Backpacker's Chocolate: A Trailside Luxury

Keeping chocolate from pooling into a liquid mess in your backpack long has been a dilemma for chocoholics. Oh, there are chocolate bars supposedly made for backpacking that take an awful lot of heat without melting, but they're typically bland-tasting, not something you can truly enjoy after making the summit or while cooling your feet in a river or lake after a 10-mile hike.
Well, my friends, if you need a chocolate fix deep in the backcountry, there's a product out there for you. Backpacker's Weatherproof Gourmet Chocolate not only stands up to the heat, but tastes rich and chocolaty.
The secret to its staying power is an outer shell of wax, kind of like that encasing a round of Gouda cheese. The wax keeps the chocolate in place until you're ready for it. If you're hiking on a hot day, once you reach camp, one preferably next to a stream or lake, you merely dunk the cake of chocolate into the water for a half-hour or so to firm up. Then you cut through the wax and have at the chocolate.
The times I used it this summer the chocolate never got hard like a bar, but rather was more like truffle in both consistency and taste.
It's kind of pricey, at $8 for four ounces, but if you really love chocolate and want a great-tasting backcountry treat, it's worth it. You can order it on-line here. The bars come in a variety of flavors, from raspberry and peanut butter to orange chili and nuts and berries.