I put off writing this review. I've devoted a good chunk of my time and attention these last several years to the pursuit of good food, tasting and tinkering. Food is culture: a toy, a medium, an experiment, history, language. The PCT is different. The PCT tore out the seams of my food culture and threw away all the extra bits because they were too heavy. On the trail, food is fuel. I've never burned fuel so fast in my life. You can feel the oscillations in your blood sugar with unbelievable acuity, giving a whole new meaning to being hungry. And at the same time, food is finite. If you didn't pack it, you don't eat it; if you did it wrong, there's no way to fix it; if you eat too much at once, you're out of luck later, because there isn't any more.
This very vulnerable state was a new experience for me, simultaneously liberating and terrifying. On a full belly, thirteen-thousand-foot mountain passes, say, or hurricane-force winds seem manageable, even trivial. But I'm pretty sure everybody messes up their resupply at least once, and when that happens, you feel like you're coming apart at the seams. It's uncomfortable to go back to that place.
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| wild strawberries! |
But this is important stuff for thru-hikers. It may be useful for someone else to know where I made my mistakes, and how I fixed them. And it seems like a good way to close out the year.
***
Resupply Strategy:
Where you choose to get your food has a direct impact on what you eat. I followed my resupply plan pretty closely, but a few things changed along the way.
Mojave, CA: After facing down a windstorm, I was prepared to flee to whichever town still boasted roofs and walls. There are a lot more restaurants and trail angels in Tehachapi, and evidently it's an easier hitch, but I got a ride from a fellow hiker with a borrowed car and went to Mojave. All I wanted to do was hide in a motel room, out of the wind. I didn't care about anything else. Motel 6 (with laundry), the diner (with cheese and avocado omelets), the grocery store, and the library (with internet) were all within walking distance.
Independence, CA: There is nothing here. I really mean that. Send yourself a box or be ready to hitch to Bishop. The exit over the Kearsarge Pass is a royal pain the ass, but I can't think of any other plausible way to break up the Sierra; carrying enough food to get me to VVR was completely out of the question. Bishop or Mammoth Lakes would be good places to take an extra zero and build resupply boxes for northern California.
Tuolumne Meadows, CA: I didn't resupply here, but it looked possible. My folks came down to meet me at Tuolumne, and again at Sonora Pass to take bear canisters away, for which I can never thank them sufficiently. Paul and I shopped in Lee Vining for both resupply stops. If you go to Lee Vining, don't miss the Whoa Nelly Deli at the gas station.
Sierra City, CA: This store is pretty good, but it was also pretty cleaned out when I visited, and there's only the one store. I know Paul had a frustrating time trying to resupply here. I received a truly wonderful care package in Sierra City, which helped a lot. The post office is right there, and you're probably going to need new shoes anyway; I'd suggest sending a box.
Belden, CA: Even less here than in Independence--no post office, and no place to hitch to. Send a box to Brenda Braaten, or else be prepared to skip it entirely. (Given the elevation drop and gain, that would be a tall order, but I know at least one person who did it.)
Chester, CA and Drakesbad Guest Ranch: I skipped Chester and sent a box to Drakesbad, with the understanding that it was a hiker's paradise. As it happens, the Ranch has changed hands and is trying to cultivate a more refined image. The current owners do not appreciate crowds of the linearly homeless draped over the deck with their balls hanging out of their shorts, strewing food wrappers and mailing boxes all over christendom. That is their prerogative, but it was a little disappointing. I heard so many good reports about the warm people of Chester from other hikers that I was a little sorry to have missed out. Oh well.
I suggest that you do not resupply at Old Station. Good place to eat a sandwich and throw out any extras in your food bag. Then buy four bottles of Gatorade. You're about to hike Hat Creek Rim--more than thirty miles without water sources--and it's really fucking hot outside. You're going to carry a shitload of water, and it's going to be heavy. You don't need anything extra.
Burney, CA: An easy hitch, and a very, very welcome break. You just hiked Hat Creek Rim.
Castella, CA: I think I could easily have resupplied at this mini-mart, but as it turned out I had TWO excellent boxes--one from myself, bulked up with treats from Mom, and one from Silas; so much food that I bounced the surplus to Ashland--and even with all those goodies, I chose poorly. Not enough fat. I crashed. Repeatedly. The four days between Castella and Etna felt like a train wreck. It happens.
