Article review: "Budget Hiking on a Short Schedule"

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/archive/index.php?t-33346.html

Good article! It raises once again the tricky topic of food and resupply. Eating junk food may require you to consume more calories, the author thinks. A couple links to more bulk food stores are included.

The part about hiking when it's cold and relaxing when it's hot to save time and energy is important, as is his advice to get into town in the mid-morning, eat some food, then do one's errands and leave when the food has had time to digest. 

Food ideas

This is really interesting:

Proper nutrition is essential. Poor nurtition will make you miserable. It will slow you down, and it will give you irrational, irresistible urges to spend lots of money at restaurants.

When I thru-hiked the AT in 2006 I bought food along the way. I ate around 7,000 calories a day, hiked far fewer miles than I did on 5,000 calories a day on the PCT, and had a never-ending appetite 24/7. 

I'm certainly not qualified to give nutritional advice, but pay attention to what you eat! If you read information from past thru-hikers you can end up with some terrible advice. Thru-hiking on pop tarts, peanut butter, bagels, and mac'n' cheese is very common. Most thru-hikers on such a diet struggle to do short mileages, are constantly hungry, and get worn down and depressed towards the end of their hikes. And they wonder why!

I recommend maildrops. That is to say, you will mail yourself packages of food to post offices (care of general delivery) and businesses that are near the trail. They are cheaper, more reliable, quicker, and they provide better nutrition when compared to buy as you go. The best way to mail yourself food is to use priority flat rate boxes. You can usually fit around 4 days of food in one of these, and you can send any reasonable amount of weight to anywhere in the US for $9. The post office will send you the boxes, tape, and labels for free if you are using priority mail. Let's assume that we have 40 total packages, an average of a package for every three days for 120 days. I try to send mail drops every 3-5 days, and the 5 day packages usually take up 2 boxes. So we spend $360 (rounded up to $400) on postage.

Here is a sample of my 2007 food. I ate the same thing every day on both my 850 mile AT training hike and my 2,700 mile PCT thru-hike. A typical day for me for the bulk of my PCT hike was 37-42 miles, and I weighed around 170 during that period. I spent around $11/day on food. Plan food according to mileage and your weight. $1000 should be plenty for an AT thru-hike.