How long did it take you to get your resupply dialed?

[hikeandbike5]

Been on a couple long distance hikes now, the latest thing I've noticed is that my food resupply has been off. Usually I'm headed to town with extra food.

Maybe because its that I plan less these days, rather than overthink and analyze everthing.

How long did it take you to get your resupply dialed?

[10-K]

In a perfect world I walk into town with dregs and I actually get it right sometimes. In my own hiking experience I tend to either have a bit too much or a bit too little - depending on how hungry I am when I resupply. It's part science, part art, part luck, and part voodoo...

Best tip I can give you is to shop with a hand basket instead of a shopping cart. If I'm carrying food around the store I can feel the weight. If I'm pushing a cart I just throw stuff in it and when I check out and pick up the bags it's like.. holy crap, what did I just do????

[swonut]

I too could never dial it in. Best advice is to not be afraid to toss new stuff in a hiker box and if you have too much food after you buy it. Then offer some up at a shelter if anyone wants it. Rarely was I not able to give away a few ramen packs or mashed potatoes.

[Starchild]

I would take what I needed as I shopped, then would find a place in the store to go over actual meals, leaving vast amounts behind. That second analysis really helped in not bringing too much plus I got to decide when to bring out of the vast selection I had which made for better meals.

[Bronk]

I almost always have food leftover when I get back to town...sometimes 3 days or more. It comes from having planned poorly and having walked 42 miles with only two packages of ramen noodles.

[grizzlyadam]

I always carry an extra day of food. Because you never know when circumstances might leave you out on the trail for a day longer than planned- weather/injury/amazing views/etc.

[Malto]

I didn't have much trouble. For a long distance hike I target 200 calories per mile. If it's a 100 mile leg then I buy 20,000 calories and yes I do keep a tally. (For short duration hikes I drop down to 100 calories per mile.). I find this extremely easy. I will tell you that the calories add up quick and I would definitely buy too much if I didn't keep a total.

[Spirit Walker]

We still carry too much. Mostly that's because I am usually very conservative in planning mileage. I don't like to feel pushed to do big miles to get to town. I'd rather have a little extra so we can take our time, or deal with unexpected weather or terrain issues without having to force the pace. Especially now, hiking with someone with serious physical issues, there is a lot of uncertainty about what we can actually do vs. what we would like to do. There's also the problem that my husband won't eat when he's really tired or hurt. We usually end up eating all the snacks, but have at least one dinner left over.

[jj2044]

I almost always have food leftover when I get back to town...sometimes 3 days or more. It comes from having planned poorly and having walked 42 miles with only two packages of ramen noodles.

This is great. I have never understood people wanting a empty food bag before resupply .... you should NEVER want that.... what if you got hurt, or sick ??.... I always carried at least one extra day, most of the time 2 days worth.

[MuddyWaters]

Well, its pretty easy for food to be self adjusting. If you are low, you eat less and walk longer days to get to town sooner. I've done that with several days food in pack, just because I didn't feel like eating what I was carrying. I usually have at least one day extra, not intentional, just don't eat, or do more miles than planned, etc. I might skip meals if moquitos are horrible, or raining. Sometimes not worth it. Eat a snickers or two and go to bed, leaves excess food.

On the JMT recently I started the MTR to WP ~115 mi stretch with 8 day food. I finished with 3 full days food left. The last day, starting at 1:30 am, submitting Whitney, and hiking down to WP, 15 miles, i consumed half a pack of peanut MMS on the trail, and half liter water. Unneeded food and water wt carried was about 8 lbs. ( I had a burger in my sights.) If the rest of your pack is light enough, it doesn't matter really.

[garlic08]

Well, its pretty easy for food to be self adjusting. If you are low, you eat less and walk longer days to get to town sooner....

This is my approach as well. And rather than a "pounds per day" formula, I use a "miles per pound" formula (that's usually 8 to 10 miles per pound of food which is about 135 cal/ounce for me). That way, if I have an easy day, I'll eat less, and if I have a long, tough day, I can eat more. When I'm halfway through my resupply, I'll take stock of remaining food and self-adjust. I either add up net weights of packages as I shop, or use the produce scale if there is one.

I've been hungry, but I learned that being a little hungry for a day or two on a thru hike is not fatal. I took an in-depth survival class years ago and realized the instructor never even mentioned food. (Priorities are shelter, water, and getting found, the order depending on the situation.) And I recently heard saying about survival priorities: Three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, three minutes without air. A bit simplistic, for sure, but easily memorized and a good rough guide.

On a typical hike, basically, food is comfort. When I realized that and I lost my fear of running low on food, my pack got quite a bit lighter, even on day hikes. And I sometimes even feel an affinity with much of the world's population, which goes to bed hungry regularly.

[Coffee]

I'm now pretty good about not taking excess food. I have found that taking two pounds per day of relatively high caloric density foods allows me to perform at a high level while hiking and to not feel ravenously hungry. I do self adjust halfway through a resupply segment. I finished one resupply segment of a recent hike a day early but still ate my allotted food since I hiked more miles per day.

