Louise Barton remembers the exact backpacking moment when her career path changed.
“I’m a botanist by training. I started working for the Forest Service and we were in Yellowstone doing huge off-trail miles, so I brought some packaged meals,” she says. “I ate a beef stroganoff dinner. I was so hungry I would have eaten anything, but it was soupy and just gross. It had this off flavor, and I was nauseous eating it. I trashed the rest of my meals when we went back into town for resupply.”
“It got me scheming: What if I just made my own dehydrated meals for the next time?”
Barton and her then-wife launched Farm to Summit, a better-for-you backpacking meals company in Durango. Their debut meals included green chile mac and cheese, Thai red curry and Thai carrot slaw.
A similar mountain encounter with beef stroganoff also inspired Felipe Vieyra, founder of Aurora’s Oso Adventure Meals.
“I took a friend on his first backpacking trip near Leadville. We were both very hungry and started eating a freeze-dried beef stroganoff meal. My friend said: ‘Is this all we have to eat out here? This is so bland and tasteless.’ We’re both Mexican, so we talked about the food that we grew up with,” Vieyra says. “We decided to bring authentic Mexican spicy food to the outdoors. Our first Oso flavors were huevos rancheros, a veggie enchilada bowl and a carnitas enchilada bowl.”
Soraya Smith readily admits she had never tasted other backpacking meals before launching Boulder’s Backpacker’s Pantry. Her inspiration was the literal weight of fresh ingredients.
“When my family was younger, we did a lot of backpacking, camping and rafting, but we always took fresh food with us. It was a lot of weight to haul. We thought that almost anything you like to eat at home and at restaurants could be turned into a backpacking meal,” Smith says.
A practical impact
Generations of Colorado backpackers have endured some truly revolting pre-packaged meals on the trails, only salvaged by the liberal application of hot sauce. But these days, the options are far more appetizing, nutritious and eco-friendly.
“We don’t want any crap ingredients, food coloring or preservatives,” says Farm to Summit’s Barton. “We source the majority of our produce from farms that are near Durango and we dehydrate everything in house. In our cooler right now, we have 400 pounds of kale that a farmer couldn’t sell. We get hail-damaged cabbage and crooked — but really sweet — carrots.”
“I was a climate change biologist by training, but I left it because I was like, ‘I’m not making a difference.’ Owning this business I can have a practical impact.”
Building in big flavors
The backpacking meals available today also reflect the shifting demographics of outdoor enthusiasts.
“I saw more folks of color, more Latinos and more Mexicans backpacking, mountain biking and tapping into the outdoors,” says Oso’s Vieyra. “We wanted to make food they would enjoy, but we really found that Mexican food is really American food that all campers want to be able to eat.”
Next on the menu at Oso Meals will be locally sourced pozole with bison. According to Smith, Backpacker’s Pantry top sellers in 2025 are pad Thai, pad Thai with chicken, and drunken noodles.
Backpacker’s Pantry offers the widest selection of breakfast, snack and beverage options among the Colorado companies, including desserts like creme brulee and mango sticky rice.
More than calories
Smith believes eating together is a fundamental part of getting outdoors for friends and family. The food should be a memorable part of that — and not in a bad way.
“After a day of hiking or backpacking or rafting, you settle together around a meal,” Smith says. “It should satiate your taste buds as much as it satiates your soul. I love doing spice blends to actually make the food taste yummy and not just something to put in your body for calories.”
“I want the food to look like and taste like what it says it’s going to look like and taste like.”