[pct-l] PCT Thru Hike Resupply Strategy

[jeff.singewald at comcast.net]

Diane,

I think it is really a personal choice.  In 2006 I used resupply drops exclusively for breakfast and dinner and my morning and afternoon trail snacks and did town resupplies for lunch meals.  The argument that I frequently heard in advance for not doing resupply drops is that you don't want to be stuck and tire of the food you have in your resupply drops.  I think this could be a problem, however, planning I found this could be avoided.

In advance, I found 12 different dehydrated meals (from Mary Jane Organics and MountainAire) that I found appealing.  I purchased these in bulk and than re-packaged these for my resupply drops.  I never ate the same dinner meal more than once every 12 days.  This worked well for me.  To address another argument that your eating habits and quantity may change, I only pre-packed my resupplies for California in advance.  As I reached northern california, I re-ordered the bulk meals and took a zero day at the Oregon border and prepped my drops for Oregon and Washington.  As I was averaging 30+ miles a day from that point on, I also adjusted the quantity of food and location of drops based on this mileage for Oregon and Washington.

I think for people that don't enjoy this part of planning and this level of preparation in advance of the hike, the town resupply strategy is a preferred option.  For me, I didn't enjoy wasting my limited town time shopping for resupply and dealing with post offices.  I used only three postal drops the entire way and sent all of my other resupply drops to non-post-office locations.  This way, I was not at the beck and call of  post-office hours.

This was also one of the main reasons I chose not to use a bounce box/bucket.  This is really a personal preference though.  I would guess that you will tire of the limited items that are available in some towns just as quickly as you would tire of what you might send in a resupply box.  

Have fun, good luck and Walk On!

Elevator

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes <diane at santabarbarahikes.com> 

> Those guys ate chips, ramen and pop-tarts. That doesn't sound very 
> healthy. I could see supplementing your diet with that, but to depend 
> on it? Maybe it's the old lady in me but it seems you might have a 
> better time with more nutritious foods. 
> 
> Tell me I'm wrong, though, because I don't want to be stuck with a 
> bunch of healthy food I won't eat because pop-tarts work better. 
> 
> Diane 
> On Mar 21, 2008, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote: 
> > 
> > These guys did it with only one resupply box. 
> > 
> > http://www.purebound.com/PCT/resupply.htm 
> > 
> > On 3/21/08, Phil Newhouse wrote: 
> >> Does anyone have an idea of how many thru-hikers have completed 
> >> the PCT 
> >> without employing the "drop box" resupply strategy: i.e. they 
> >> resupplied 
> >> with whatever they found in "town" 
> >> 
> >> phil of irvine 
> 
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