Unrelatedly, Paul got his iPhone stolen at this mini-mart. We hitched to Mt Shasta to get it replaced, then hitched right back to the trail again, before we could decide to quit. People in Shasta are super-friendly. I recommend hanging out in front of the food co-op and looking battle-weary. Kind hippies will ask for your stories, and offer rides.
Ashland, OR: My folks came down to meet me in Ashland, and I put together the resupply for nearly all of Oregon. Because I'd learned a few things in 1700 miles, we drove to Medford, where there is a Trader Joe's and REI, and it made the task much easier. Lots of good stores in Ashland, though. The Shop'N Kart is where you want to go. And don't skip the Morning Glory Café--if I lived in Ashland, I would work there, and that's saying something.
Santiam Pass, OR: When I built my resupply in Ashland, I wasn't sure if I would hitch to Sisters or Bend, but I knew I would want to get off the trail for a zero by the time I got this far, so I elected to skip Big Lake Youth Camp and resupply in town. Good decision. After walking across all that lava I wanted a break. I got a ride with some wonderful traveling trail angels in their pop-top VW to Bend, where another set of trail angels adopted me and my hiking companions. These people housed us, fed us, and took us around town to--yes--Trader Joe's. I can't vouch for the relative ease or difficulty of hitching along this highway, or resupplying in Bend or Sisters, but I have very fond memories of this stop.
Cascade Locks, OR: I would not want to resupply for all of Washington here. The grocery store isn't terrible, I could easily have bought enough for the long march to White Pass, but for all of Washington? That could be tough. My dad came down to meet me, and we headed to Portland for groceries and shoes.
White Pass and Snoqualmie Pass, WA: My dad drove out to meet me, bringing the resupply that I'd bought earlier. I know, right? My resupply crew was the greatest. We stayed in Packwood and North Bend, respectively.
Stehekin, WA: The bakery here is absolutely wonderful (I would work there, too), but seriously, just take a day and eat there. Enjoy it. (I wish I had, but we were racing against the weather.) Don't resupply at the bakery. Packing big bags of scones and cinnamon rolls sounds appealing in theory, but in practice it was cumbersome. The tiny store at the lodge has nothing. Send a box.
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| Frosty and Goldilocks repackaging their supplies in Kennedy Meadows |
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| town food is important, too |
Lots of General Notes:
The food you eat on a long-distance hike sucks, there's no getting around it. Some hikers reckon that since we're living on garbage anyway, the grade of garbage doesn't make that much difference. I disagree. One of my decisions going into this trip was to spare no expense on comestibles, so future hikers should take heed that mine may not be the most cost-effective approach to resupply. At the grocery store in Wrightwood, for instance, a fellow hiker spotted a bag of dried strawberries in my shopping basket and observed wistfully that they "looked good, but were too pricey." To me, however, those strawberries were worth every penny, because I ate them without wincing, even looked forward to eating them. I can't say that about much of the other stuff in my shopping basket. My top priority was finding food that made me happy, and that was an enormous challenge without imposing a dollar limit. You get tired of buying and eating too-sweet too-salty long-life Indestructo-Food©. You get tired of eating, period. Skimping on food money adds an unnecessary complication to building good resupply, in my opinion.
That said, Trader Joe's is the best and most affordable source for hiking food that I found. They carry many wonders: freshies and sample tables for sating your immediate desires, granola and instant oatmeal, lots of cookies and candies, dried fruit, nuts, trail mix, cheese, all the bars, chips and crackers and tasty noshes. I don't know what I would have done without them. The only things you can't get at TJ's are bread items with preservatives in them (important for mailing ahead) and trail dinners. For those, I went to Safeway.
I did not make and dehydrate any of my food at home, myself, in advance. For some people, the process of preparing meals and food boxes is part of the journey, and I respect that. I also spoke to many for whom it was a source of great dissatisfaction later; their homemade curries and gumbos were not as tasty (read: salty) as they wished, or portions weren't big enough, or they got tired of eating the same thing over and over. Then again, I scored some really delicious meals that these people had discarded in their frustration, and it made a welcome change. I would say, if you've never thru-hiked before, you're bound to screw up, no matter which approach you take. So if you are excited to make your own food, do it. But be prepared to abandon some or a lot of those dehydrated meals to the hiker box.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't want to rely on them for everything, but hiker boxes are a wonderful resource. Someone else's groan-worthy package of dehydrated pasta sauce provides a feast to the right finder. The hiker box is also a great way to concede the vagaries of appetite without feeling wasteful. (I myself 'boxed a lot of trail mix.) While I have your attention, however, be righteous about it: label your mystery packets, and throw garbage in the garbage bin. "Hiker trash" is not always a term of endearment.
