Boat Camping With Mountain House Meals

My plan was to spend a couple nights on Lake Powell chasing striped bass. Those big, strong fish are most active early and late in the day and so I wanted to stay in the area we planned to fish. That meant we needed to carry all of our gear on the boat, so we could make a comfortable camp on the beach.

But my boat is small, an 18-ft Tracker bass boat. No room for big camp stoves and coolers full of food. How do you go light and still satisfy the appetites of hungry fishermen?

No problem. I just packed MountainHouse meals in pouches and used my tiny backpack stove to heat the required water. The meals make excellent food for camping, backpacking and, it seems, boat camping.

Mountain House pouches contain freeze-dried food. To prepare them, just pour boiling water into a pouch, seal it and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Easy. You can eat right out of the pouch, if you want. Most pouches hold 2-3 servings and so we elected to use paper bowls, to share the bounty.

And the food actually tastes pretty good. On this trip the guys seemed to particularly like the beef stew and breakfast skillet. Both are safe bets for most groups.

I like to camp, backpack and boat camp and so I keep Mountain House pouches on hand. They also come in hand during emergencies. If the power goes out, I can still boil water and serve tasty, nutritious food. It's a win all around.

I get my Mountain House camping food here.

-- Dave Webb