Big Sur Bar

The Big Sur Bar is a dense but tasty high calorie bar for backpacking, camping, or trekking. It tastes great and is a good treat on trail!

I like to keep my pack weight down when I do multiday backpacking trips. I'm not an ultralighter, but my base weight is pretty light—around 15 pounds. Because I go light, I try to keep my food weight down and I like my food to be compact and not take up much room. I've had other good high-calorie meal bars before, but recently I tried the Big Sur Bar for the first time on my Rae Lakes Loop trip in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. In a word, the Big Sur Bar is fantastic!

The Big Sur Bar comes in three flavors that are somewhat similar. There's an oatmeal + flour crust topped with goodies like almonds, raisins, pecans, chocolate chips, coconut, and dates. It sort of tastes like a homemade nutty oatmeal bar my grandma might have made! These bars are sweet, but not too sweet. There's a soft and chewy part of the bar and the nutty topping gives it a great crunch.

I like that each package/bar has 600 calories. They don't have any junk in the ingredient list, so that's a huge bonus. I could eat one for breakfast or lunch on trail and it would keep me satisfied for a few hours. The Big Sur Bar did not upset my stomach in any way. They sat well with me and I always looked forward to my next one. I'm 100% certain I'll take these on backpacking trips from now on as a great breakfast or lunch food on trail. I should note that my wife enjoyed these bars as well. And I should note that they go very well with coffee.

Each bar is around $5-7 depending on how many you purchase.  I'm totally fine with these prices. They're worth it! Also note: since these are made fresh, the shelf life is only a few weeks unless you freeze them. You can order these before your trip and let them know when you want to receive them so they will still be fresh on your trip. That's what I did and it worked well. The customer service is great—I ordered my bars a few months before my trip and received them the week before I started the trip. All in all, this is a five-star meal bar for backpacking. 

Background

I've been trying all different backpacking meals and food for many years. I recently had these Big Sur Bars on a 50-mile backpacking trip of the Rae Lakes Loop.