[pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

Eric, and anybody else who is interested, you might find this very  
long essay to be interesting.
http://foragersharvest.com/into-the-wild-and-other-poisonous-plant- 
fables/

Since it is very long (yet quite interesting), I copied the part I  
hoped you might see:

When Krakauer insists that McCandless had sufficient food in the  
Alaska bush, it makes me suspect that he has never lived on red  
squirrels. I eat three in one meal, and that’s with wild rice and  
vegetables.

The squirrels that McCandless was eating (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)  
typically weigh five to nine ounces (Whitaker, 1996). Using seven  
ounces as an average, and realizing that after subtracting the skin,  
tail, head, bones, feet, and entrails, the edible flesh would  
constitute about 40 percent of that weight, or 2.8 ounces of meat per  
squirrel. This means that he would have needed to eat about twenty- 
five squirrels per day to meet his caloric requirement. If he  
carefully removed and ate the liver, kidneys, kidney fat, heart,  
lungs, and brain of each squirrel, he would have about doubled the  
calories that he received from each animal. Since he probably did  
this to some extent, I estimate that he needed roughly sixteen  
squirrels to equal a calorie-day.



Chris McCandless was not hiking 15-30 miles a day. Just hanging out  
in his bus he'd need about 16 squirrels a day.

If you do plan to hike and hunt, you might do better not hiking the  
PCT. It's a crest trail so it stays away from the better animal  
habitat. You'd probably find more food in the late summer of the  
Pacific Northwest portion of the trail.

On Nov 6, 2012, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> Subject: Re: [pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style
> To: Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.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