[pct-l] "buy-as-you-go" strategy

[Brian Lewis]

Stephen said: "Everyone is different in this respect towards eating
repetitively.  It is worth pondering how you may react to your food choices.
I've talked with folks who caneatrice for weeks on end, and have a friend
who hiked the JMT many years ago eating only oatmeal"

Definitely there are a lot of variations in what people are happy with; I
expect most long distance hikers have run into someone with a stunningly low
amount of variety in their diet.  One friend eats trail bars (the same sort
of trail bar) for everything but dinner, and his dinner every night is a
mountain house (one of maybe 3 flavor varieties).

I also noted the opposite effect --- people would see others picking up a
particular food item in a trail town and try it out and sort of fall in love
with it, eating a lot of it for the next few hundred or more miles.   I was
that way after I saw Sleepwalker eating rosemary flavored triscuits.   Lucky
went from disliking oatmeal to going gonzo over the "X with creme" type of
oatmeal packets, we would stop for five minutes and he would have eaten two
of them (I think he walked out of one trail town with two boxes of the
stuff).

In terms of what a person will get sick of on the trail, I wonder whether
the JMT is a sufficient distance to know for sure?   I nevertheless suggest
that the best way a person can find out about themselves on this point is to
do one or more long shake-down hikes the year before to find out first hand
what food mix seems to work, as well as things like how warm a sleeping bag
they want, what kind of shelter works best, etc etc etc (and a few more
etc's).

I opted for lots of resupply boxes with a lot of food in them, buying
locally when I was pretty confident I'd have decent selection but mailing at
least part to many other places.   I'd be a bit more relaxed about this if
doing the trip again, but I built in sufficient variety in what I mailed
myself that I never had the "I'm so sick of eating X" problem.   I ended up
not loving every one of the meals I made for myself at home ahead of time (I
made a variety and didn't have time to try them all out ahead of time), but
when your body needs the calories you can choke down something that's "not
great but edible" without too much problem!

Bottom line is I agree with Stephen. I guess with the caveat that until you
really learn what works for you over long distances, I'd err on the side of
assuming that you could get sick of daily eating something that seems fine
on a weekend trip (or that seems a good idea in a book or from someone's
trail journal).


Brian Lewis / Gadget '08
http://postholer.com/brianle