View Full Version : days hiked before food resupply
mark schofield
12-06-2010, 07:38
How many days do you all go between stopping to resupply for food and the calorie binge in town. Last year. I went out for 13 days and was fine until after the first week when my energy level started to drop. Probably because of not enough calories. A lesson learned for me. 7 days is probably my optimum time on the trail between in town calorie pig-outs. It would be difficult for me to carry the 5-6K calories needed per day because of the weight. Mark S.
I think I carrried 6 days of food a couple of times early on but after mastering the necessary AT skill of "hitchhiking" plus dealing with some sort of staph infection on my right leg around DWG (Pa.) I never wanted to go more than 4 days without a shower and laundry. So 3-4 days was the norm plus an extra meal just in case.
garlic08
12-06-2010, 10:15
I usually think in terms of miles, not days. I'm real comfortable with 100-mile carries, pretty routinely. On the AT I would pass up towns if they were not walking distance of the trail, if the next town was right on trail and within that 100-mile range (my first hitch was in VT). That's usually 4 or 5 days on good trail like the AT. Food weight for that is between eight and ten pounds.
My longest distance was just over 180 miles in rough and sometimes trail-less terrain, seven tough days. That was 14 pounds, about the most I like to carry if I'm hiking all day. I agree with your seven day figure.
Tipi Walter
12-06-2010, 10:48
Most of my backpacking trips are in the 15 to 20 day range without resupply. I have found my limit with one load to be around 21 days, and this computes to about 45 pounds of total food load including neat things like apples and avocados and other heavy items. Ya gotta eat well and ya gotta carry food that you will want to eat for the whole 20 days. Variety is the name of the game.
So it's possible for any normal adult backpacker to go out for around 3 weeks on one load without resupply.
Depends on the section but 2-4 days is a good average with 7 being the longest. Why carry weight if you don't have too?
"How many days do you all go between stopping to resupply for food and the calorie binge in town. "
This depends hugely on the condition of the hiker, weight carried, terrain, even weather.
I think that in general, past thru- and long-section hikers are going to think of this in different terms than folks who tend to do shorter trips.
For example, Spokes' 2-4 days (above) I think might reflect a typical AT thru-hiker viewpoint, whereas other types of hikers, and/or hikers on other trails might opine differently from their particular experience.
When I hike I have noticed that a few extra pounds of food will let you stay on the trail longer with less resupply. This has helped me spend more time on the trail and save a lot of money on town treats. How much $$ would you save if you cut your town days in half?
In researching for my trip next spring I printed out the Thru Hikers Planning Spreadsheet" here:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/index.php?page=15%20mile%20plan
It looks like that plan is for a stop every two or three days. I'll probably skip some and go for resupply every four days or so and a zero every 7 to 10 days.
At the beginning of my hike a 5 day or more stretch with only the food in my pack was entirely doable. I could even skip a few meals and feel fine. Later on, 5 days was pretty much my maximum. I really didn't want to carry more food than that (I ate twice as much as at the start and would panic if I was running out) and after about 5 days I felt like the whole world was turning gray, I didn't have feelings anymore, I kind of had retreated inside myself. A good meal would make me feel alive and in color again.
In researching for my trip next spring I printed out the Thru Hikers Planning Spreadsheet" here:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/index.php?page=15%20mile%20plan
It looks like that plan is for a stop every two or three days. I'll probably skip some and go for resupply every four days or so and a zero every 7 to 10 days.
Don H, the spreadsheet is a great start to get your "head around" re-supply strategy. You'll be amazed how quickly you'll get the hang of knowing how many days food to pack along the way once you get into your own rhythm.
In addition to a guidebook, I also carried Baltimore Jack's re-supply article by section (put the other sections in my bounce box). It listed all the extra information about what to expect that guidebooks typically omit. That really helped planning food quantities as well.
Cheers!
Many who hike the PCT do a 10-12 day stretch in the High Sierra with no resupply and thats hiking over the toughest stretch of the trail at high altitude. Though there are some resupply options through there that some use like the one over Keasarge Pass that requires 12miles of scenic hiking off trail. Maybe its because I don't skimp on food to save weight, but I've never bonked even on a 10day stretch. The only issue I've had on a long stretch was not enough salt in my diet which I noticed around day 7 and fortunately was able to correct before it became an issue by begging... err yoging.
