| Mile | 275.3 |
| Miles Since Last Update | 0 |
| Day | 29 |
I had originally planned to take a zero in hot springs but I think I’m going to end up taking two. Looking at the weather tomorrow night the low at the first shelter is going to be 4 degrees. In theory doable, but eh. Been over 100 miles since my last zero, and I’m not on a schedule. People passing me left and right I’m sure. The main “bubble” of thru hikers starts today. March 15th and April 15th are the two most popular start dates. Registry-wise I’m number 125. I’ve been told they are in the 700s now, by the end of May that number should be around 2000.
Ran into Junkfood, Big Man, Thunder, and Storm the dog this morning as they were walking thru hot springs. They are pushing tonight and tomorrow to get thru to a hostel to wait out the cold snap it sounds like.
Also ran into preacher this morning too. Sounds like he got his finger situation sorted and is back out here. Said it was staph. Yikes. The cottage I’m at is right next to a church and he was going in for the service.
Not a ton to do here in Hot Springs, especially on Sunday, so I’m trying to tune some food stuff.
I’m not a picky eater, but I have grown to hate carrying extra weight, so diving into a lot of the food I have right now and sorting out cal/gram. There are some spreadsheets online that break this out a bit more (just use the bing search engine to look for “Hiker Food 2.5”), but those don’t really account for having to scrounge for food at dollar generals and places called “Dave’s Hillbilly Market”.
6 cal/g seems to be the upper limit. At that point you are basically eating olive oil. A lot of the high end backpacker meals like mountain house can push into the mid 5 cal/g range but they are hard to find in town sometimes and are like 15 bucks a pop. My goal is to carve away anything that isn’t at least 4 cal/g right now.
Above is basically what I plan to carry out of hot springs and into the next resupply, Erwin TN.
Loosely organized as follows:
- Knorr side dishes are the main cooked meals. You can pour boiling water straight into the bag so the cook pot doesn’t need to be cleaned. The rice ones are garbage value at like 2-3 cal/g but the pasta ones are generally in the 4-5 range. “Parmesan” is supposedly the most efficient flavor but I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll be on trail for 4 days, so need 4 of these.
- Spam packets. These are easy protein/fat and I generally eat with the knorr, sometimes I throw them into the knorr bag, sometimes I just eat them out of the packet to save time. These actually suck at around 3.4 cal/g but I haven’t found a better easy “meat”. The dollar general here only had the “lite” ones. Sucks.
- Loose ramen. These are a hair over 4 cal/g iirc and I generally throw a quarter block or so into a knorr packet to make it more of a meal. Sometimes just eat these raw too. I save the seasoning packets but there’s probably little point.
- Instant mashed potatoes. These are right at 4 cal/g and easy to pack. Haven’t actually tried these yet but there’s a real popular thing people do (according to Junkfood) called a “ramen bomb” where they cook ramen and then thicken the broth up with a few spoonfuls of these.
- Various candy/protein bars. Try to keep at least 2 of these a day to eat on the trail for when I break down crying in front of a 2000ft ascent. Paydays are super efficient since they are just sugar and peanuts. Robert Irvine’s protein bars are also super efficient but I hate looking at his dumb face on every wrapper.
- Electrolyte packets. I always go for liquid IV if it is available but there’s 50+ overpriced brands of these now that influencers are constantly hocking now.
Also have some other things that go into the can, toothpaste, the cook pot itself, and a garbage bag. In the end with everything crammed in it looks like this:
Can claims it can fit 7 days worth of food, but I am not very good at packing it and throw in a bunch of non food stuff. Probably won’t ever need 7 days of food anyway.
Vegetables are super hard to deal with and thinking about it I really only get them eating in town. I saw a guy at a hostel drain 4 jars of olives and cram them into a Ziploc bag, that might be worth looking into, he seemed to know what he was doing.
Ate lunch at the spring Creek tavern and out of boredom went back to the dollar general to scrounge some more. Bacon bits are crazy good value I found at just under 5 cal/g. Throwing some of those into the instant mashed potatoes bag. Probably have more than 4 days of food now but it is a good thing to have learned.
Went to the outfitter again. Remembered I wanted to swap my Spork for a spoon since it keeps poking holes in the bags so nabbed that and a “Peak” meal, which is like a mountain house but a bit more expensive (but 850 cals, holy moly). Plan is I’ll eat that, and keep the bag to throw the knorr meals in since it has a zip loc and a little better insulation. Then once it starts to get a bit too mucky I’ll just buy another I figure.