![]() The best thing to do is go on “practice hikes” to better understand your abilities and comfort level. If you are new to backpacking, you need data points before you can start predicting your pace on a multi-day hike or a thru-hike. Group size, which affects group efficiency.Physical fitness of myself and others in my group, e.g.good trail, game trails, tussocks, deep powder, Spring corn oxygen-deprived Colorado, oxygen-rich Appalachians My ability to accurately predict MPD has improved with experience. During a thru-hike, I never arrive in town with food leftover. If I overestimate how much time it will take by underestimating my MPD, I will be free to eat more each day than I originally planned. If I underestimate how much time it will take by overestimating my MPD, I will have to ration my food so I do not run out, as happens in the example below. my pace, noted as MPD, or miles per day, since Predicting durationĮven if I determine correctly the amount of calories I need per day, I may not necessarily leave the trailhead with the correct amount of food for the entire trip because this calculation depends on whether I determined correctly how many days it would take to reach the next resupply point, which itself is a function of the distance I cover each day, i.e. If the 3,000-calorie pile looks reasonable, then make adjustments before your next trip based on the results from your first. If a pile of food worth 3,000 calories seems like it’s way too much or way too little, adjust the amount before you even start your trip. Instead, use 3,000 calories/day as a starting point and adjust up or down as you see fit. My experience is that most backpackers only need about 3,000 calories per day, so in most cases I do not recommend that you replicate exactly the food plan above. But they also make planning easier because they can be broken apart in orderly rows.īelow is an example of what my typical rations looks like: I prefer these small, distinct meals because they keep my energy level sustained. Rather, they consist of a breakfast, four to six mid-day snacks, desert and dinner. Of course, my daily rations are not as simple as just five Snickers. Sum all food needs from (3) to determine how much food I need to buy for the entire trip.įor example, if my daily rations consisted again of just five Snickers, and if my thru-hike had four resupply points that were 4, 6, 7, and 10 days apart (27 days total), then I would need 135 Snickers.Multiply (1) x (2) to determine how much food I need sent to each resupply and,.Determine the duration (in days) between each resupply point.To determine how much food I need for an entire thru-hike, then, I modify the steps just slightly: On my 208-day Great Western Loop, for example, I resupplied about 50 times, or on average about every 140 miles, or 4 days. This is a very simple example, but it makes the point.Ī thru-hike is really just a series of consecutive multi-day trips. Determine the duration (in days) between the start and finish and,įor example, if my daily rations consisted of just five Snickers, and my trip was 4 days long, then I would bring 20 Snickers.Specify the composition of my daily rations.Multi-day backpacking trips versus thru-hikesįor a multi-day hike, there are three steps in determining how much food I need: I simply need to go shopping (using the shopping list I developed in Excel), package the food (hopefully with the help of family and friends), box it up, and ship it to my planned resupply points. The tangible planning stage is less interesting so I will not discuss it here. In the remainder of this post, I want to explain how I theoretically plan my food for multi-day backpacking trips and thru-hikes. This stage can be intimidating because I am now committing my financial resources, not just my time. For example, I order my gear, bottle my stove fuel, print my maps, and reserve my air flights. I obtain everything that is a prerequisite to start. To do so, I rely heavily on applications like Excel, Word, National Geographic TOPO!, and Google Maps.Ģ. On my computer, I develop, refine, and perfect every aspect of the trip, notably my gear, supplies, route, and logistics.
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