Resupply

Fuel! It’s necessary for travel. Not the gas or diesel you immediately thought of, but the food and liquids that our bodies burn when we hike long distances day after day. How do you carry enough? You can’t, but there is a way.

The OHT is about 205 miles long. Hiking about 16 miles a day, which is not a particularly killer pace, will get Cappuccino and me to the end in 13 days. So, we will need 13 days of food. As I mentioned above, you really can’t carry all your food for most trips, especially long ones.

Now, Cappuccino and I could probably lug the 20 to 26 pounds of food needed for 13 days. That’s 20 to 26 pounds on top of the weight of all our camping gear. But, there is a better, and lighter way. We will be hiking near some small towns. Ozone, AR is two miles from the trail. With a population of only 200, it lacks any kind of store, but they do have a post office. By sending a resupply package there, addressed to myself c/o General Delivery, the PO will hold it for me to pickup.

So, as long as I plan in advance, figure all the meals I’ll need between PO stops, and get my boxes in the mail on time, I can count on resupply. In fact, we will be doing two resupplies on this trip.

We will start out carrying 5 days of food. When we reach Ozone we will pick up a resupply box with 3 more days of supplies. Then in Pelsor (3 days farther and one mile from the trail) we will pick up our last 5 days of food. Lighter loads will make for easier travel, even if we have to go a little out of our way to pick up the supplies.

Here’s a bit of Thru-hiker trivia: if you don’t open a Priority Mail package, you can forward it to another PO at no cost. Thru-hikers often put extra gear in such a box and keep forwarding it to the next PO up the trail until they need the gear (think new shoes.) It’s called a Bounce Box.

In fact, I used a Bounce Box when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. My wife sent me some replacement shoes because after 600 miles, mine were wearing out. Go figure? When I got the box of shoes, I decided that the ones I had on had at least a hundred more miles of wear in them, so I forwarded the replacement shoes to the next town 100 miles away. What I didn’t know was that Nancy included a loaf of homemade banana bread with those shoes as a surprise. I only learned of the surprise after I had forwarded the box. A week later, I arrived at the next PO and unpacked my replacement shoes and some very moldy banana bread. :^(

Well, that about does it. See you next week.