A Hiker's Guide to Eating

There are three main topics of conversation on the trail. We talk about hiking, gear, and of course, food. Most hikers never feel as though they get enough to eat on the trail due to the fact that you have to carry all you are going to eat on your back. Some hikers do what we did and set up mail drops along the trail, and prepare all their food ahead of time. However, more hikers simply restock in towns, buying their food as they go. There are pros and cons to both options. While it is a lot of work to prepare all of your food ahead of time, you can buy your food in bulk and thus save money. I have heard that these small stores located in trail towns will raise their prices during hiker season. During hiker season, all the locals do their shopping out of town, like at Walmart, (which of course you need a car to get to). Then after hiker season, the store owners lower their prices again and the locals start shopping there again.

The staples of a hiker's diet who resupplies in trail towns are Lipton Noodles in Sauce, little pouches of tuna, and ramen noodles. A common hiker dinner involves adding a pouch of tuna into a ramen packet. Our pre-prepared food offered much more variety.

One recent conversation I had with a group of hikers involved how differently people would eat if they had to carry all their food on their back. Someone then suggested how differently people would purchase their food if they also had to carry around all their trash.

When hikers get into town, they really eat up a storm, eating all the foods they could not carry on their backs. A popular hiker treat is an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Another hiker favorite is all you can eat buffets. Who would be crazy enough to open an all you can eat buffet in a trail town? Most hikers average about three heaping plates of food at buffets,(Jonathan averages five or six plates). A hiker named Hitch told me that one time when he and a few other hikers were eating at a Chinese food buffet, the owner came out and told them, "That is all you can eat, you go now." Hikers eat a lot and they don't restrain themselves. I have heard stories of many hikers who after coming off the trail, bloat up like balloons because they don't relearn portion control. That is the biggest challenge for me being off the trail. However, I am still so happy to be home, that even not eating all that I want to seems of little consequence.
Madeline