Planning a Long-Distance Trek
hours a day with a pack on your back. Experienced hikers train before beginning the hike, but they also build up their mileage gradually, over several weeks.
List Your Resupply Points
With this list, you can plan your resupply. There are two major resupply methods: mailing yourself food along the way, and buying it as you go.
Resupplying by mail takes a lot of advance planning: you must add up the number of days between each resupply point, and plan all your meals for each day in between. Food should be light, easy to prepare, and tasty-conditions that can often be difficult to satisfy, especially the last one. In addition, hikers who plan their meals several months ahead seldom realize how sick of their food they will be after eating the same things several times. Right now, it may sound tasty to have chocolate pudding for dessert four times a week, or your favorite peaches and cream oatmeal every day for breakfast, but after eating these treats too many days in a row, you'll be trading them with other hikers or just leaving them at the post office. On the Appalachian Trail, particularly in the second half of the 2,000-mile trip, I often received excellent freeze-dried or dehydrated food from other hikers who would otherwise have thrown it away. In exchange, I gave them things I had bought at the store.
Resupplying by mail is best for people who have special dietary needs, and who can either provide themselves enough variety, or who don't mind monotony. Vegetarians often prefer it, since small trail towns often don't have much for them to eat.
If you choose to resupply by mail, pack each section's food in a box, and address it to yourself, care of General Delivery in the town where you plan to pick it up. It's often useful to write "Hold for Long-Distance Hiker" and the name of the trail on the outside of the box; post-office workers will usually keep it for longer, since they know you may be delayed. Take all the boxes to the post office and have them weighed, and get stamps for each one. On each box, write the date that it should be mailed in order to reach you on time; allow at least a week, preferably more. Then give them to a helpful friend. Since the boxes are all ready and paid for, all this person has to do is
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