One of the most common mistakes hikers make with their resupply is insufficient variety--this really can't be said enough. It's such an easy trap. You discover a great deal on tropical trail mix at WinCo, put it in all your boxes, and can't stand even to look at dried pineapple anymore. Or you find a food that works and then you're afraid to change it. If you ate a package of garlic and herb couscous at some point during the last leg and found them agreeable, by all means, get another package for the next leg--but for god's sake don't lose your head and decide to have couscous for dinner every single night, just because it's there, just "to keep things simple." That way madness lies. Paul is a creature of habit if ever there was one--he ate a peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch every day from age eight to age thirty-two, and every day it was immensely satisfying to him--but ask Paul about couscous, I dare you. Ask Paul about peanut M&Ms. 2660 miles is a long way. VARIETY. It's the spice of LIVING.
After a few weeks or months you sort out which strategies work best for your appetite, your pace, and the distance between water sources and resupply. In such a mutable context, it's tempting to cultivate a kind of daily protocol. Try it. Why not. Sometimes this is useful, like bait, because it gives you something to look forward to--gonna get to camp and cook my dinner, or gonna drink a Crystal Light at two o'clock. But don't get too attached. Stay flexible. Your approach will probably change, just like the weather and the terrain change; you'll learn to adapt, because you won't have a choice.
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| resupply out of Mojave |
***
First Meal:
-Breakfast Essentials with Starbucks Via or other instant coffee, sometimes with dry milk powder
(This was more important than I had expected. Obviously, there is coffee involved, so count me in, but that gulp of quick calories also helped get the day started right. It was totally worth carrying my pink plastic cup for the delight of my morning beverage. I drank it cold and I drank it hot. Via is expensive, but many trail angels had huge cases of the stuff for free. Story goes that a former thru-hiker's dad is some bigwig at Starbucks. Dividing a jar of plain old instant coffee among ziplocs works just as well, if you're preparing several boxes at once. I would like to state for the record that dry milk powder does not dissolve in hot water, ever. My fingernails grew at an unseemly rate while I was hiking; I blame the Breakfast Essentials.)
-Phase one: bars
(Granola bars, cereal bars, Clif Bars, Luna Bars, Belly Timber, Pemmican, Pro Bars, Bumble Bars, various other bars, and just once, "pies" in a package. I woke up super early in the desert, to try and make the most of the cooler morning hours, and this meant eating breakfast on the move. Bars have their place--they pack well in bear canisters--but I got sick of them. Pemmican are the worst bars. Pro Bars are the best bars, in flavor, nutritional profile, and calories per dollar. They are also the most expensive bars. If you can buy them in bulk at a grocery outlet or find sponsorship, do that. Yes, in Washington I eventually wound up packing Pop Tarts, but they were snacks, not breakfast.)
-Phase two: granola with powdered milk, bagels
(Granola has an alluringly high ratio of calories per ounce, but it's often terribly sweet, and it may play you false and upset your digestion. Bagels are bulky, but agreeably bland and filling. In an emergency, they can also be used as a floatation device.)
-Phase three: instant oatmeal packets (x2), often with dried fruit (or foraged berries)
(Hot breakfast was awfully nice on cold mornings in the Sierra and through Washington. Adding berries I'd picked myself transformed instant oatmeal from orphan-food into an event.)
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| hot breakfast with wild strawberries |
Cooked Meal:
In the desert, I mostly cooked at midday, while I was waiting for the sun to temper its ferocity. (I also found that I needed a big slug of calories after starting my day on bars.) This resolved into the even-less-fixed schedule of cooking where I found a water source, sometimes at midday, sometimes in the evening before getting to camp, and sometimes at campsites. In Washington, where I couldn't get away from the water sources, I mostly cooked in the evening, after I'd already pitched my tent, because a pot of hot food was a good way to make sure I'd stay warm while sleeping.
(I really wanted to like these carefully-produced, vegetarian meals. Some of them tasted alright. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that every last one of these wholesome legume-based entrees required a lot more cooking time than the directions called for. In my janky alcohol stove this was not always successful; with a JetBoil it was impossible; Paul and I both made the mistake of eating the Savory Lentil Simmer only half-cooked, and we paid for it dearly the next day.)
