Recently I had a conversation with my daughter’s friend Rachel who is hiking the Chilkoot Trail and on the trip one of the merry backpackers are having a birthday. By and by the subject of what to bring rose to the surface. You can’t or shouldn’t pack a bottle of champagne up a pass and over. Yes, I know the miners who made that trail famous carried things way heavier. They are dead now.
The Chilkoot Trail is a historic trail heading from near Skagway and into Yukon and it gained fame as route thousands of miners took during the Gold Rush of 98. This was 1898 and not a gold rush based on some corporate raid on pensions like we see now. Jack London wrote of the Yukon Gold Rush that people didn’t go to Yukon for the gold, they went because they wanted excitement in their lives. That hasn’t changed. Have fun Rachel.
Anyway, you don’t want to carry heavy stuff on a backpacking trip and the Alpine Margarita is light and tasty. I concocted this drink just prior to our trip up Split Thumb to celebrate the day. You can use glacial ice on the rocks if you are near a glacier like the Lemon Gacier pictured to the right
Here's the recipe:
Before you ever leave home add 150 ml of tequila (2.5 shots), juice of 2 medium sized limes, and 100 ml to a water bottle. A Nalgene actually has milliliters marked on the side of the jar. The ingredients weigh about 10 oz.
Once you are on the mountain and your day is done. Don’t hike drunk. Public Service announcement. I digress. Fill the bottle half full of snow and/or ice and shake it up a lot. The snow will melt and get smaller in volume. Add a little more snow and shake again. Then add water. The proportion of water and snow depends on how slushy the snow is. On a hot summer day you may not need water at all. The goal is to have about 500 ml or two cups of slushy margarita and if you get the snow right it will be so much like a frozen margarita that you will wish you had fajitas.
