Food

The Stuff Hiker Dreams Are Made Of

Cassiopeia and Sticker Dan going for the Half Gallon Challenge at Pine Grove Furnace State Park, Pennsylvania.

Trail meals quite easily fell into routine. Most foods were chosen based important factors such as portability (or how messy), availability, how easily it could be divided into portions, and caloric content. The latter was most important and foods normally not considered would be taken along if they offered a significant caloric contribution. In following these guidelines however it was easy to purchase the same basic foods when resupplying each time. Variation entered into the picture only when the "normal" trail food wasn't available and I had to make do with what the grocery store had - but this was only a factor when in small town settings one would find in rural Maine and other somewhat remote mountain areas. That sort of situation was rare since even a country store was aware of the hiker needs and was well stocked in most backpacker foods. As for the freeze-dried foods one normally sees for sale in outfitters…most thru-hikers do not buy them. While they are cheap and simple to prepare, the cost can be $4-5 more than a usual backpacker meal and not quite big enough. Now obviously, what follows does not seem like it would fuel a hiker over 2000 miles of rugged mountains and you would be right to think so. There is a definite caloric shortfall that every hiker makes up by pigging out in town.

Breakfast

Salty, Johnny Steel and Red Pepper having dinner at Seely-Woodworth Shelter

I hate Pop-tarts. Oatmeal took too long and was a pain because I had to clean up afterwards. So what did I eat if I shunned these two popular hiker foods? My main breakfast staple was the "Milk and Cereal Bar" that General Mills manufactures and almost always the Cinnamon Toast Crunch variety (they weighed .2 oz. more than the Chex and Honey Nut Cheerio bars!). I ate two bars, and after would eat a chewy granola bar (110-120 calories). Most of the time I also ate dried mango and dried papaya, which was sent from home, or dried pineapple when I had run out. On occasion I would also have Carnation Instant Breakfasts - two envelopes in about 14 oz. of water. And yes, I did eat pop-tarts when certain things were unavailable from the town grocery store.

Lunch

I always tried to eat lunch around 9 or so miles into the day's mileage. There is a considerable variety among hikers when it comes to lunch, most of which I avoided. I did not eat pepperoni, hummus or tortillas and I do not care much for peanut butter. For the longest time I carried a small jar of chocolate laced peanut butter until I realized that I was not eating it. The flavor was nice but I hated the mess. In fact, almost all foods I ate were chosen for the ease of clean up (with dinner, being a more involved meal, was the exception). Therefore, no peanut butter. This also excluded block cheese, which usually degenerated into a greasy mess, the one exception being the last leg of the trip when it was cool enough to prevent this from happening.

Oh God, Mountain Dancer has the potato salad - run everyone!!

So what did I eat? Bagels with cheese that comes in an aerosol can. It was not the best meal but it was easy and better than eating a plain bagel. On occasion I substituted a can of chicken spread for the cheese but this was a rare occurrence since the cans were heavier than I wanted to carry. Another staple was a dried fruit mixture composing of dried cherries, raisins, cranberries, and to a lesser degree, dried blueberries and strawberries. The exact proportions shifted constantly as I used what was available in the next town to top off the bag. As block cheese was too inconvenient to carry, I resorted to individually packaged mozzarella sticks, much like what one would put in a child's lunchbox. These kept forever. To round out the meal was the poor man's powerbar a.k.a. Snickers bar, a chewy granola bar and a small package of honey roasted peanuts or cashews. I carried an abundance of beef jerky which was always flavorful in the bland world of hiker diets.

Snacks

The first snack break occurred about 4 to 5 miles into the day's hike and was almost always a Bear Valley Pemmican Bar (fruit 'n' nut flavor). Dense as a brick and tasted like one after a week of constant ingestion; indestructible and incredibly nutritious, it did not take long for me to tire of them. My parents ordered 100 from the company which they sent to me in maildrops (they made ideal packing material). It was hard to deny the energy value once I choked one down. Incidentally there are about 40 of the original 100 left.