-Idahoan instant potatoes
(You might think all instant potatoes are the same. They're not. You want Idahoans. Instant potatoes get a bonus point because they require no cooking time; just heat up the water, or if you're in a real pinch, rehydrate and eat them cold.)
-Knorr pasta sides / rice sides
(Ugh. But they're available everywhere.)
-Annie's Organics macaroni and cheese
(Annie's has a whole line of cheesy noodles, I think I tried most of them. Don't get Kraft, it's gross.)
-Middle East couscous
(I found that I couldn't eat couscous at midday; it knocked me out. Made a good dinner food, though, if I didn't plan to hike further.)
-Instant soup in bulk
(Good old Taste Adventure split pea, black bean, and curry lentil.)
-Instant brown rice with instant refried beans
-Thai-brand instant noodle soup
(Always buy two packages for one meal, and you only need half the water called for.)
-Instant stuffing
-Various meals from other hikers and the hiker box
I did not buy, scavenge, or consume any Top Ramen. None.
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| fresh tomatoes in my couscous! a gift from some day hikers |
Uncooked Meal:
It was nice to have an easy, filling, no-cook, no-wash-up meal available, because sometimes cooking just isn't the right choice, and snacks aren't filling you up.
Flour tortillas with any of the following:
Flour tortillas with any of the following:
-peanut butter
-Nutella
-Justin's maple almond butter
-sunflower seed butter
-cheese
-instant hummus
-instant refried beans
-foil-pack tuna salad
-SPAM
I'm convinced that peanut butter will save your ass when everything else goes wrong.
-SPAM
I'm convinced that peanut butter will save your ass when everything else goes wrong.
I don't want to eat a flour tortilla again for a very long time.
Snacks:
Snacks are the most important. They are also the hardest to get right, to my way of thinking. You're aiming for a balance of sweets and salties. Sweet, because around four or five in the afternoon, your blood sugar will crash, and you need something to combat that. Salt, because you're sweating balls 100% of the time.
The best snacks came from Trader Joe's: rosemary marcona almonds, sesame cashews, dried unsweetened mango, tart dried cherries, plantain chips, sesame sticks, kale chips, pea crisps, edamame crackers, chocolate-covered nuts, peanut-butter-filled chocolate-covered pretzels, interesting cookies and candies in every form and flavor.
Otherwise, there was a lot of trail mix (homemade and store-bought), which got old really fast, and had the unfortunate tendency to melt into a colossal chocolate brown mess. Lots of nuts, dried fruit, various "energy" bars, Snickers, PayDay, peanut M&Ms, Fig Newtons, cookies, fruit snacks, sour gummy worms, sour apples, peach gummy candy, chocolates and caramels, homemade jerky, turkey jerky, vegan jerky, coconut date rolls, string cheese, corn nuts, wasabi peas, goldfish crackers in rainbow colors. I also saw a lot of Ritz crackers, pretzels, Doritos, corn chips, donettes, Little Debbie brownies, Starbursts, and Jolly Ranchers. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of stuff. Hikers are bottomless snack pits.
I love chocolate, but I had no stomach for it until the weather cooled off, very late in the game. It made me sad, but there it is. I gave a lot of it away.
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| so good. so cold. |
Beverages
Though many hikers started from Campo with a generous supply of Gatorade powder, True Lemon, and other drink additives, it took me awhile to follow suit. Access to extraordinarily good spring water is actually one of the perks of hiking in the backcountry. There were a few skunky-looking natural sources in central Oregon, but honestly, the worst-tasting water I encountered came out of the tap at Motel 6 in Mojave.
But hikers drink so much water that eventually I needed some help getting my daily allowance down the hatch. Starting near the midpoint, outside Chester, "Crystal Light with Energy" was my poison of choice. Other folk swear by Mio or Green Thunder. "With energy" means caffeinated, so on top of the Kool-Aid effect of helping me to slug a whole liter of water at a sitting, it also gave me a little boost to counter the mid-afternoon lethargy. Crystal Light is pretty vile overall--the grape is worse than cough syrup and the citrus tastes like drain cleaner--but it served a purpose.
After getting caught in a thunderstorm in Jefferson Park, WeeBee, Siesta and I started the Hot Drinks Club. Apple cider and hot chocolate go down pretty easily after you've been rained on all day. In hindsight, bouillon cubes might have been nice, too. And coffee, never forget the coffee.
