Why Snacking Matters More Than You Think

Ask most people about fitness for the hills and they will talk about legs, lungs and boots. Ask them about eating, and you often get a shrug. Yet the most common reason a long day turns sour — the sudden heaviness in the thighs, the foggy head, the irritability on the last climb — is not fitness at all. It is fuel.

Your body carries only a limited store of glycogen, roughly enough for ninety minutes to two hours of steady uphill effort. After that, performance drops unless you top it up. The catch is that on a big day out you cannot eat a large meal and expect it to sit well. Blood is being diverted to working muscles, digestion slows, and a heavy plate of food at the summit will have you waddling rather than striding. The answer is small amounts, often: a handful of something every forty-five minutes to an hour, starting well before you feel hungry. Aim for somewhere between 30g and 60g of carbohydrate per hour on a sustained climb, and treat that as a target rather than a vague hope.

Build the Base: Slow-Release Carbohydrates

Slow-release carbohydrates should form the backbone of your rucksack. They digest gradually, keeping blood sugar steady rather than spiking and crashing, and they tend to be robust enough to survive being squashed under a waterproof for six hours.

• Flapjack — oats, butter and syrup give a steady trickle of energy. Cut it into squares at home rather than carrying a slab.
• Malt loaf — dense, sticky, cheap and remarkably good on a cold hillside. A thick slice is roughly 30g of carbohydrate.
• Oatcakes with cheese — the classic savoury combination, with fat to slow absorption further.
• Wholemeal sandwiches — a filled roll or two will outlast any cereal bar in both durability and satisfaction. Cheese and pickle, hummus, or cold meat all work well.
• Bannock or soda bread — traditional, dense and sturdy, ideal when you want something that will not disintegrate in a pocket.
• Cereal bars and fruit bars — convenient, but read the label. Many are little more than sugar in a wrapper, which is fine as a top-up but poor as a base.

Aim for two or three slow-release items in your day bag, portioned so you can eat one without stopping for long. If the wrapper takes more than ten seconds to open with gloves on, repack it before you leave the car park.

Keep It Savoury: Salt, Fat and Flavour

When you sweat, you lose sodium, and when you lose sodium, you can drink litres of water and still feel dreadful. Salty snacks are not a treat on a hill day, they are a piece of kit.

• Crisps — lightweight, salty, easy to eat on the move. A small bag weighs almost nothing and lifts the spirits.
• Salted nuts — calorie-dense and satisfying, though slow to eat when you are breathing hard.
• Hard cheese — mature Cheddar or similar keeps well, even in summer, and pairs with almost anything.
• Pork pie or scotch egg — a proper savoury anchor for a longer lunch stop, though keep it cool and eat it early in the day.
• Olives or pickled onions — in a small sealed pot, oddly delicious halfway up a ridge, and excellent for salt.

Savoury food also solves a practical problem: after four hours, sweet things start to cloy. Having something salty to alternate with the sweet treats keeps you eating when you would otherwise stop.

Quick Sugar: The Emergency Gear of Snacking

Fast-acting sugar is not the enemy; it is your reserve. Keep a small quantity of something sweet and immediate for the moments when the tank is genuinely empty — the last hundred metres of a steep pull, or the trudge back to the car in the dark.

• Boiled sweets or wine gums — easy to eat one-handed and won't freeze solid.
• Dried dates, apricots or raisins — natural sugar with a little fibre, and they travel well.
• Fudge or Kendal mint cake — traditional for good reason, though save them for genuine effort rather than habit.
• Chocolate — wonderful in winter, a melted mess in summer. If you carry it, keep it in an inside pocket in the warm months and a cool one in the cold.

Use these deliberately rather than as your main intake. A steady diet of sweets alone will give you sharp peaks and troughs that feel worse than the original hunger.

Weather, Seasons and Terrain

Your snack list should change with the forecast. In winter, cereal bars become brittle bricks and sandwiches freeze at altitude. Favour softer items, carry a flask of hot sweet tea or soup, and keep the day's food in an inside pocket where your body heat can keep it edible. Add extra fat and calories for the cold, because shivering burns fuel quickly.

In summer, the reverse applies. Chocolate melts, cheese sweats and anything with mayonnaise becomes a risk. Go for hard cheese, nuts, dried fruit, oatcakes and plain biscuits. On very hot days, add a little salt to your water or carry an electrolyte drink alongside your snacks, and eat a bit more than you think you need — heat suppresses appetite while increasing sweat losses. Rough terrain, deep heather or a long boggy approach will slow you down and stretch the day, so pack an extra item or two for the unexpected.

Packing, Portioning and the Art of Little and Often

The best snack in the world is useless if it is buried at the bottom of your rucksack. Keep the next hour's food in a hip belt pocket or a jacket pocket you can reach without stopping. Repack everything into small portions at home so that eating is a ten-second job, not a full halt with gloves off and a rucksack unstrapped.

Then eat on a rhythm. One small handful or one item every forty-five minutes, whether or not you feel like it, washed down with a few mouthfuls of water. Set a mental timer on the climbs, because appetite lags behind effort on a steep ascent. Save a proper slow-release item for a sheltered lunch stop, and keep a spare bar in the bottom of the bag as an emergency ration — unopened, uneaten, but there when the day runs long.

Get the fuel right and the hills feel a great deal kinder. Little and often, sweet and salty, slow and quick: that is the whole art of it.