After Johnny Steel had the burger, he ate a cat, a tree stump, two left sandals and a hubcap. Thru-hikers have no bounds.

The second snack break happened between lunch and arriving at camp and more often was skipped unless that day happened to be a big mileage day, in which case I would need the extra calories. It was a Powerbar (regular but sometimes one of the tasty Harvest Bars or whatever other brand I decided to experiment with) and a packet of cheese and crackers. From the White Mountains to the end of the trail, the meals shifted from “snack 1, lunch, snack 2” to “lunch 1, lunch 2.” The first lunch was both the Pemmican and the Powerbar. This shift occurred because of the more demanding terrain, where my daily mileage dropped but my caloric needs increased slightly.

Supper

This was the biggest meal of the day and the only one I did not mind cleaning up after since I was more “settled.” The main meal was always cooked except for one or two times when the weather and I were not in the mood. For the most part it was a Lipton noodle and sauce or an instant mashed potato packet (4.5 oz each). Into this I would mix in a 3 oz. packet of tuna. Squeeze margarine was carried (double bagged of course!) for the purpose of adding calories in the form of fat to the hot meal. On rare occasions I had "instant" commercial freeze dried backpacker meals - the kind that are too expensive for a thru-hiker - but most of these were either sent from home or given to me by another hiker. Dessert was a packet of cookies (Oreos or Nutter Butters), a “Cosmic Brownie” or “Rice Treat” or whatever indestructible Little Debbie product the supermarket happened to have, and sometimes the Snickers Bar I didn't eat during lunch.

Beverages

The Fatfest feast for fifteen friends of the forest from funny former forest folk. Food fed? Fresh fish!

Water. During supper I would have a quart of Kool-aid, which was a luxury I rarely went without. There were also a few times I carried teabags and coffee singles but this was mostly towards the end when it was cooler and wanted a hot drink more. By the way, drinking water all day makes that occasional soda, lemonade, or juice taste extrordinary.

Other Stuff

Sometimes hikers will become possessed while they shop for food and buy something that is really - I want to say “stupid” or “impractical” - different and pack it out. Every thru-hiker does this. Follow the above menu for a few weeks and you would do this too. I heard of one person who carried a lobster and then had to figure out how to cook it in the standard 1 liter hiker cookpot. I never went this far. The worst I did was when I carried several individual cups of applesauce, which by hiker standards were an abhorrent 4 oz. per cup. A few times I carried cans and bottles of soda. Most of the other stuff is fairly mundane: a bag of potato chips, Combos, or a nice sandwich from a deli. while some would consider Hostess fruit pies too fragile to pack out of town, I did so after discovering they had a whopping 480 calories per 4.5 oz pie. Yes, that is a lot. If one does any long term investigation into caloric content and serving size of prepackaged foods, these things start to stand out.

Alcohol

It was not often that I would drink during my thru-hike.

Guiness and pretzels...it was a good meal.

Getting the Food

Now how does the hiker get this food? There are two equally popular ways of doing so. The first is by purchasing food along the way at local grocery stores. This is somewhat time consuming and requires a ride to a store roughly 50 percent of the time. The other method involves preparing maildrops that are sent to the hiker from home thanks to a person acting as "ground control". This is also time consuming (although in a different way) and can be expensive when mailing costs are factored in. In addition, one can never be too sure of how their tastes will change as they hike and if they can really eat the 40 pounds of gorp they prepared beforehand.

Personally, I bought my food along the way both times, the second time through developing what I jokingly referred to as Sleepy's Modified Maildrop System. Because of the advantage of having a previous thru-hike, I knew which towns had poor variety or had stores that were difficult to get to. 100 or so miles before I got to such a town, I would buy extra non-perishables and mail them up the trail to myself. In some cases this eliminated all together the need to take time off to hunt down the grocery store, and my town stop was nothing more than a quick in-and-out. The other part of this was getting a few basic stamples mailed to me from home along with my maps. These included dried fruits, the aforementioned Pemmican bars that were rarely found along the way, and occasionally dehydrated spaghetti sauce. All in all everything worked out pretty damn well.