Food. Arguably the most important topic once you’re hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. And certainly something to consider before setting off. Because what are you going to do about food on a wilderness trail? This post discusses your PCT food and resupply strategy and is part of a Pacific Crest Trail guide for future hikers to help answer all the questions you have about the trail!
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You are reading:
• Food and Resupply Strategy
Also part of this series:
• PCT Questions Part 1: Planning
• PCT Questions Part 2: Trail Life
• How to get the B-2 Visa
• Safety for Female Hikers
• My 2019 PCT Gear List
• Daily PCT blogs
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Before I started my Pacific Crest Trail hike, I mentioned to a friend of a friend that I was going on a five month hike. She was in her thirties, intelligent, but not a hiker. She asked me if I was going to carry five months worth of food with me. I was so baffled by her question I nearly slapped her.
Carrying five months of food is of course, not an option. Carrying several weeks worth of food is a stretch. Even though trails inherently run through remote areas, there will always be a road to cross that will lead to a town, big or small, near or far. Every 2 to 7 days (with an average of 5) you’ll be able to go to a town and resupply.
Many hikers take weeks or months to plan their resupply strategy. They prepare food boxes and have someone send them to a selection of resupply stops along the way – post offices or other establishments happy to hold them for hikers. The organisation of this before and on trail is a headache, and the entire concept is impossible if you’re coming from abroad. What’s more, the whole thing is needless.
This post discusses your food and resupply options if you decide not to prepare resupply boxes and simply purchase food in the towns you pass along the trail. I’ll share all the stops I resupplied at, and highlight any particularly poor resupply stops, so you can be prepared.
I’ll also talk about the few good restaurants along the trail (there are not many, sorry.) So you know where to get the good stuff!
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Resupply
• Advantages to sending yourself food boxes
• Disadvantages to sending yourself food boxes
• Where did I resupply? Poor resupply towns and unexpected standouts
• What was it like to buy all my food on trail?
• What you’ll eat when you don’t send yourself boxes (What I ate on trail)
Restaurants
• What the restaurants and diners are like
• The cafes and restaurants you shouldn’t miss
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Resupply
If food isn’t one of your favourite subjects now, it will be when you’re hiking all the way between Mexico to Canada. It might take a few weeks for hunger to set in, but once it starts, it won’t stop. Food will be your main thought, and the prospect of lasagne might help you get through the San Jacinto snow. Your first stop in any town will be a restaurant and you will order several mains and still feel empty. You’ll be a bottomless pit. And you’ll still lose weight. We like to call this Hiker Hunger.
For a lot of people, planning food resupplies turns out to be the biggest prep item, aside from buying gear.
The most popular approach is to prepare resupply boxes and to have someone you know mail them to you along the trail. Where do you pick them up? Establishments or post offices along the trail. Many post offices will accept ‘General Delivery’ packages, stating your name and their address. They will hold your package for a month. Many stores, resorts and hostels along the trail hold packages for hikers as well, sometimes for free and sometimes for a small fee of around $5.
If you do this, you’ll have to schedule your entire hike with your estimated arrival time for each resupply, choosing which towns you’ll go into and guessing how many days it will take you to complete each stretch. You’ll be deciding what you’ll be eating for a whole 5 months, buying all the food, putting everything in ziplock bags and putting the right amount of food in each box. If you change your plans along the way, your food boxes will be messed up. Before you prepare them, you’ll probably have to call quite a few of your chosen destinations to check their address and to make sure they’re still accepting hiker boxes.
Just writing this down stresses me out. I’d argue that it shouldn’t have to be this way.
Advantages
Sure, there are certainly advantages to sending yourself food boxes, and it definitely works out for people.
- You can buy in bulk, which is cheaper
- You can quickly pick up your package and be back on trail in no time. Or, if you plan a day off in town, you have one less chore to do and more time to rest
- No long winded grocery store trip in every town and repackaging all your food on the street
- If your plans change, USPS allows you to forward your unopened box up to the next post office for free, providing you posted Priority
- You don’t have to deal with subpar resupply stops and get stuck eating gas station food
I would say that resupply boxes are a GREAT idea if you can dehydrate nutritious food ahead of time and send that to yourself. Or if you have a certain diet. But a lot of people stuff their resupply boxes with Snickers and mashed potatoes and you can easily buy those on trail.
Disadvantages
So, the disadvantages of sending yourself resupply boxes?
