Imagine if a collaboration could save a life? (NZCS X ON TRACK MEALS)
Imagine if a collaboration could save a life?
That was how we began our conversation with On Track Meals as we started preparing for our Stewart Island adventure.
Our experience of the outdoors has involved close calls, both for us and for many people we’ve met along the way. The biggest barrier to entry we often see is that those new to the outdoors have no idea how to properly manage outdoor safety. Our mission is not just to create conservationists; it is to help people enjoy the outdoors in a safe and responsible way. So we wanted to craft a story around key problems we see in how people interact with food and energy safety in the outdoors.
This wasn’t a theoretical conversation. As a teenager, I got trapped in a snowstorm with three mates in a remote part of Otago. We had not prepared properly and did not have enough food or supplies. Everyone had assumed we would be able to spend a long day outdoors and return that evening. Instead, we got caught in a storm that nearly killed us. It was pure luck that we survived. The principles we have spoken about in this series are not theoretical. They are what I wish I had known when I went out that day.
When I pitched this series to On Track Meals, I did so for several reasons. Firstly, we both came from outdoor backgrounds. Rich and Andrew worked as guides on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, while I had worked for guiding companies in Canada and New Zealand. From both sides, we knew what it was practically like to venture off the beaten path and shared a sense of adventure.
But more importantly, with our reach, this was not theoretical: “This could actually save someone’s life.” We are not just jointly promoting a product I genuinely stand by; we are also promoting the shared values that the outdoors should be respected, waste needs to be carried out, and that planning beforehand can make a real difference
This was an extremely exciting partnership to undertake for our Stewart Island Adventure. With a focus on expedition food planning, understanding real calorie requirements in remote terrain, building contingency into trips, the role of base camp caches, managing waste responsibly in the backcountry, the reliability of retort pouch meals in wet environments, and the importance of flameless heater technology when stove systems fail or conditions deteriorate.
We chose Stewart Island because it is one of the few places in New Zealand that is still ‘untouched’ by people. In many ways, it is the ‘last wilderness of New Zealand’. Most visitors to the island will only visit the single settlement of Oban and the tracks on the northern side of the island. The southern half of the island is remote, slow to move through, and heavily shaped by weather that can change plans without warning.
The Port Pegasus region in particular still carries real conservation significance, including areas where kākāpō were present within living memory, which made it a powerful setting for telling a story about how conservation work and safe expedition planning intersect. It is also the kind of terrain many people underestimate. Stewart Island is not a true alpine environment but instead a mixture of subalpine scrublands in the interior and mixed podocarp forest near the coast. However, it is wet, dense, and demanding country where calorie planning, contingency food supplies, and reliable cooking systems can make a meaningful difference to decision making in the field, which made it the right environment to explore these ideas in practice.
Trips like this are never just about filming conservation content. They are about moving safely through these environments and leaving them in the same condition we found them.
That is what shaped our collaboration with On Track Meals before we even left the mainland. When we started planning Stewart Island together, the conversation was not about taking product into the field for the sake of visibility. It was about whether we could use the expedition to show how food actually functions as part of a safety system in remote New Zealand landscapes. With the number of people who follow our work each month, that message matters. Most outdoor accidents do not begin with massive mistakes. They begin with small planning assumptions that compound into major problems in remote environments where help is a long distance away.
The original plan was to spend five days moving through the Port Pegasus region, working both the coastline and the tops while documenting the wider conservation history of southern Rakiura. But dense Stewart Island bush has a way of throwing a spanner into the best laid plans. It rains more than two hundred days a year here, tracks are virtually non-existent, and travel slows to a crawl as the scrublands turn into an almost impenetrable hedge of vines.
So we packed for seven days instead. That decision ended up being one of the best things we could do. Partway through the expedition, the route we intended to take south became impassable, the team split movement between the coast and higher country, and a major storm system slowed our ability to regroup. Because we had brought extra food, none of those changes created additional pressure. Groups often find themselves forced to move in dangerous weather because they are running low on food. Our choice to pack seven days of food instead of five meant that food did not become the limiting factor in our decision making, which in remote terrain is one of the most important advantages you can give yourself.
Calories were the first place we saw the difference that approach made. People consistently underestimate how much energy they burn in the New Zealand backcountry, particularly in the vast scrublands of Stewart Island, where travel can slow to a crawl while navigating almost impenetrable bush. Compound that with brutal wind chill from storms coming off the ocean, and it is completely normal to sit somewhere around three to four thousand calories per day without noticing it happening. If you pack like you are walking a weekend track near a road end, you are already well behind your calorie intake. That is not just a challenge; it can become life threatening in an already demanding environment.
Before the trip, we worked backwards from expected calorie burn and built a structured intake plan rather than relying on luck. That was incredibly important because meals became a key part of our safety planning and overall experience, and that has practical benefits.
One afternoon, after I injured my leg ascending the tops, I noticed my thinking slowing down less than an hour from camp. It would have been easy to keep moving, but that brain fog and energy crash can become dangerous quickly. Instead, we stopped immediately and used one of the flameless heater pouches to prepare a hot meal on the spot. Within minutes, the mental fog lifted. It was a small decision at the time, but in retrospect exactly the kind of moment where fatigue turns into mistakes if you push through it.
