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Walking uphill with an insulated bag on your back is a compromise between two things that pull in opposite directions. Cold needs mass, and mass is the thing you least want at eight hundred metres. Most walkers resolve this badly, either by carrying a full cooler for a day trip or by taking nothing and eating a warm cheese sandwich at the summit.

Decide whether you need cold at all

A great deal of hill food does not require chilling. Oatcakes, hard cheese, cured sausage, flapjack, nuts, dried fruit and firm apples travel perfectly at ambient temperature for a full day. If your menu is built from those, you can leave the packs at home and save several hundred grams. That is the honest first question.

When cold does matter

Two-day trips, hot weather, or food you genuinely want chilled change the answer. Here a slim insulated bag inside the rucksack, rather than a rigid cooler strapped to the outside, is the sensible format. Soft-sided bags of the sort found at https://mexsus.com/ compress into a pack and take the shape of what is around them.

Ice packs versus frozen food

On a long day, the best cold source is often the food itself. A frozen wrap or a frozen carton of juice packed against the perishable items acts as your pack for the first half of the walk and is thawed and edible by lunch. You carry one item instead of two, which on a hill is the whole argument.

Where the bag sits in the rucksack

Against your back is the warmest place in the pack, because you are a heat source. Put the insulated bag towards the outside of the load and towards the top, with clothing between it and your spine. Do not strap it to the outside where it will sit in the sun all day.

• Build the menu from ambient-stable foods where you can
• Use frozen food as its own ice pack on longer days
• Keep the bag inside the rucksack, away from your back
• Carry out every wrapper, core and crumb of leftover food
• Dry the bag properly at home; damp kit in a cupboard grows mould

The summit is not a picnic table

Hill weather changes fast, and a bag left open on a rock while you eat will fill with grit, rain or a surprising amount of wind-blown sand. Take out what you intend to eat, close the bag, and put it back in the pack. It takes ten seconds and prevents a soaked lining on the descent.

Water, condensation and the wet-map problem

Thawing packs sweat, and inside a rucksack that moisture has nowhere to go except into your spare fleece and your map. A sealed liner bag or a simple freezer bag around the insulated bag solves it entirely. This is the single most common complaint from people who otherwise did everything right.

What to do with what you did not eat

If you carried cooked meat or a dairy-based item and it stayed cold, it will keep for the drive home in a bag with life left in its packs. If the packs are liquid and the bag is at air temperature, treat that food as spent. Hill days are long, and food that has been warm for six hours is not worth the risk of a ruined week.