[pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style

[eric at ericwichman.com]

Good points Eric.

I wonder why no one has mentioned pack animals yet. Not just to carry  
more food from the beginning, but to be able to carry more food along  
the way. Not sure how this would work as I have ZERO experience with  
pack animals. Also, I'm just throwing it out there about the pack  
animal. Would I have to carry food for another mouth to feed? Would I  
have to make more stops for water and such? I don't know if a pack  
animal would be a good idea, or would slow me down.

If one foraged for food the whole way it would probably take a year to  
complete the trail. However, spending 2 days hunting/foraging and  
drying food instead of going into towns might enable me to gather  
enough food to hike 7-10 days or more without having to hunt again.  
(this would also make it easier to plan the hunts. I may have to hike  
a day or so off trail to reach a suitable hunting area)

I'd rather take one deer or pig, and spend a couple days prepping and  
preserving the meat for a good solid 7-14 day hike between  
foraging/hunting times. But this is ideal, and plans never usually  
work out that way.

I don't know... That's why we're discussing it right...?

~Eric


Quoting Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.com>:

> 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
>
>