The technology behind the meals mattered more than we expected as well. Most backcountry food in New Zealand is freeze dried. On Stewart Island, the difference between freeze-dried meals and retort pouch meals became obvious quickly. Retort meals are already hydrated and sealed fresh, which means they taste better and, when coupled with flameless heater bags, do not depend on dry conditions to prepare properly. When everything around you is wet and wind is moving across exposed tops, reducing setup time around meals makes it far more realistic to stop early and refuel properly rather than pushing on because cooking feels inconvenient. It is one of those advantages that only becomes clear in hindsight but made a massive difference to our energy levels and trip safety.
The flameless heater bags were the piece of equipment that surprised the team most. At first they felt like a backup system rather than something we expected to rely on. Then one evening on the tops the wind made stove use unrealistic and the temperature dropped quickly once we stopped moving. Being able to activate a heater pouch with a small amount of water and produce a hot meal without flame or shelter changed the tone of that camp completely. Several of us said afterwards we would carry heater pouches on all future trips, simply because they remove one of the most common failure points in expedition cooking systems. In remote country redundancy is critical and the difference between a safe and risky trip.
Another decision that proved unexpectedly valuable was leaving a five-day Go Bucket food cache near our drop-off point before splitting into two travelling groups. At the time, it felt like a precaution. Later, it became a really important insurance policy that allowed us to reduce pressure around our return window, knowing we had several extra days of supplies available if needed.
Alongside the contingency Go Bucket, we also carried a full set of On Track Meals ration packs across the trip, including both standard and vegetarian versions so we could test how the system worked across different dietary needs in real expedition conditions. Each daily ration pack is structured as a complete field food system rather than just a single evening meal. They include a main retort pouch dinner, a second hot meal option, snacks for movement through the day, hydration support, coffee, and flameless heater bags that allow meals to be prepared without a stove if required.
That made a noticeable difference to how we managed energy across the expedition, because instead of relying on loose snack food, we were working from a predictable calorie base each day. The hydration mixes were particularly useful in wet scrub country, where you are burning energy constantly but not always noticing fluid loss, and having drip coffee built into the ration packs meant we started our mornings with a comfort from home, something we coffee lovers deeply appreciated. The phrase “manna from heaven” was thrown around a few times in reference to the quality of coffee included.
Across the team there were some clear favourites. James and Rhys both kept reaching for the Slow Cooked Australian Steak mixed with Pumpkin and Potato Mash, which quickly became one of the top-rated end-of-day meals on the trip for the whole group. So much so that it became a significant point of contention as to ownership of each packet of Slow Cooked Australian Steak, and we have all agreed that next trip we need to bring many more packets of it.
Dylan really liked the Beef Bolognese, and I kept coming back to mixing Coconut Ginger Chicken with Coconut Rice Pudding, which provided a colossal energy boost in tough conditions and struck a good balance between flavour and energy after long days moving through heavy terrain. One of the things that stood out most over the week was how different retort pouch meals feel compared with freeze-dried food in persistent rain.
Because the meals are already hydrated and sealed fresh, they heat faster, require less setup time, and are easier to prepare in exposed conditions where stopping briefly to refuel can make a real difference to decision making. The five-day Go Bucket followed the same logic at a larger scale, providing a sealed contingency reserve containing multiple complete meals, heater pouches, and supporting nutrition designed specifically to sit at base camp as insurance if weather delayed extraction or movement between groups. Having that sitting quietly in the background reduced a lot of pressure, because it meant food never became the factor shaping our timing.
Contingency matters when plans change and you realise you still have options beyond pushing on or feeling like you need to go beyond your limit because you are running low on supplies. That flexibility is one of the reasons structured expedition food systems make sense in environments like remote Stewart Island, where plans rarely follow the schedule you imagined before departure.
What stayed with us most from the trip, though, was not the technology itself but what it allowed us to do. Stewart Island still carries a sense of mystery that is difficult to find elsewhere in the country. Few people ever find themselves in this environment, and fewer still push inland from the coast. Being in the last location in New Zealand that held kākāpō in the wild was a humbling experience and changes how you think about the landscape around you.
Each evening we returned to camp soaked, tired, and completely blown away by where we had spent the day. Meals became a shared connection. As a group of mates, we sat around and talked about the experiences we had. We compared routes, talked through the terrain ahead, and built memories that will last a lifetime. That shared connection matters. These are often the moments that turn interest in the outdoors into a long-term commitment to conservation.
That is ultimately why this collaboration existed in the first place. Learning to protect wild places is inseparable from learning how to move safely through them. Food planning sounds like a small part of that story until you spend time in landscapes where the margin between comfort and exposure is measured in hours rather than days. On Stewart Island, carrying a structured food system meant we could move more slowly when conditions changed, stop earlier when energy dropped, and stay longer in country that still feels genuinely wild. In places like that, the difference between a meal and a safety system is smaller than most people realise.
On Track Meals are now available in stores across New Zealand, and if you’re planning your own trip into remote country you can find your nearest stockist here: On Track Meals https://ontrackmeals.co.nz/