There are many different approaches to resupply on the PCT. We eat a vegan diet and love to cook, so we decided to buy/prepare all of our food ahead of time and have family/friends mail it to us from the Midwest. This worked quite well for us.
Breakfasts:
- Muesli (overnight, cold-soaked oats)
- Granola with coconut milk
- Instant coffee
For breakfast we alternated having muesli or granola with coconut milk, and we always treated ourselves to hot coffee. We assembled and vacuum packed an assortment of muesli dishes with old fashioned oats, sunflower seeds, and different flavorings, including brown sugar, peanut butter powder, cocoa powder, coconut milk powder, and/or coconut flakes. We also sent ourselves a variety of store-bought granola with coconut milk powder. And most importantly we sent ourselves instant coffee. At a few points we even grabbed regular grounds in town and boiled up cowboy coffee on the trail. We were out for 142 days and didn’t miss our coffee a single morning.
Lunch:
- Cold-soaked Near East couscous sides
- Cold-soaked Knorr sides
- Instant hummus on tortillas or crackers
- Single serve peanut butter packets on tortillas or crackers
For lunch we mostly cold-soaked store bought prepared foods that we had supplemented with additional dried beans and/or greens. Our lunch strategy is where we could have used the most improvement. By the end of the hike we were absolutely sick of our lunches. As of writing this we have been off the trail for nearly six months, and Renee has yet to eat couscous. For our next hike, we hope to come up with some of our own lunch recipes. Our ideas include burritos with beans, veggies, and rice or potatoes. We will post them to our recipes page after we give them a try. Our biggest takeaway from our lunch experience is that store-bought pre-made foods are full of sodium and preservatives that taste fine at first, but over time they become extremely noticeable and disgusting.
Dinner:
Our dinners were amazing. We left our jobs two months before the hike started, and we devoted that time to dehydrating food for the trip. The veggies we dehydrated included kidney, pinto, black, garbanzo, & refried beans, spinach, mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, zucchini, carrots, corn, broccoli, sauerkraut, basmati rice, and sushi rice. Before we were vegan, we had tried many recipes from the book “Recipes for Adventure” by Chef Glenn. He has some tasty recipes and a great method for back-country cooking. We made several of our own vegan recipes for the PCT based on Chef Glenn’s method for backcountry cooking, and we supplemented these self-made recipes with a few of Chef Glenn’s own recipes (adapted as needed with vegan ingredients). Our dinners utilized a carbohydrate base of noodles, rice, or ramen, coupled with a protein of beans or nuts, and a large amount of veggies for flavor, texture, and nutrients. By making sure that each recipe covered these three categories (carb, protein, veggie), we had no trouble staying well-sustained during the trip. Ultimately, we came up with 12 dinners that we rotated through during the hike.
- Coconut Peanut Butter Noodles
- Coconut Cashew Curry
- Chili with Noodles
- Curry Rice
- Spanish Rice with Refried Beans
- Bibimbap Rice
- Unstuffed Peppers Rice (adapted from Chef Glen)
- Bean & Veggie Ramen (adapted from Chef Glen)
- Taco Mac (adapted from Chef Glen)
- Spinach & Bean Ramen (adapted from Chef Glen)
- Ramen Noodles and Kraut (adapted from Chef Glen)
Snacks:
- Homemade dehydrated fruit
- Granola bars
- Nuts
- Fruit leathers
- Sports drink powder
It was difficult predicting how much of this stuff we’d need. Our original estimate was not enough. But, after a couple of weeks of wishing we had just a bit more food, we realized that it was no problem to grab additional snacks, even in the least vegan-friendly towns (hey, even Oreos are vegan!). Healthier snacks would have been nice, but with the amount of exercise we were doing every day we didn’t feel like Oreos, Skittles, pop tarts, instant ramen, and Fritos were doing too much harm. In fact, it was entertaining to see how much every hiker’s dietary standards deteriorated as we became accustomed to eating what was available in trail towns.
Towns:
Our resupply shipments included food to eat while we were in each town. This ended up being somewhat unnecessary. It turns out that 99% of hikers, us included, are happy to get ‘real’ food from restaurants when it is available. Since we are vegan, there were plenty of towns that had terrible options for us to eat, but even so, when they were available french fries from a fryer were often much more appetizing than another packet of Knorr or couscous.
