Crushed Potato Chips

My friend Damien McCombs is the person with the most and best little kernels passed on to me. He's the kind of guy who has a slightly different way of doing things and is always thinking of ways to do things even a little more different (hopefully better). This is the little kernel that compelled me to start keeping track of them all.

There are a few food items that people crave when they are backpacking, climbing, backcountry skiing or exerting themselves in the outdoors. My cravings are mostly fat, salt and carbs. Wouldn't it be great if there was some miracle food that you could bring along with you to provide all three?

I was climbing a mountain with Damien and a few other folks. We'd been up since before the Sun came up, had a great and challenging climb and had finally hit the summit in early afternoon without a lot of nourishment along the way. Most people were grumbling about granola bars, power bars or something else equally unappetizing when Damien pulls out a bag of crushed potato chips. Everyone was dumbfounded and Damien was instantly everyone's best friend.

1. Buy your favourite kind of potato chips. Better make it a large bag.


2. Open the top of the bag.


3. Pulverize your potato chips so that they're about a tenth of their previous volume


4. I usually put an elastic band around the bag of chips to keep from having crushed potato chips distributed throughout my back pack.

This little trick has also made me appreciate whole potato chips all that much more since I'm now used to eating them in their crushed form.