- Postage fees. This is around $15-20 for a flat fee medium or large Priority box. On top of that, some establishments will charge a fee for holding hiker boxes, and several rural destinations have a high charge for carrying in packages
- You’re tied to post office opening times, which can cause delays as rural post offices have limited running hours and may be closed on the weekends
- You might be able to get back to trail faster, but you (almost always) still have to go into town to pick up the package. Once you’re in town, you might want to stay for the day (or a few days) anyways. At the least to eat food and do laundry
- You’re stuck eating the food you thought you wanted to eat for the next five months. Many hikers realise they were very wrong, and half their resupply ends up in hiker boxes. Then they have to supplement with food bought locally anyways. Many hikers also realise they put too much food in their boxes
- You have to stick to the town you planned to go into ahead of time. You’ll probably end up with a trail family and you might want to go somewhere else. You’ll have to contact your designated resupply person at home to relay the change of plans
My personal advice? Don’t prepare food boxes (unless you can make yourself quality ones.) If anything, send yourself some food boxes from along the trail, when you know a meagre resupply stop is coming up.
Where did I resupply? Poor resupply towns and unexpected standouts
Some towns will have full-service grocery stores like Safeway, Vons and Trader Joe’s, or well-stocked general stores with pretty much everything you need. There will also be small towns with poorly stocked general stores, stores at resorts or other tourist destinations that offer just a few options. You will cross an Interstate or highway with just a gas station several times. The main problem with limited resupply is that they don’t carry fresh food, and most of your options will be snacks – chocolate bars, ramen, pop tarts and perhaps some dehydrated mashed potatoes. You can live off it, but it will get to you after a while.
I have noted all the resupply towns I stopped at. If there are no comments, the resupply wasn’t an issue. Either the town had a full service grocery store or a decent enough general store. I have added comments to the ones I found were particularly subpar, and a few that were unexpected standouts.
The resupply stops with this symbol ☼ had a restaurant I enjoyed, which I describe further down!
Southern California:
- Mount Laguna (mile 41.5): Your first resupply stop will shock you a little. Expensive with little stock. But it doesn’t matter because you won’t have eaten as much as you thought you would, so you only need a few things. The hiker box will probably be full of free food. The start of the trail passes stores every few days and crosses quite a few roads so you’re never too far from buying more snacks.
- Warner Springs (mile 109.5)
- Idyllwild ☼ via Paradise Valley Cafe (mile 151.8)
- Big Bear Lake ☼ (mile 266.1)
- San Bernardino via Cajon Pass (mile 341.9) (Not a usual PCT stop, and don’t go to the Walmart here.)
- Wrightwood (mile 369.3): The general store is an unexpected gem and perfectly geared towards hikers. All the dried foods you’d want in all the flavours. Clif bars, tuna packets, everything.
- Agua Dulce (mile 454.5): The general store has more empty shelves than full ones. You might have to get a little creative. Still, you can resupply. It’s just surprising they don’t stock it with hiker food during the summer months.
- Hikertown (mile 517.6): This is a classic PCT stop and a very strange one. The owner created a tiny old Western town, and you can rent rooms in the buildings that never get cleaned. You have to catch a lift up the road to the general store, which is tiny and mind blowingly expensive. Clif bars are $3 or $3.50 each. You can find a lot of the typical hiker foods, so you can get a (pricy) resupply together. There’s the competing Wee Ville place where you can stay as well, and they’re all trying to lure hikers to stay with them by promising barbeques that never come.
- Tehachapi (mile 558.5)
Sierras:
- Ridgecrest (and Lake Isabella) via Walker Pass (mile 652.1) (Both have all the grocery stores you need but I would advise against Lake Isabella as it’s very depressing.)
- Kennedy Meadows (mile 702.2): While I would skip the general store, Triple Crown Outfitters next to Grumpy Bears has the perfect resupply. As a gear shop they only stock items that hikers would need, and they surprisingly have them all. They also carry items such as lithium batteries.
- Independence (and Bishop ☼) via Kearsarge Pass (mile 789.1): Independence only has a post office and a limited general store, but all the other Sierra resupply towns are just up that one main road. From Independence it’s an easy hitch (or bus ride if your timing is right) to Bishop, which has everything, including several hostels.
