Baking Day was a success! Special thanks to the Wiebers for generously offering up their home for us to use for the day!
We started off by quick running to the store to get some candy to put in our baybread, initially we had just had an assortment of Reese’s candy, so we made sure to get some variety moving forward. Then we all split off into groups to tackle certain items, which would be: Hot Chocolate, Bay Bread, Hamburger, and Bannock. If you are unfamiliar with what Bay Bread or Bannock is, Bay Bread is a super dense granola bar where you can add mix ins into it to add flavor (ie the candy we just bought), and Bannock is a bread we actually make on trail, we just get everything ready here back in the states.
Everyone took turns rotating tasks, helping others, and stepping into action when needed.
Our Bay Bread was taking longer than expected to bake, so we had to tweak a few things to get it to cook right, so for a few lunches on trail we are going to have some crispier bay bread…
The guys crushed making hot chocolate and bannock, and it was fun to see how they reacted to how much hot chocolate we are bringing now that it is tangibly in front of them, and not just a number.
Midway through the day we needed to quick run to the dehydrator to bag the jerky, and swing by basecamp to grab some more supplies for baking day, so Jack generously volunteered to stay back and cycle in and out bay breads from the oven while the rest of us worked on the jerky and supplies. This actually made things move a little faster because when we got back we had essentially all the bay bread cooked, we just had to bag it. Unfortunately we still had to cook most of our beef, and when everyone started to realize this could mean we would be here for a lot longer, people started stepping up and offering to cook some of it at their house, and let others go home. We decided to roll with this because we still had around half of our beef to cook, and the rate we were going at it, we were going to be here all day.
Only 9 days out from trail. It is starting to get surreal! We’re all getting antsy and excited to get out there!