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| unusual addition to a trail magic cooler in NorCal |
Extras
A lot of clever souls carried little kits of extras to make their food more interesting, or to amp up the calorie count. Most of the time, I was not one of them, but when I had them I was a happy hiker.
-Chili flakes or hot sauce
-Olive oil or cheese
-Dehydrated vegetables
-Avocados
Vitamins
I did not take any vitamins. I never take vitamins. I think all those little tablets are pretty bogus, actually. Drink a smoothie when you get to town.
Vitamins
I did not take any vitamins. I never take vitamins. I think all those little tablets are pretty bogus, actually. Drink a smoothie when you get to town.
Trail Sprouts
Remember my excitement about trail sprouts? Well, I received my sprouts bag and seeds in Echo Lake, didn't get it started until my zero in Sierra City, babied it for four days, ate the sprouts the night before getting to Belden, and finally ditched the whole kaboodle in Drakesbad, when I realized I was about to cross Hat Creek Rim. The water situation was the breaking point. The sprouts tasted wonderful, but they had to stay damp, which took frequent application of filtered water, and then the bag flopped wetly all day long, like having a dead trout tied to the top of my pack. I was pretty bummed, but it just wasn't worth it.
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| trail sprouts with sun-dried tomato cashew "cheese" from Charissa |
Foraging:
Perhaps in light of my recent bouts of urban foraging mania, at some point Silas asked if anybody had ever hiked the trail eating only what they caught or collected. I heard stories--there's always a story--about people ostensibly doing that, while simultaneously tripping their brains out. But these seem mostly to be just stories. It would be a tough task. The vegetation cannot be relied upon. Hunting lizards and snaring rabbits would consume a lot of time and energy that you can't spare if you intend to complete the trail in a single season.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed a few fine foraging forays. In spite of Paul's mockery, I had a great time digging up swamp onions along the banks of creeks in the Sierra, chopping them up and adding them to my dinner. Pennyroyal, with its distinctive delightful odor, lingers in all of my memories of California from the High Sierra northward. Some people had poles and fished for trout; I tried scooping the abundant fish out of the streams and lakes with my cooking pot, but it never worked. Midway through Oregon, the blueberries/huckleberries started showing up, and in Washington they ballooned to a delicious distraction. Fellow hikers would hail me with purple grins. I collected berries in cones made out of spent maps, to put in my oatmeal the following morning. I even found a patch of tiny wild strawberries a couple of miles before the road to Trout Lake; then a couple of miles after, in last year's burn zone around Adams, morel mushrooms as big as my fist erupted from the scorched ground. I'm certain that someone with greater knowledge of edible plants would have identified many other opportunities to add wild flavors to their meals.
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| pennyroyal |
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| berry break |
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| no fishing |
Cravings:
You think about food constantly while hiking, and everybody craves something. I bored Paul clear over Kearsarge Pass by describing at length and in detail the enormous sandwich that I planned to buy at Subway in Independence. But my cravings surprised me, because they often manifested as revulsions. I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want any chocolate. I rarely wanted sweets. In NorCal, when [I can see now] I was running up a caloric deficit, everything tasted too sweet. Sugary cereal, sugary drinks, sugary snacks. It made me feel sick.
The one exception? Ice cream. I wanted FAAAT. I wanted bacon and buttered toast and milkshakes. I did not want hamburgers. Everybody wants to feed hikers hamburgers. In Blood, Bones and Butter, Hamilton describes a sandwich with three fats--sweet butter, bright olive oil, salty prosciutto--and bitter arugula on a good ciabatta roll, and this had me salivating for a week. I'd have done dirty deeds for that sandwich, right then.
The other thing I wanted was sour food. A good sour lemonade, or sour fruit.
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| don't miss the sundaes at the soda fountain in Etna |
***
Roughage:
You will have noticed that many of the energy-dense, marginally-wholesome food substances listed above are...very high in fiber. And you eat a lot of them. So yes, pooping is vital element of a thru-hiker's existence, and so is gastro-intestenal discomfort. Get used to it.
***
Roughage:
You will have noticed that many of the energy-dense, marginally-wholesome food substances listed above are...very high in fiber. And you eat a lot of them. So yes, pooping is vital element of a thru-hiker's existence, and so is gastro-intestenal discomfort. Get used to it.
***
Good Reads:
Looking for more tips about what to eat on the trail? I found these resources informative.