While I've become better at not carrying excess food weight, I routinely arrive at a water source with extra water. I justify this by remembering that lack of water can quickly lead to health problems or, in extreme cases, even death while lack of food will never kill me over a few days. So I never trust "seasonal" water sources and when they are running I find myself irritated by carrying too much water. Remember that when a hiker coming the opposite direction has only a vague response to water inquiries that you take that input as gospel at your peril! More than once I've been told a source was running to find it dry. Almost certainly not because anyone wanted to mislead me but because people forget and also don't always pay attention to water sources if they don't need water at the time. I only take water input from hikers coming the opposite direction if the input is specific and unambiguous.

[Bronk]

Well, its pretty easy for food to be self adjusting. If you are low, you eat less and walk longer days to get to town sooner. I've done that with several days food in pack, just because I didn't feel like eating what I was carrying. I usually have at least one day extra, not intentional, just don't eat, or do more miles than planned, etc. I might skip meals if moquitos are horrible, or raining. Sometimes not worth it. Eat a snickers or two and go to bed, leaves excess food.

On my thruhike attempt I had severl surges in my appetite. Ironically, the first three weeks or so I really wasn't that hungry most of the time and skipped a lot of dinners and just went to bed because I was tired. So I started buying less food. Then all of the sudden one day a switch flipped and I was eating like crazy. At least a couple of times my appetite surged like that. And I totally disagree that eating less is an option...when you are in one of those hunger surges its very difficult to discipline yourself enough to do that. When I walked that 42 miles I knew how many miles I had to go and how much food I had and tried to ration it out, but when you're lying in your sleeping bag at the end of a long day and your stomach is growling and you can't sleep, you're going to eat something...so I ate everything in my food bag but those two packs of ramens and got up the next morning determined to walk as far as I possibly could. I ate one pack of ramen for dinner the next night and cooked up the second one for breakfast in the morning...took two bites and threw it out because it was making me sick. I climbed over Dragon's tooth thinking I was going to pass out. When I got to the road someone had left a bag full of snickers bars hanging on a tree and that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.

[RED-DOG]

Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't, after you been out their for a while and set a comfortable pace and see how many miles you do in a day and then you can pretty much calculate your food from resupply to resupply.
it takes around a month to get good at it.

[swisscross]

Section hiker...
Would rather come home a little hungry then carry extra.
I plan for breakfast,snack,lunch,snack,supper each day with one extra supper just in case I am super hungry or someone else needs a meal.

My issue is volume. I pack/dehydrate my own foods. I tend to package more than I prefer to eat at one sitting.

[Malto]

This is great. I have never understood people wanting a empty food bag before resupply .... you should NEVER want that.... what if you got hurt, or sick ??.... I always carried at least one extra day, most of the time 2 days worth.

Why cut the food so close? Because you won't die from missing a meal. The whole fear of missing a meal is exactly why people carry extra lbs of food. For most people there are many days (or weeks) of stored energy tied up in excess fat. This is a prime example of people carrying their fears. But as always, Carry Your Own Weight!

[kidchill]

While thru-hiking it took me about 500miles to really dial it in. I would still show up with 1 or 2 extra meals, but I'm okay with this. I basically carried breakfast, 2nd breakfast, lunch, 2nd lunch, and dinner. Then I would bring some kind of high-calorie snack food that I really liked (usually yogurt covered raisins). Each meal was usually 500-700 calories, depending on what I brought (4 poptarts, 3 ramens, 4 easy macs, texas honey-bun thing, 2 packs of combos, etc). Also, when you're thru-hiking, you may push more or less miles then you intend on each day, so sometimes I'd end up in town at say, 11am, when I thought it would be 4pm (so, there's like 2-3 extra meals I didn't eat).

[jj2044]

. This is a prime example of people carrying their fears.

why carry a tent ? there is shelter along the way, is that carrying your fear also ?
Why take any food, according to you can go several weeks with nothing, im sure i can find some along the way
maybe I shouldn't take cold weather gear, that's jut my fear of cold.
I don't need to take my head light, that's just my fear of the dark.
I don't needs bright colors during hunting seasons, that just my fear of being shot by some dumb redneck hunter.
I don't need any medical supply's (Vit I , pepto ,etc) , that's just my fear of getting hurt or sick.

Man I really like your thinking, when I get rid of all the "fear" gear my pack will only be like 6 pound....... I will be a complete dumbarse, but with a light pack!!!!

[flemdawg1]

Even after 8 years of section hiking, I'm not "Dialed in" on food. During my recent maine hike, we planned to get thru the 100MW in 8 days. We brought in 4 days of food and had 4 more days waiting in a bucket drop about halfway thru. After the second day it was apparent we were going to need 5 days to get to our food drop. Luckily we ran into a pair of ladies that were bailing out near the Gulf Hagas parking area and they provided the extra day of food we needed. However, I could have adjusted my meals/snacks to get an extra day out of what I brought (eat a small breakfast 2 days, skip a couple of snacks to provide an extra lunch, load up on the blueberries (I only ate sparingly from the loaded bushes I passed), etc).