[pct-l] Trail food

[The Mountain Goat]

Bob;
You will probably get a number of good answers on this forum. When I went in 2005, I figured for myself, about 4,600 calories a day. This is a little below average. Accord to some information I got over time, it appears that the average hiker needs 5000-6000 calories. There are a lot of factors in how many you actually need. Are you pulling 22 miles a day, 6 days a week? Are you one of those supper humans who goes 40+ miles a day? Are you taking your time at 15 miles a day?

On a 'typical' PCT thru hike, where you plan on 5 months of hiking with an average of 22 miles a day.... 5000-6000 calories is about right. 
Other factors include how much do you weigh, are you already lean for the hike, or will you be dropping some weight as you go along. 

In my case, I started at 146LB, drooped to 136LB by Agua Dulca. my weight pretty much stayed around 136-138 for the rest of the hike. 

Generally I found that I would eat about 4000 calories a day, and 'catch up' at trail; towns. The missing 600-1000 calories a day, showed up over time, as each lb of fat I burned off is 3,600 calories. By the time I hit the Sierra, I couldn't loose any more weight, and had to carry a little more food, basically from mile 700- 2659.

You will probably find a number of answers to what food people take. I suggest that you find out what you like. For me, I like Cous Cous a lot, and had it about every 5 days, for months, and that worked for me, Stove top stuffing was a great idea the first time, and a bad idea the second time I had it. Know what you like and what you don't like. For Lunches I would eat all day long on nuts and dried fruits. This worked for 3 months, after which I got tired of the nuts. In reality my body wanted something different. The nuts although high in calories, but did not provide enough nutrient that my body needed. Since my food was a little shy on lunches, I just bought some extra stuff at Resorts, and got a few care packages from my parents. Stuff like protean bars, granola, and when everybody else was tired of TVP, I started picking it up in the hiker boxes, and thought it was the bomb. (That is to say, I liked it a lot, and FYI -TVP is textured vegetable protean)

And this opens up yet another can of worms... Resupply as you go or package all your food up in advance and have it mailed to you. Many people will probably tell you to resupply as you go, I went with the pre-resupply strategy, because I knew what I wanted, and made a few adjustments on the trail. Basically I planned 110 days  of food, and had to add some extra stuff on the way to the lunches. Dinners worked out almost perfect, except for a couple packages of stove stop stuffing which I conveniently put in the hiker box, in case, somebody else actually liked it...

Resupplying ahead of time worked for me, but may not work for you. It depends if what they have at the resorts is what you can eat, or if you don't mind hitching to larger towns, when possible. In my case, I can't have a number of things, and pre-resupplying worked for me.

Hope that helps.
-Mountain Goat-
PCT 2005.




Bob and Diana Nelson      benelson at ktc.com        
     

Greetings,

     I plan to start northbound in April 2007. Am sure that I will have many
questions for this forum but currently I'm looking at food. The question is
this, how many calories a day do experienced hikers shoot for and how do
they get them?



 		
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