Food.

The average person eats around 2000 to 2500 calories a day. On a hike as big and as long as the PCT this figures jumps up to double that, at 5000 calories a day. This is what I need to consume to give me the energy I require. That said, the chances are that my calorific expenditure will exceed what I can eat because it’s nigh on impossible to carry the amount of food required to keep up with what I will be burning. Put simply, I need to double what I eat at the moment, and I will still probably lose weight.

So, what do you eat on the PCT? The trick is to carry the lightest, most compact, transportable (i.e. – doesn’t perish) with the most calories possible. You don’t mess with canned goods (too heavy), most foods that require cooking are dehydrated in some way so water is added which I will already (hopefully) be carrying. Good examples are pasta and rice. A rucksack bouncing up and down all day will destroy any food remotely ‘fragile’ so crisps, crackers, bananas etc are no no’s. It’s no use carrying pasta tubes, for example, because they contain too much ‘air’, far better in the form such as couscous which will give me more food for the space.

This all sounds pretty dire in the taste department and it can be. There are tricks to spice things up like stock cubes, pesto in a tube, shaving off some salami into the pot or even carrying a small amount of spices (chillies etc). I have to try and vary my food choices otherwise I will rapidly become bored with them.

There is snacking as well for those times between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner. Trying to pack 5000 calories into three meals may not be hard but it’s easier if you spread the intake a little. Snacking on such things as nuts (huge amount of energy and protein), dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, apricots etc will suppress my hunger at these times.

By the time a thru hiker hits a town or village (on average once every 5 to 7 days), the only thing on their mind apart from a shower and motel is food, lots of it. Town stops are utilised to make up calorific deficits and to eat what is unavailable on the trail. Fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. Ask any PCT hiker what they think about the most and 10 times out of 10 the answer is food. It is an all consuming fixation for most, the most talked about subject.

There are famous places along the trail which have sprung up to service the PCT hiker. All you can eat pancake mounds, ice cream challenges, you name it. Some establishments with ‘All you can eat’ signs or ‘Unlimted salad bar’ have actually banned hikers because they eat too much!