How To Resupply On A Thru Hike + My Trail Food for 2020

hey guys it's Darwin today I'm talking about resupply strategies during a thru-hike and what food I typically carry yep I braved the cold in the snow I got some snowshoes and I'm back out here on the trail so apparently I liked you guys a little bit it is freezing out here and there's tons of snow but here I am so let's jump into the videos so over the years I've made a handful of videos about the types of food that I carry when I'm out on the trail and I've loosely talked about how I resupply but I feel like there's a lot of people out there that might be planning their first through hike or a long section hike that still really have no idea on how to resupply how they should resupply and what types of food that they're going to be resupplying on while they're doing a long hike so first let's talk about general resupplying now if you're gonna go out and do a weekend backpacking trip or maybe a week long section hike odds are you're gonna be carrying all your food from the beginning all the way through the entire hike so you're not really gonna need to stop in a town and get extra food but if you're doing something like a thru-hike or a couple week long section hike you're gonna be out there for an extended period of time you're gonna have to jump into town and resupply on food and other gear and odds are you're not gonna be able to carry all of your food and all of your gear for four to six months unless you have like a really strong Sherpa or a donkey or something so there's a handful of different options on how to do it while you're out there whether it's sending yourself a box to a post office resupplying at a local grocery store or convenience store or even utilizing a service like zero day resupply it's really all gonna depend on three things what trail you're hiking how much you're willing to carry and what type of food you're willing to eat so first let's talk about what trail that you're gonna be hiking now a lot of your resupply strategy during a thru-hike is gonna largely depend on what trail you're choosing to do most trails like the 80 the PCT or the Arizona Trail are going to be routed in a way that they come to a town or some sort of a community or civilization about every four to five days depending on how fast you can hike and in those towns you're gonna find grocery stores convenience stores dollar generals gas stations and post offices so you have kind of a big variety of ways to resupply versus doing something like the Grand Enchantment trail or the hey Duke trail where they're a little less developed a little more out there in the middle of nowhere when you get to a small town or community it might just have a gas station in a post-office so your resupply options are limited now there's some trails that I've done where I've actually done both I've mainly resupplied in towns but I've also sent myself boxes in certain places where I knew that I wouldn't have good options to get food a good example is when I did the PCT in 2018 about 95% of the time I resupplied in towns at grocery stores at convenience stores at little resupply stops but there were places like White's pass and Stehekin where I sent myself a box because I knew that it was really limited resupply I wouldn't be able to find that much food and what I could find was gonna be quite expensive and that comes down to doing your research before you get out there and knowing what to expect when you get to each town in each stop so what I typically do before I go out and do a thru-hike is number one I get on Google and I'll type in Great Divide Trail resupply options chances are the Trail Association or another hiker that's hiked in the past has made a list of different spots and stops that you can do while you're on the trail now the next thing that I'm gonna do is grab my guide or my app and start looking at those towns and those spots to see what services are there one of the great things about something like gut hook is I can get on there I can zoom into a town I can see that there's a grocery store I can see that there's a post-office and then I can read comments from other hikers in the past that have said you know there's battery supply here there's good resupply here send yourself a box here and that way I know that I can either depend on there being food or I need to send myself a box you know next thing that I'm gonna do is look at how much I'm willing to carry so just like getting on the app or the guide and looking at what is gonna be in the town in the stop that you're going to I also start looking at the mileage between both of those stops now I mainly do that when I'm out on the trail because doing it before is kind of hard because you never really know you know what's gonna happen on the trail some days you might do less miles some days you might do more miles things can happen that hold up your hike you can go off on to little side things on the trail and see that'll take up more time but regardless I look at that mileage and not only do I look at the mileage I look at the terrain I look at the weather and I make a guestimation on how much food that I'm gonna need to carry between those two spots if I know that I have 60 miles between two towns and I'm gonna be able to hike at least 20 miles a day I'm only gonna need to carry three days of food so it comes down to knowing your ability understanding how much mileage that you have what your hunger is and what lies ahead of you there's really no science to figuring out your resupply because things constantly change while you're out on the trail now all that is a big reason why I personally don't and a lot of other hikers don't solely do resupply boxes it's really hard to know and figure out what you're gonna want to eat where you're gonna be and what's gonna happen when you're sitting at home packing those boxes up now what's a good reason a hiker would send themselves all resupply boxes to a post office well that's all gonna come down to what type of food you're willing to eat or I guess I should say what type of food that you can eat a lot of the resupply options that you're gonna find out on long distance trails are gonna have very basic food which is why things like ramen noodles nor rice sides instant mashed potatoes snicker bars Clif bars have become a staple for thru-hikers ayats I don't want to eat that stuff while I'm out there it's not because I like it but it's because I have limited options and because it's cheap if I'm out there from four to six months it's a lot cheaper on my wallet if I'm trying stretch my budget for an entire hike I got to think about that when I'm resupplying and sometimes not buy the best nicest most expensive food and go with some of the cheaper stuff that's higher calorie now if you have certain diet restrictions where you eat more uncommon food so say you're a vegan or you're gluten-free or you're diabetic that's when you might want to consider sending yourself all boxes on the trail now doing all mail drop boxes on a thru-hike takes a lot more time a lot more organization research to put all those together and I'm not gonna go over all that in today's video but if you want to find out more information on that if you think that's gonna be an option for you and you have a specific diet my buddy frozen over at outdoor adventures recently made a video all on how to send yourself boxes on the trail so I'll leave the link down below for that so as I'm quickly approaching my 2020 hiking season I've been thinking a lot about and doing a lot of research on how I'm gonna resupply where I'm gonna resupply and what I'm gonna eat on the 80 on