8 Best Backpacking Snacks of 2026

Thirty-two packs of a hundred calories each sounds generous until you do the arithmetic: a long day on trail can go through eight or ten of them, and that’s eight or ten wrappers to carry out. We still reach for this box first on hot trips, because nothing in it can melt, crumble or leak, and the flat packs slide into a hipbelt pocket without a bulge.

The almonds are lightly salted at 40 milligrams of sodium per pack, which is the right call for something you might eat three times a day — but it’s mild. If you’re a heavy sweater or hiking somewhere hot, treat these as a base and add something saltier rather than expecting the nuts to cover your electrolytes. Texture holds up too: they arrive whole and stay crunchy, which is more than we can say for anything baked.

Where the box earns its place is the front half of a trip, when weight matters and you want calories you don’t have to think about. It isn’t the cheapest way to buy almonds, and a bulk bag decanted into a zip bag costs less per calorie. For a weekend the pre-portioned packs are worth the premium; for a two-week walk, buy the big bag and portion it yourself.

Around the fourth day, when every bar in the food bag tastes like the bar before it, a pouch of tuna is what resets your appetite. That’s the case for carrying the extra weight of a wet pouch, and it’s a good one.

Twelve pouches, 2.6 ounces each, wild-caught light tuna in water, tear-open with no can opener and nothing to drain. Each one carries 17 grams of protein for 70 calories — the biggest protein number on this page — which is why we keep a couple in the bottom of the pack even on short trips. Straight from the pouch it’s fine. On a tortilla with a squeeze of something, it’s a genuine meal at a cold camp, and that’s worth more than the calorie count suggests.

Where it falls down is as fuel. Seventy calories is a rounding error against a backpacking day, so this supplements your snacks rather than replacing them. The pouch is also wet, which means it goes in the trash bag rather than a pocket for tomorrow, and a fishy wrapper wants double-bagging if you’re sharing a tent. Neither of those is a reason to leave it home.

Eating while walking is a skill, and these mini waffles make it easier. Soft enough to chew at pace, sweet enough to be worth reaching for, and thin enough that a few fit in a jacket pocket without turning into a brick.

As a quick carbohydrate hit mid-climb, we think they’re the best of the sweet options here. Each serving carries 18 grams of total carbs from a honey filling between two thin wafers, they’re USDA Organic with no artificial sweeteners or preservatives, and they go down without the heavy, sticky feeling a chocolate bar leaves behind. On a long climb that lightness matters more than the number on the label.

What they aren’t is a food bag. A 5.3-ounce bag holds a handful of minis, so treat one bag as two or three snacks rather than a day’s fuel. The waffles also often arrive with crushed edges, which doesn’t change the taste but does leave crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Buy two bags if you’re relying on them, and keep them near the top of the pack.

Crunchy granola bars have a backpacking problem: by the second day they’ve become a bag of crumbs. These don’t do that. They’re chewy, with whole peanuts holding the bar together, and they come out of a stuffed pack in one piece.

Thirty bars in a 36-ounce box, no artificial flavors or colors, no high-fructose corn syrup, and enough peanut in each one that it eats like a candy bar rather than health food. The sweet-and-salty balance is what makes them work on trail — after a few hours of plain water, salt is the flavor you actually want.

Two practical notes before you commit. The peanut butter coating softens in heat, so in high summer keep the bars toward the middle of the pack rather than the top. And 30 bars arrive in a retail box, not a stuff sack, so plan on moving them into a zip bag before you leave. Neither is a dealbreaker, and both take about a minute to solve.

This is the bar we reach for when the day is long and we want something that feels like a proper snack rather than fuel, and of everything here it’s the best value per calorie — which matters if you’re buying for a week rather than a weekend. It’s the box most worth buying in quantity, and the one that has never come home unopened.

There’s a small moisture pad inside each of these pouches, and it’s the reason the meat stays soft enough to bite through instead of splintering. It’s a tiny design detail that makes a real difference on a cold morning, and it’s why this is the meat snack we keep coming back to.

You get 7 grams of protein per serving from 100 percent beef, no refrigeration needed, and a pouch that weighs almost nothing — the classic thing to keep in a lid pocket for the last hour of a climb. What you don’t get is much jerky. The pouches run to a few pieces each, fine as a protein top-up and frustrating if you were counting on it as a snack. If jerky is going to be a real part of your food bag rather than a garnish, buy two multipacks.

A fruit strip weighs almost nothing, takes up the space of a bookmark, and gives you something to do with your hands on a break. That’s the whole case for carrying them, and it’s a decent one.

Twelve individually wrapped strips, half an ounce each, in three fruit flavors, made from fruit puree concentrate with no added sugar and colors and flavors from real sources. They stay soft rather than freezing solid, they don’t leave residue on your fingers the way chocolate does, and they’re the one snack on this list nobody argues about.

As a morale item for a mid-afternoon stop, we rate them. As calories, we don’t — half an ounce of fruit is a bite, not a course, and nobody is walking twenty miles on fruit strips. Texture also varies between batches, with some strips arriving soft and chewy and others hard and dry. Carry them for the moment you need a change rather than as the backbone of a day’s food, and they earn their tiny bit of pack space.

No shells is the detail that turns pistachios from a party snack into trail food. You’re not spitting shells into the dirt or carrying them out in a pocket, and you can eat a bag one-handed while you walk.

They’re roasted and salted, which is exactly what you want on a hot climb — the salt is the point, not a flaw — and each 0.75-ounce bag is a small, satisfying handful rather than a bottomless bag. Nine bags to a box, plant-based protein, and certified gluten-free, kosher, halal and non-GMO, so they slot into most diets without a second thought.

The portion is the weak spot. Three-quarters of an ounce goes in about four bites, and nine bags empty fast on anything longer than a weekend. The salt that makes them welcome on a climb also means you’ll want water alongside, which is worth remembering on a dry stretch where every liter is planned.

For the end of a hard day, though, they do more for morale than anything else in this guide. A bag of pistachios and five minutes sitting down beats another bar by a mile, and that’s a different job from the one your calorie-dense staples are doing.