Resupply

One of the common questions we get is about how we'll resupply food and other essentials while we're on the trail. All of our past trips have been short enough that we could prepare everything in advance - from food to sunscreen to batteries - and just mail packages to stops along our route so we could pick them up on the way. That is not going to work on this trip... Pulling together 5 months of supplies in advance is basically impossible.

Repeat picture: all of our food for 24 days on the John Muir Trail in 2010

Not only are the logistics of it overwhelming, but we also keep hearing that, on long hikes like this, you eventually get utterly and completely sick of whatever food you start out with. So, even if we were willing to dehydrate 5 months worth of meals, and could figure out how to get them mailed to towns along the routes at the right time, we'd probably be cursing our past selves within a month or so of eating chili and cous cous every night.

So, we'll primarily be resupplying our food from grocery stores in towns that we stop in. In many places, the trail goes directly through towns or cities. There are other stretches where you need to detour off the trail - sometimes more than 50km (30 mi) - to get to civilization. Hitchhiking is common in these situations, and it sounds like it is relatively easy to catch a ride with a nice person in most places. We haven't had to hitchhike on any of our trips yet, so I'm just a bit nervous about that part of it.

We'll probably be fine if we stick to friendly looking vehicles like this, right?

In larger cities the shopping will be easy - there will be sporting goods stores that sell dehydrated meals (if we're willing to pay for them), and large supermarkets with a wide range of foods that are easy to cook on the trail. But many of the towns we'll go through will be smaller, and apparently resupplying from them can be challenging. Often, there are only small markets with a limited selection of expensive food available. Even though we are planners to the core, this is something that we know we'll just have to play by ear and figure out as we go.

There are also some non-food items that we'll need to resupply. Things like shoes. That's right, we're going to walk enough that one pair of shoes will probably not last the whole way. Apparently most sporting goods are really expensive in New Zealand, so we're trying to pre-buy spares of the things we know we'll wear out. If you hike far enough, I guess almost everything becomes a consumable. So we'll pack up a spare pair of shoes, a spare shirt or two, some of the hard-to-find batteries that our Photon flashlights take, and anything else we think might be hard to replace on the trail, and mail it before we leave.

There are about a half dozen towns along the way that provide "poste restante" service. The post office will hold a package for up to three months, and also allow you to forward the package to another post office for a reasonable fee. Thru hikers call this a "bounce box", because you can bounce it from post office to post office along your route, only taking what you need for the next section at every stop. This is a really common practice on the Appalachian Trail, where there are very frequent towns with post offices that offer that service. The post restante options are fewer and further between on the TA, but it will still be useful for things we'll use up infrequently, or can live without for a couple of weeks between post offices.

Bounce boxes lined up in a post office along the AT (credit)

We'll also probably throw in some food treats, like homemade dehydrated meals and powdered drink mix (which is one of our staples, but also apparently hard to find in NZ?), to motivate us to get to the next post office. Even though it might seem silly, having a good meal or a tasty snack waiting for you somewhere down the trail can be a huge motivator on those days when you still have a long way to go, and just don't want to walk anymore.