the gdt and the Colorado trail now I personally don't have any diet restrictions and I typically eat just about anything when I'm out on a thru-hike but over the last handful of years I've really been trying to step my nutrition game up and get less refined sugars less carbs more fats and more protein so for my hikes this year I'm gonna be doing kind of a blend of sending myself some boxes in certain places but mainly resupplying while I'm out on the trail and now that I've went back to a stove and I'm cooking again I've started to reintroduce some of those meals that I used to eat in the past like Noor rice sides like mashed potatoes but adding things to them like certain oils and fats to kind of boost the nutrition a little bit while I'm out there now before I start talking about what type of food that I eat what I resupply on and what I use on the trail let me remind everyone we are all different we all have different diets we all know our bodies differently we all work in a different way yes some of the food that I eat out on the trail is the best some of it has higher sugar some of its processed and a lot of it has a lot of packaging but after hiking over 7000 miles in five years I know what works for me I know what gives me fuel I know what I can find when I'm out on the trail just because I eat it does not mean that it is for everybody and it's what everybody should eat on a hike it's just what works for me it's not like I want to eat bad food it's not like I want to have a lot of trash and packaging but sometimes you can't just stroll down the street to your local Whole Foods and buy some really good high nutritious low packaging food sometimes you just have to deal with what you're given and what you can use while you're out on the trail and that's what I've learned over the years so I use what I can use what I know that I can carry and what I know works for me and gives me fuel on the trail so today I basically put together what I'm gonna be starting the 80 with in March now in that first stretch I'm gonna be going from Springer to Hiawassee Georgia and that's about 70 miles well I know that I can do about 20 miles a day in that section because of my research because I've hiked it before so I'm gonna be carrying four days of food but you'll notice that I don't have a fool four days of food the first day I don't have a breakfast the last day I don't have a dinner and I'll go over that a little bit more here in a minute but uh let's open it up and I'll show you guys what I typically carry on a full resupply all right so first off you will probably notice starting here with day one that I separate all of my stuff into individual gallon bags now the reason I do that is because I tend to want to eat more than I should actually be eating so I started doing that back on the 18:15 just to make sure that I didn't eat all my food in one day that's just easier for me all right so if we dive in the day one here you'll notice right off the bat there's no breakfast and that's because if I am starting the trail or if I am leaving a resupply odds are I already had breakfast so I'm not going to need carry that on the first day starting up at the top here I have a noir rice side and that's the fancy select one with a tuna packet that has some good olive oil in there so high calorie and then some extra fat butter to add to that for calories and just for extra good fat and then moving down I usually carry about four to five bars per day and I try to get a bar that has at least 200 calories moving over today to basically the same thing for dinner except for I swapped it out to a mashed potato just to kind of get a little bit of variety and again I have some of that butter for extra fat and some tuna and olive oil for higher calories again I'm gonna have about four to five bars to snack on throughout the day and then for breakfast that morning I typically have something like a bogo's oat bar or some sort of oak bar and a packet of coffee day three is basically gonna be a carbon copy of day two so no rice side salmon and butter four to five bars and again abobo's oak bar and coffee and then moving over to the last day you'll notice that my day four is pretty small and that's because I'm gonna be going into a town so all I have is breakfast again a oak bar and coffee and then four to five bars to eat throughout the day as I'm on my way into town now I won't need dinner because odds are I'll be eating that night whenever I get into a town or I'll have food from my resupply box to eat for dinner that first night out on the trail now last but not least we have basically what I eat every day for lunch so I don't do a lot of lunch but what I do eat are usually mixed nuts so macadamias cashews and almonds and then I usually have some sort of crunchy salty chip in this case Cheetos how opinion not exactly the best food but I like to get a little bit of salt and like to have something to crunch on and then again for breakfast every day I have a little bit of trail butter with my o'Barr and two of those would typically last me about four days I don't always use trail butter but I try to get some sort of nut butter whether it's peanut butter or almond butter basically whatever I can find at the store and then the last thing that I have is a little packet of extra drink mixes so I do carry extra coffee in case I run out or I can't find it in my next resupply some green drinks and some electrolytes and flavorings for my water and that's about it pretty basic like I said that is for four days and in this case that's gonna be 470 miles so as you can see I try to look for high calorie low weight high fat high protein and somewhat cheap food I tend to blend some of that crappy food that I can find while I'm out on the trail some of the easy stuff that's gonna be available to me and I try to blend that with some better stuff what I'll end up probably doing is on the 80 on the gdt and on the CT is probably about 90% of the time I'm gonna be resupplying in towns at convenient stores and grocery stores but I will be sending myself some supplementary boxes with some of those nut butters some of those oils some of the coffee that I like to drink while I'm out on trail and just try to put those things together and then obviously there'll be some towns and some certain stops that I'll send myself a full box because I know that it's low options so again there's no exact science to it it really comes down to doing your research and understanding yourself seeing what type of food that you need to eat and how much of that food that you need to carry between the stops figure out what trail you're gonna be hiking what you're willing to carry and what type of food that you're willing to eat while you're out there do your research plan a little bit ahead and aside from that resupplying is pretty easy are you a through hiker a section hiker what do you typically do when you're out on the trail do you resupply in towns or do you send yourself boxes leave me something down below and let me know your thoughts if you found any value in this video and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already as always guys thanks for watching now I'm gonna strap these bad boys on get out of here [Music] you

Channel: Darwin onthetrail

Views: 171,403

Rating: 4.9631963 out of 5

Keywords: UL Backpacking, UL Hiking, UL Hiking Gear, Thru Hike Resupply, Thru Hike Food, PCT, Pacific Crest Trail, PCT Thru Hike, AT, Appalachian Trail, AT Thru Hike, Arizona Trail, AZT Thru Hike, Backpacking, Hiking, Adventure, Hiker Trash, Long Distance Hiking

Id: RRl-zltiHTI

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 02 2020