pillows they’re not.

I usually awake sweating profusely in my sleeping bag, oblivious that temperature outside reads -15, but fully aware I have a can of tuna lodged in my ass.

To give the Food Dude his due, on paper there are some pros of tuna, salami, cheese, and crackers:

Low prep time, low cost, high in calories, high protein, some carbs (although he chose Wassa crackers which have the nutritional value and taste of your finest corrugated cardboard).

But, the cons, mostly philosophical and psychological, win by a landslide, or I should say, an avalanche.