PCT food planning: resupply, calories, and spreadsheets
Note: Check out my post-hike food post to see how and what I actually ate on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Six different stores, 110,000 calories, and 15 square feet of my living room later, I think I’ve sorted out my first month’s food for the PCT.
I’ve done as much as I’m gonna do, that’s for sure.
Wait, I’m supposed to leave all this food for later? It’s practically demanding that I eat it!
Since my overview of PCT food planning, I’ve been trying out different dehydrated foods and snack bars, and compiling the results. As I mentioned in the Ohlone Wilderness Trail trip report, I’ve already changed my mind about granola and Meal Pack bars. I finally got to a point where I couldn’t take any more research and decisions, so I finalized some calorie plans, and pulled the trigger on food shopping.
Read on for a look at my resupply strategy, specific 3000 and 4000 calorie breakdowns, a list of the particular foods I’m starting with, and what else I still have to do for PCT food (hint, it involves a scale and ziploc bags).
Resupply strategy
I like spreadsheets. I like food. One thing I’ve learned during this PCT food planning process, though, is that I am not a fan of the intersection of the above. My eyes start to cross, and my attention wanders over to something shiny. Doesn’t matter what I like though, ’cause this had to get done.
I decided to resupply food by getting the first month’s worth of boxes ready to go before departing, and have Russell buy the food for subsequent boxes once I’m hiking. If resupply options on the trail are satisfactory, I’ll buy along the way. I’m not eager to spend a lot of time in towns, though — I’d rather do this now, than wander around a grocery store halfway down the trail, feeling panicked by all the people, smells, and options.
Since Russell has offered to be my Super Duper Best Resupply Person Ever (THANK YOU), I’m taking him up on it, hard. I can let him know after a few weeks or months which Lärabar flavors turn my stomach, and no more Chicken-in-a-Biskit, please.
I fully expect this plan to get chucked out the window (into the hiker box?) at some point on the trail. It’s not intended to get me to Canada, just far enough to figure out what works for my hiker metabolism. If I turn out to be one of those people who can eat the same thing every day, hot diggity — one less thing to mess with on the trail.
Calorie counting for fun and weight maintenance
The USDA recommends 2000 calories a day for a “moderately active” woman in my age range, and only 2400 for an “active” one. That average woman is 5’6″ tall and weighs 126 pounds — taller and lighter than me. Moderately active is defined as walking 1.5-3 miles per day at 3-4 mph; active is walking more than 3 miles a day at the same pace.
Hey USDA, where’s your thru-hiker category, hmm? Forget 3 miles, what about us folks walking 20-30 miles a day? How dare you not plan for this tiny subsection of insane amateur endurance athletes?
After consulting my friend Mr. Google, I found a range of estimates of thru-hiker caloric needs, from 3000 to 8000. That’s a crazy wide spread, and hard to work with. Most of the “this worked for me” posts that get detailed about calories are written by men, which makes my research a bit harder. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for men to finish a long trail looking emaciated, while women thru-hikers at completion haven’t lost nearly as much weight — sounds like different metabolisms at play, eh?
I did get some good inspiration from a 2013 female PCT finisher whose eating style looks similar to mine, and there are women writing about thru-hiking and calories; it just takes wading through a few pages of search results to find them. I’d love to find more: please add any you know of in the comments!
After briefly considering doing serious research to better estimate my caloric needs, I decided to instead lean on Dr. Brenda Braaten’s thorough “Pack Light, Eat Right” thru-hiker food discussion. I then just made up some numbers.
For my 5’5″, 145 lb body and 10-15 lb base weight, I’ll be packing 3000 calories per day for the first week, and 4000 per day after that. I’ll monitor how much I’m eating, and adjust it as need be. My winter belly should step in and provide some stop-gap coverage if it turns out this isn’t enough; I definitely don’t want to start burning through my hard-earned and much-needed muscles though.
In towns, all bets are off. I’ll be heading straight for the ice-cream sundaes and burgers. And beer. Lots of beer. And for the love of Thor, something Green.
Based, again, on vague and unscientific recommendations around the web, I am aiming for an average of 120 calories or so per ounce across all my foodstuffs. This would let me carry 3000 calories in 1 lb 9 oz, or 4000 calories in about 2 lbs 1 oz.
Spreadsheet time!