That said, if I was on the AT, I don't see why you'd want to go more then 3-5days without a resupply. It allows for a smaller and lighter pack if nothing else.
"It looks like that plan is for a stop every two or three days. I'll probably skip some and go for resupply every four days or so and a zero every 7 to 10 days."
I'm with Miner on this; there are a lot of things to *not* like about the AT, but one to definitely *like* IMO is how often and how easy it is to get off and resupply. Very nice to eat town food more often and carry less food weight in between. I think that I lost weight slower and got my hiker hunger later on the AT than I did on the PCT because of this, eating in towns or similar more often.
Zero every 7 to 10 days: what you might consider (particularly to keep costs under control) is more Nero's and relatively few Zero's. That's what I and in general folks I was with did this year. If you work it right you can have a Nero where you spend something on the order of 24 hours off trail, come back on trail as refreshed as from a Zero but with a bit less time spent just sitting around (some zero's you end up wishing you hadn't taken a whole day off), and for the cost of just one overnight town stay.
Many who hike the PCT do a 10-12 day ...
that any hiker who posts a question here is doing so in reference to an AT hike since this is (I thought) a board "dedicated to the Appalachian trail enthusiast". Am I wrong in assuming this? Not that the other trails aren't of interest but my assumption is that if he or any other poster wanted information specific to the PCT or CDT or whatever they would take it to those message boards. Not saying that some of the information isn't relevant or entertaining or helpful but one thing that is not relevant is days between resupply.
Jack Tarlin
12-07-2010, 16:07
Mark:
There is a piece in the "Articles" section of this website that will give you a pretty good idea about how long it'll take the typical hiker to cover a particular section of trail, i.e. it'll give you a good idea aboiut how much food you'll likely need for each stretch.
You'll probably find that even if ou're capable of doing so, you simply won't want to be in the woods for seven days at a stretchm even if you could comfortably carry that much in the way of food. Most folks go thru 2 to 2 1/2 pounds of food a day, so a 7-day load would be a lot! Except for a very few places, you'll nbever really need to carry this much on the A.T., as the places to re-supply are more numerous and more easily accebile than you might think. In most cases, you'l be carrying between 3-5 days at a time; in a few places you'll need less, in a very few, you'll want more. But unless one is hurt, slow, or is deliberately doing short days for one reason or another, you'll never need more than a week's worth of food at a time on the A.T., and for all sorts of reasons, you won't be wanting to carry this big a food-load unless you really have need to.
I am fully of the more Nero less Zero camp, great way to save money and really I didnt want to spend time in town. I wanted to be on the trail, I loved sleeping in the woods, by myself.
So in that tread I was mostly carrying 7 days of food and skipping towns.. So distracting, all the restaurants, the towny people, its very easy to forget why you are out there. I found only the first day was hard after the resupply.. going from 15lbs to 35lbs took more will to lug around, but taking a full pecan pie can make up for any "hardship".
(yeah I had the biggest foodbag of all the hikers I met on the trail and I was still too skinny)
sbhikes makes a good point, one which I haven't experienced, yet. After a few weeks of hiking metabolism kicks in and you need to eat much more food. I've only done one week trips and have not had a big appetite.
Tipi Walter
12-08-2010, 01:01
Mark:
You'll probably find that even if ou're capable of doing so, you simply won't want to be in the woods for seven days at a stretchm even if you could comfortably carry that much in the way of food. Most folks go thru 2 to 2 1/2 pounds of food a day, so a 7-day load would be a lot!
Total subjective judgment call here. Some might not want to be in the woods for seven days or more at a stretch, others might very well like it. He might want to be out longer and carry more food. All of my trips in the last couple years have been in the 12 to 20 day range, and I don't mind the extra food weight if it means I can stay out longer w/o interruption. My daily mileage varies from 2 or 3 to 14 or so. No sweat.
Tipi Walter
12-08-2010, 01:05
Double post error and edited.
Jack Tarlin
12-08-2010, 16:25
Tipi:
You're sort of right about my comment being subjective, and you're also right that carrying extra food permits one to be out longer, to take some really slow days (tho few thru-hikers plan on 2 or 3 mile days), to take a zero day in the woods, etc. But most thru-hikers, even the ones who prefer the woods to towns do NOT want to leave town packing a 20 or 20-plus pound food bag, and that's not subjective, it's simple fact. People that carry 12-20 day food supplies on the A.T. are a very small minority.