Meg Brasel presents her startup business Traildrops at the Will This Float? competition in December.Anyone who has been on a long-term backpacking trip knows that planning meals for such trips is typically a long-term endeavor as well.
Signal Mountain resident Meg Brasel frequently goes on backpacking trips with her husband, and she realized she was spending a lot of time weighing their food and calculating the number of calories per ounce, attempting to create the ideal balance of low weight and high caloric content best for backpacking.
It dawned on her that this could be a service others would pay for: She could come up with a range of recipes designed to meet the needs of backpackers, package the foods and deliver them to hikers at different points along either the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail through the U.S. Postal Service.
Brasel said post offices will hold packages for up to a month, and many outdoor stores will hold packages for hikers to pick up as well.
In addition to research done for personal trips and for her new business, Traildrops, Brasel has had a lot of experience in nutrition counseling in her 13 years a nurse midwife, she said. She feels she can use her knowledge to help make the process of planning meals for long-term trips less daunting for the average backpacker. For example, Brasel said, not everyone would know that when backpacking during the winter, meals should have a higher fat content since the body burns more calories trying to keep warm.