- Mammoth Lakes ☼ via Red’s Meadows Resort (mile 906.6)
- Tuolumne Meadows (mile 942.5)
- Kennedy Meadows North via Sonora Pass (mile 1016.9): It’s a difficult hitch down to Kennedy Meadows North pack station (they run a daily $10 shuttle around 3pm) and their small store is limited with supplies. It’s still very possible to resupply, but it won’t be very nutritious.
Northern California:
- South Lake Tahoe (mile 1090.0)
- Truckee (mile 1153.4) (You can also take an Amtrak train to Reno from here, which will get you to all the big stores, including REI and Wholefoods.)
- Quincy (mile 1267.9)
- Belden (mile 1286.8): Belden isn’t so much a town but one large building that incorporates a hotel / restaurant / store that throws a lot of parties. You’ll be doing a bit of browsing to select food instead of fedoras.
- Chester (mile 1331.3)
- Burney Falls (1419.0): The Burney Falls store is really a tourist store but it’s just off trail, so easy to reach. Again it’s very pricey and quite limited but you’ll be able to scrape something together. If not, a hitch to Burney will get you to a bigger store.
- Mount Shasta ☼ (mile 1501.2)
- Saied Valley (mile 1655.9) (I did not actually resupply here but I believe you can get an all right resupply together in the little store (or hitch to Etna from mile 1599.7 instead.) I hitched in and out due to snow – hitching not recommended as you’re in the middle of nowhere.)
Oregon:
After Ashland, the PCT passes a number of resorts (tourist destinations, often campgrounds with stores and hot food). They’re all 1 or 2 miles off trail, which you have to walk to. They’re a few days separated from each other so you don’t have to go to all. You’ll probably visit Mazama Village and Shelter Cove Resort only.
- Ashland (mile 1717.7)
- Fish Lake Resort (mile 1773.2): There’s a 2 mile side trail to get here (I regretted going because it added so much mileage to my day – you can hitch but may not get a ride.) The people were friendly and let me charge my electronics. The store is limited as expected, but you can get some bits together to keep you going.
- Mazama Village (Crater Lake) (mile 1821.7): This is another tourist store, so it sells a lot of drinks and items hikers have no use for, and doesn’t have all the things you might need (like wet wipes). You’ll be living off mostly convenience store food for the next few days.
- Shelter Cove Resort (mile 1906.6): Has a store with slightly better resupply options compared to the other tourist destinations (and I ate a breakfast burrito that was surprisingly good.)
- Elk Lake Resort (mile 1952.6): Only 46 miles north of Shelter Cove. It has a ‘store’, which is really a few shelves with painkillers, gas canisters and Clif bars. Don’t resupply here.
- Bend (and Sisters ☼) via Santiam Pass (mile 2000.9)
- Timberline Lodge ☼ (mile 2097.4): The tourist store is no good for resupply as it only has snacks, but you should visit for the (breakfast) buffet, which is amazing. You can catch a $2 bus into Government Camp. While the store here isn’t amazing either, the bus will also take you into Sandy, just a bit further down the road. Sandy has all the big stores.
- Cascade Locks (mile 2147.3) (You can also take a bus to Portland from here.)
Washington:
- Trout Lake (mile 2229.4)
- White Pass (mile 2295.4): You’ll find a gas station half a mile from where the PCT crosses Highway 12. The shop is stocked with items that hikers would buy, although nothing on the somewhat more nutritious scale of things. Expect mashed potatoes and sweets for your next resupply. You can also hitch into Packwood from here, which has a proper grocery store. (I didn’t manage to get a hitch so resupplied at the gas station, charged my electronics and returned to the trail.)
- Snoqualmie Pass ☼ (mile 2393.6): A strange ski ‘town’ which looks more like an overgrown gas station alongside a huge Interstate / highway jumble. You can resupply at both the gas station and another convenience store. Both options are poor with low quality foods. Expect to eat ramen and crisps for the next stretch.
- Leavenworth ☼ via Stevens Pass (mile 2464.7)
- Stehekin (mile 2572.4): The town has a small shop, and although the stock is small, in conjunction with the bakery you might find yourself with a fun, different resupply. You’ll probably wonder why you haven’t thought of resupplying solely from bakeries before…
- Mazama ☼ (mile 2591.6): The Mazama Store is essentially a health / delicatessen store with bakery goods. Southbounders will be shocked by the price, but as a northbounder it wasn’t much more expensive than anywhere else on trail, yet the quality was so much higher. You won’t find hiker staples here, but you’ll be able to get creative and pull something together. There’s also fresh produce so it may not be a bad change. The bakery is known for its sea salt baguette which you should definitely pack out as part of your resupply.