Resupply Locations:
Our Resupply Spreadsheet is below. We tried to choose resupply stops that were as close to the trail as possible to minimize hitchhiking. This wasn’t always the best approach, but it worked well enough.
| Actual Arrival Date | Location | Trail Miles (2018) | Shipping Address | Notes |
| 5/3/2018 | Southern Terminus | 0 | ||
| 5/5/2019 | Mt Laguna | 43.2 | Name c/o Laguna Mountain Lodge PO Box 146 Mount Laguna, CA 91948 | $5/box to collect |
| 5/9/2018 | Warner Springs | 111.5 | Name c/o General Delivery Warner Springs, CA 92086 | |
| 5/13/2018 | Idyllwild | 178.6 | Name c/o General Delivery Idyllwild, CA 92549 | |
| 5/18/2018 | Big Bear City | 263.9 | Name c/o General Delivery Big Bear City, CA 92314 | |
| 5/22/2018 | Cajon Pass | 340.6 | Name c/o Best Western Cajon Pass 8317 US Hwy 138 At the I-15 Freeway Phelan, CA 92371 | |
| 5/27/2019 | Agua Dulce | 448.7 | Name c/o The Saufley’s 11861 Darling Road Agua Dulce, CA 91390 | |
| 6/2/2018 | Tehachapi (Wits End) | 551.3 | Name c/o Wits’ End 115 S Mojave St Tehachapi, CA, 93561 | |
| 6/8/2018 | Kennedy Meadows | 698.2 | Name c/o Kennedy Meadows General Store 96740 Beach Meadow Road Inyokern, CA 93527 | $5/box to collect |
| 6/25/2018 | Tuolumne Meadows | 943.6 | Name c/o General Delivery Tuolumne Meadows Yosemite National Park, CA 95389 | |
| 7/2/18 | South Lake Tahoe | 1091.4 | Name c/o General Delivery South Lake Tahoe, CA 96151 | |
| 7/9/2018 | Sierra City (Store | 1198 | Name c/o Sierra Country Store 213 Main Street Sierra City, CA 96125 | |
| 7/16/2018 | Drakesbad Guest Ranch | 1358.5 | Name c/o Drakesbad Guest Ranch End of Warner Valley Road Chester, CA 96020 | |
| 7/23/2018 | Castella | 1517.5 | Name c/o Ammirati’s Market PO Box 90 Castella, CA 96017 | |
| 7/30/2018 | Seiad Valley | 1655.9 | Name c/o General Delivery Seiad Valley, CA 96086 | |
| 8/4/2018 | Fish Lake Resort | 1773.2 | Name c/o Fish Lake Resort State HWY 140, Mile Marker 30 Medford, OR 97501 | $5/box to collect UPS only |
| 8/10/2018 | Shelter Cove Resort | 1906.6 | Name c/o Shelter Cove Resort & Marina 27600 West Odell Lake Road, Highway 58 Crescent, OR 97733 | $5/box to collect UPS only |
| 8/15/2018 | Big Lake Youth Camp | 1995.1 | Name c/o Big Lake Youth Camp 26435 Big Lake Rd Sisters, OR 97759 | |
| 8/22/2018 | Cascade Locks | 2146.6 | Name c/o General Delivery Cascade Locks, OR 97014 | |
| 9/2/2018 | White Pass | 2294.9 | Name c/o Kracker Barrel Store 48851 US Highway 12 Naches, WA 98937 | |
| 9/7/2018 | Snoqualmie Pass | 2393.1 | Name General Delivery c/o Chevron Station Snoqualmie Pass, WA 98068 | |
| 9/17/2018 | Stehekin | 2571.9 | Name c/o General Delivery Post Office Stehekin, WA 98852 | |
| 9/22/2018 | Finish! Manning Park, BC, Canada | 2662.5 |
Shipping Costs
We spent ~ $500 in shipping to send ourselves ~31 boxes from the Midwest. Thanks a ton to Tim’s mom, Janet, in Chicago and our friends, Tia and Ricky, in Rhinelander, WI for sending them all to us! We used USPS flat rate shipping boxes for a majority of our boxes, except for Kennedy Meadows where we mailed ourselves a bear box and microspikes and two locations in Oregon that were served by UPS only. USPS boxes themselves are free.
- (~9) large USPS flat rate boxes ($18.90 shipping per box, free box)
- (~19) medium USPS flat rate boxes ($13.65 shipping per box, free box)
- (2) UPS boxes
- (1) USPS non-flat rate box with bear box & microspikes ($29.15, mailed from San Diego to Kennedy Meadows south)
Summary
We really enjoyed eating our wonderful homemade meals and snacks. For a future thru hike, we would probably only send ourselves the homemade food and buy everything else from the stores in the trail towns.
