The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

I am psyched about this next week! For one, it will be my first full week off work in over a year; needless to say, this is much needed time off. And two, it will be my first long trip attempting to maintain a high raw food diet. I recently received some inspiration from The RAW Sunny Kitchen, and so began a crazed frenzy of making RAW foods for my trip. They key to maintaining a high RAW food diet on a trip like this is to plan ahead. I don’t have specific meals planned out, but I will have plenty of things to choose from and will have several cooked vegetarian options as well for those nights I crave something different.

Two staples I have prepared are Matt Amasden’s famous onion bread and his RAW burgers from his book RAWvolution (a book I highly recommend for anybody interested in or just getting started in a raw food diet). Other items I will have in tow are chocolate chia seed crackers from Kristen’s RAW, RAW vegan cheese from Rawmazing as well as one of her bread recipes.

Other tasty treats I will be munching on are dehydrated apples and mangoes, homemade trail mix and my own Buckwheat Treats.  The snack foods are key, as they help hold you over until they next meal. They will also be a staple on the Longs Peak portion of my trip, as I will have to sacrifice RAW meals for cooked. I haven’t quite figured out how to make a RAW diet work well when backpacking, but I will have plenty of RAW snacks to get me from breakfast to dinner.

So, it should be interesting to see how I do when faced with the temptation to cook food with my climbing partner and stop at fast food restaurants for the sake of convenience. But knowing the amount of time I invested in prepping food I think that will inspire me to eat what I prepared myself.  But know this, I will surely be eating at least a few meals in town, one after we arrive back from Longs Peak (which will also be accompanied with a beer or two), and hopefully another with Twitter friends in Boulder.

I head out this Friday morning for Colorado Springs, we will climb there one day then head to Boulder to climb the first Flatiron, then head up and do Longs Peak in two or three days, after that we will climb at Lumpy Ridge and conclude our trip with climbing in the Boulder area. If you will be around any of those locations be sure to let me know and maybe we can meet up.

So with all that being said, I will be out of the office for over a week. I hope to bring back an amazing trip report with plenty of splendid photos!