For anyone curious, here’s my 3000 calorie plan, weighing about 1 lb 7oz:
| PCT Food: 3000 calorie breakdown | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Meal | Food | Calories | Weight (oz) |
| 1st Breakfast | Pro Bar | 380 | 3.00 |
| 2nd Breakfast | Almond butter packet, 1oz espresso beans, 2oz crackers | 647 | 4.15 |
| Elevenses | 1oz dried fruit, 2oz nuts | 450 | 3.00 |
| Lunch | 2oz salami & 2oz cheese | 410 | 4.00 |
| PM snack | Snickers, 1oz fruit | 340 | 1.90 |
| Dinner | 2.5oz bean soup, 1.5oz fritos, 1oz veg chips | 530 | 5.00 |
| Evening snack | Lärabar | 200 | 1.60 |
| Total | 2957 | 22.65 | |
And the 4000 calorie version, coming in at just under 2 lbs:
| PCT Food: 4000 calorie breakdown | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Meal | Food | Calories | Weight (oz) |
| 1st Breakfast | Pro Bar & Clif Bar | 620 | 5.40 |
| 2nd Breakfast | Almond butter packet, 1oz espresso beans, 2oz crackers | 647 | 4.15 |
| Elevenses | 1oz dried fruit, 2oz nuts, sesame snap | 660 | 4.40 |
| Lunch | 2oz salami & 2oz cheese, 2 fig newtons | 670 | 6.40 |
| PM snack | Snickers, 1oz fruit, 1oz nuts, 1oz jerky | 599 | 3.90 |
| Dinner | 2.5oz bean soup, 1.5oz fritos, 1oz veg chips | 530 | 5.00 |
| Evening snack | Lärabar, 1/4 chocolate bar | 315 | 2.30 |
| Total | 4041 | 31.55 | |
Though I list certain snacks at certain meals, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a free-for-all between 1st breakfast and dinner.
Did someone say food?
The 30 day food pile contains:
Pro Bars, Clif Bars, Lärabars, vegetable chips, Fritos, curry lentil soup, black bean soup, split pea soup, Cheez-Its, Ritz crackers, Chicken-in-a-Biskit, Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans, Bunny Crackers, Sesame Snaps, Flattened Bananas, beef, buffalo, & salmon jerky, cashews, macadamia nuts, toffee peanuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, cherries, apple rings, pineapple rings, dried pear, dried apricots, Coconut Toffee chocolate bars, Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter, almond butter, maple almond butter, honey almond butter, raspberry fig bars, blueberry fig bars, peach apricot bars, Snickers, Almond Snickers, Heath Bars, Columbus Dry Italian Salame, Springhill Farm Mike’s Smokehouse Cheddar.
And this isn’t even everything. Day 1 of food shopping for the first 30 days of hiking the PCT.
… not a single green thing. OH WELL.
Next food steps
From here, I’ll take the copious numbers of Ziploc bags I stocked up on, and start weighing portions. If you think that’s too fiddly, sit on it. That’s the sort of monotonous task that can feel soothing to me (after a beer), so I’m looking forward to it.
Ask me how I feel about it (or better yet, how Russell feels about it) after the trail.
(Looking for my PCT food planning overview?)
I’m glad you made the decision and got the food! As you say, you can always adjust as you go along.
It feels good to have pulled the trigger. I’ve been bagging the first week’s food, and all the weighing is super satisfying…
Whoo-hoo! You go, girl!! I get excited just *looking* at that pile!
So do I! And then I have to talk myself down from starting to eat it NOW. I already dug into some of the jerky. *Shrugs*
Where’s the honey roast peanut butter?
I honestly think figuring out food would be the most difficult part of a thru-hike. I’m not even good at doing food in daily life at home. Thanks for this helpful post
Food can be tricky, but with something as long as a thru-hike, you have a lot of time to figure it out. Look for a post in the next few weeks about the food I actually ended up eating for most of the hike.
My experience of the PCT in 2015 taught me that its all too easy to over-plan food and resupply because of the missing button in excel – the PCT practicality and thruhiker laziness button.
This button would automatically account for (i) getting really sick of Ramen noodles really fast (ii) discovering Amazon as a resupply strategy, if you have enough dough (iii) gorging yourself stupid all of the day you arrive at a resupply town (iv) gorging yourself stupid all the morning of the day you leave (basically you eat four or five days worth of calories in two days every time you stop) (v) discovering that many of the high calorie foodstuffs we rely on do your digestive transit no good in the long term. Snickers are the thruhiker’s friends, but the colon’s enemy.
Its also true that, accepting we will have some serious weight loss – perhaps more for men than women, the hunger we struggle with can be as much a symptom of under-hydration as calorie deficit. I lost close to 80lbs on my hike (but I started big to begin with and anyway its fine – I FOUND it again. It was in the fridge). One definitely builds up calorie debt between resupply stops, but we also drink far too little – especially in the early part of the hike when the desert section makes us try to conserve water. I ALWAYS got to evening camp with more water than I needed to make the next water source, and so I was exerting energy carrying water I’d be better off drinking. I noticed that in the desert I was never more than a short distance from a way to get water if it was a life or death situation; be that a road to hitch out on, or a smallholding I could beg from – but honestly, who can say they never misjudged it and had to walk 6 miles before breakfast to find some water? Our water planning seems to imply that once we run out of water we will die if we take two more steps! The reality of the hike is very different to the theory. Oddly, there’s a button in excel that causes this – its the “I know better than the people who have already done the PCT, even though I haven’t” button. I used to click that one a lot.
I’m now doing it all over again this year – so we’ll see if I learned anything from myself.
Damn. Helpful as all hell.