[pct-l] Food weight/calaries/day

[brick@fastpack.com (Brick Robbins)]

At 01:03 PM 10/21/02, you wrote:
>  I have read that one needs about 2.5 lbs of food per day.  I have done
> several
>1 - 2 week solos and found that 2.5 lbs of food is too much for
>me.  Perhaps the nutritional concentration
>in the food has something to do with the poundage required.
>
>I would appreciate any thoughts from you long distance hikers regarding
>food weight/day.

I found that I lost weight on a 25 mile/day thru hike while planning on
about 5,000 cal a day carried on my back, and pigging out in town stops.
Smaller hikers will need less. Additional miles require about 100 cal per
mile, so do cold weather and hilly sections.

I've also found it takes me about two weeks on the trail before my appetite
kicks in and I really need that much. I planned my Colorado Trial hike (two
weeks) this summer using the same numbers, and had too much for the first
part, but just about right the last 3 day section.

I also found that 5000 cal weighs in, more or less, at about a kilo, or 2.2
lbs. If you ate pure fat, you could get that weight down to about 550g, or
a little over a pound, but that wouldn't taste very good

YMMV.

--
Brick Robbins                       mailto:brick@fastpack.com