Resupply

For anyone who has also read The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, you might remember the protagonist, Eustace, frolicking along the Appalachian Trail in the 70s and using the “hunt-as-you-go” strategy. He and his friend were literally starving by the end of his trip. I plan on taking a more secure and pragmatic approach to getting myself what I need on the trail, as much as I wish I could return to my hunter-gatherer roots. I am but a humble girl from the wilds of suburban Portland, after all.

Dinner wrangling in Grand Gulch, Utah.

FOOD

Nowadays, people use one or both of the following methods of food resupply: mail-as-you-go (and prepare ahead of time) or buy-as-you-go. Both have been effectively used and combined with success.

• Mail-as-you-go is generally appreciated by the type-A planner who likes to have security and control over their food. It involves deciding before your hike where you want to resupply, counting the days between each resupply, and stocking the thirty-odd boxes beforehand. A friend or family member then ships your boxes to the appropriate location on the trail for you to pick up (usually a hotel that wants your business, or a post office). Wow, writing it makes the whole thing sound so simple, but at this point the amount of work I’m going to have to put into my boxes scares the bejeezus out of me. Good thing I just finished undergrad; I think I still remember how to work hard...
• Buy-as-you-go is the flexible, free-spirited sibling of mail-as-you-go. You can pull off the trail when you want more food, buy whatever is available, and be on your way. Simple as it sounds from a planning standpoint, though, I see it as more time spent on my feet in towns when what I really want to be doing is sleeping, stuffing my face, and blogging; maybe all at once. Plus, some of the towns are nothing more than a post office and a gas station. Um, I will gladly call myself a food snob if it means I don’t have to shell out way too much money for really shitty gas station food. I value my health. But it would be nice to buy just what I want in towns with real grocery stores and not have to pay to ship boxes to every resupply.

 So what’s a girl to do? After poring over other blogs and various first-and-secondhand accounts of hikers before me, I decided to do a hybrid of the two strategies. I’ll ship boxes to about 2/3 of my resupply towns—the ones too small to have a decent selection and price for food—and buy in the bigger towns. Ah, balance!

MAPS

The sorted piles of maps by resupply location.

The maps (See my navigation post) came to me in a behemoth stack and I was at once giddy with excitement and also filled with dread for the hours I would spend sorting these maps. Mostly giddy, though.

Halfmile’s maps are conveniently organized into digestible sections, by what I assume are the more popular resupply towns. These sections do not, however, always match up with my resupply stops. So I spent four hours one morning sorting and dividing the maps chronologically into piles on my bedroom floor, stapling them together, and attaching hot pink post-it notes with the start location, end location, mileage, and notes on getting on/off the trail to my resupplies. I also denoted whether I was buying in that town or getting a package mailed to me; that way, I could put maps for sections that I’m buying food in into the previous section’s; ensuring that I have my maps even if I’m not getting a package in that town. Savvy? Yeah, me neither. Worst comes to worst, I have Halfmile’s maps downloaded on my phone, so there’s that.