Planning Food for an Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike
Long-Distance Hikers Need Nutrition, Calories, Variety
Mar 2, 2009
An Appalachian Trail thru-hike is an enormous feat of endurance. It takes about 5 1/2 months and 5 million steps for the average hiker to hike the entire 2,200-mile long trail. Not to mention millions of calories! To fuel all that activity, hikers need a good balance of foods, including supermakret staples, fresh foods, and freeze-dried foods.
A master's degree thesis done by long distance-hiker and graduate student Karen Lutz found that long-distance hikers cannot carry enough food to replace the calories they exert while hiking. Carrying additional food requires expending more calories; the result is a vicious cycle. This explains why hikers eat so much in town - and why they invariably lose weight during a thru-hike.
Characteristics of Good Long-Distance Backpacking Foods
Hikers need foods that provide enough calories to keep them going, and they need foods that offer a balance of nutrients. Hiking foods should be lightweight, high-calorie, fairly damage proof (oatmeal, yes, eggs, probably not.), resistant to spoiling, and fast cooking. As a result, many hikers choose staple foods such as quick-cooking thin pastas, cheese, peanut butter, energy bars, crackers, dried fruits, and nuts. (Note that hard cheese and peanut butter easily survive without refrigeration.)
Variety is important. First, having lots of different foods helps ensure a better balance of different nutrients. Second: Variety helps satisfy taste buds and cravings. Realize that tastes can change on a long-distance hike. More than one hiker has opened a box carefully packed several months earlier, only to send it home in disgust or try to trade with other hikers.
Types of Long-Distance Backpacking Foods
Most Appalachian trail hikers pre-pack so-called food drops, which they mail to themselves for pick-up at post offices along the trail. A typical food drop might contain:
- Prepared foods such as commercially packaged macaroni and cheese or just-add-water instant soups and stews. These are lightweight, fast cooking, easy to prepare, and non-spoiling, plus they are often cheap. But all that may come at the cost of empty calories and poor nutrition. Prepared foods may also be loaded with preservatives, MSG, and sodium.
- Specialty prepared foods. Check out health food stores, gourmet supermarkets, or Oriental or Mexican markets for new takes on prepared foods. Some of these have better nutritional content, plus, having a few will spice up the menu.
- Freeze-dried backpacking foods. Freeze-diried meals for hikers are more expensive than grocery store foods. Some brands focus on nutrition, don't use artificial preservatives, and offer vegetarian options. Read the labels: Some of them require more cooking than others.
- One pot meals. Many hikers mix favorite ingredients. For instance, Instant potatoes, dehydrated meat, a package of gravy mix, freeze-dried vegetables, dried mushrooms, and a bit of cheese. Small cans of tuna fish or tomato sauce can sneak into packs once in a while as a treat.
- Fresh foods: Every once in a while, it's worth carrying a bit more weight in order to saute some fresh vegetables, enjoy some fruit (oranges and apples pack best), or even grill up a steak.
- Home dehydrated foods. These are probably the best choice from a flavor and nutritional standpoint, but six months of food takes a lot of planning, cooking, and drying.
Probably, the most effective strategy is to do a little of everything and mix it up as much as possible. Plus leave room for some shopping while en-route. And enjoy restaurant meals when they are available.
A final piece of advice: Many outdoor cookbooks and magazine articles are too ambitious for long-distance backpackers. Thru-hikers need to conserve fuel, minimize the number of pots, and must watch the weight of the food they carry. Simplicity is the watchword.
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