[pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style

[Eric Lee]

This was rolling around in my head today and I had one more thought to
share.  It should be possible to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations
to see if the math comes out looking remotely feasible.

One of the things about modern-day survival practices is that people almost
never do them consistently for multiple months at a time.  I respect folks
who know how to find significant quantities of food in the backcountry but
let's be honest - you can run a pretty drastic calorie deficit for a week or
two while you're doing your short-term survival thing.  You'll eventually go
home and chow down on pizza or whatever to gain it all back.  Doing the same
thing for five months straight means that you don't have the luxury of
running a chronic calorie deficit - over the long term you *have* to break
even.  That's a very different sort of proposition.

A 180-pound male hiking 20+ miles a day in the mountains with a loaded
backpack is probably going to burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,500 to
5,000 calories a day.  It varies per person, of course, but this is just a
rough calculation.  So each day you need to collect and consume an average
of 5,000 calories.  Ok, so how much time can you afford to budget for food
collection each day on average?  Let's say two hours for the sake of
argument.  If you walk really fast you could be able to make more time for
food collection but then you're also probably burning calories at a faster
rate.  Ok, now what kind of food sources would you expect to find in the
wilderness that let you gather at the rate of 2,500 calories an hour?  I
don't know the answer to that but it's worth asking yourself that question
and seeing if you have an answer.  Shooting a deer would definitely do it, I
guess.  Smaller animals - I dunno, maybe.  Plants?  I very much doubt it.
How many dandelions and wild onions do you have to gather and eat to net
5,000 calories?  Again, I don't know, but I'm guessing you'd be at it all
day, and then you're not thru-hiking, you're just subsisting.

Of course there are going to be many stretches of trail where there simply
won't be any food to be had regardless of your standards.  You will probably
frequently walk a whole day without finding anything worth eating close by
along the trail, so you'll either need to gather twice as much in the good
times and prepare it to carry with you, or detour off trail to find dinner.
Can you gather 10,000 calories a day in the wilderness?  I don't know, but
it's worth thinking through it as a thought experiment.

Eric