What was it like to buy all my food on trail?
I did struggle with the sections with repeatedly limited options, especially the resort phase in Oregon and the constant poor options in Washington. The ones that really brought my spirit down were the two gas station resupplies in Washington – White Pass and Snoqualmie Pass. Two stretches of bad food when I was really craving something fresh – anything fresh. My relief to hitch into Leavenworth after this stretch was palpable, and I still think about that health store where I picked up very expensive dried fruits and about Yodelin (which I almost skipped) which served me the most gorgeous meal along the entire trail.
Still, I managed to resupply EVERYWHERE, and I personally still wouldn’t bother sending boxes. (But you might want to, and perhaps you should.)
What you’ll eat when you don’t send yourself boxes
As mentioned, many stops have full service grocery stores such as Safeway and Vons (my favourite.) They have everything you want to eat. Sometimes there will be a Trader Joe (a fancier and more wholesome grocery store), Walmart or Wholefoods. Sometimes you might have to hitch a bit further to get to these stores, which might be worth it.
Quite a few general stores along the trail have great stock for hikers, and some are very subpar. When you’re resupplying from gas stations you might nibble on cookies, crackers and ramen for a while. The foods below I managed to find most of the time, changing things up to reflect what the stores were offering. In Washington I started buying loafs of breads and jam because I was just so hungry. It was bulky but kept me going. If I was tight on space or weight, I would substitute for ramen packets.
My food selection is also based on the fact that I cold soak, meaning I don’t carry a stove and just eat everything cold. Foods like couscous, ramen and precooked rice (like the Knorr Rice Sides collection) can be rehydrated just fine with cold water!
What I ate on trail:
Breakfast:
I eat ‘breakfast’ walking on trail, so no oatmeal in my resupply.
- Clif bars (mint chocolate became my favourite)
- Granola or protein bars such as Nature Valley or RXbar
- Protein drink – Garden of Life Raw Protein & Greens in chocolate flavour
- Coffee and hot chocolate powder mix drink
Snacks and lunch:
This varied a lot with the different resupplies!
- Bread with jam, peanut butter or chocolate spread
- Wraps with Babybel and salami
- Granola with chocolate powder (instead of milk)
- Crackers
- Dried fruit, nuts, Japanese crackers
- Chocolate, Haribo sweets, Starburst, crisps (chips!)
- Knorr Rice Sides, mashed potatoes, ramen
- Nuun or Amazing Grass electrolytes and Amazing Grass Green Superfood drink sachets
For the first day out of town I’d try to add some fresh or heavy items such as:
- Carrots, bell peppers, fruit (watermelon, strawberries, apples)
- Salad bag (Caesar was my favourite)
Dinner:
For dinner I would most often have couscous (I added some mixed dried herbs or bought the expensive boxed flavoured couscous.) Less often I’d have Knorr Rice Sides or mashed potatoes (the Idahoan ones are sold everywhere – coming from abroad you’ll notice how much salt and flavouring is added to these, and it’s a little scary how quickly you get used to this.)
I would add quite a few items to the couscous and mashed potatoes such as these:
- Salami, cheese (blocks or Babybels), tuna packets
- Sundried tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
- Avocado
- Olive packets
- Olive oil
- Beans (dehydrated or canned beans redistributed into a ziplock bag)
- Sometimes I’d put the whole lot in a wrap
I also started to drink beetroot powder as an evening drink, which I found at Wholefoods.
You burn so many calories on trail that you’ll never actually be able to make up for the deficit with the food you carry on your back. It’s just too much. Hence a lot of hikers eating calorie dense crap like Snickers and pop tarts and cookies. Yes, you burn everything off but your body needs the right nutrients to keep you going and you need to make sure you don’t run dangerous deficits (even if you’re young and you feel invincible.)
You’re doing some intense athletics here and it’s even more important you try to eat food that are not only calorie dense, but also nutritious. It can very well mean the difference between that injury bothering you the entire trail and it healing after a few weeks.
So remember to eat fruits, vegetable, whole grains, nuts and good fats when you can.
What the restaurants and diners are like
When you’re on trail (or read the Guthook app comments), you’ll notice a lot of ‘BEST BURGER ON TRAIL’ ‘BEST PIZZA ON TRAIL’ ‘THE MILKSHAKES ARE AMAZING’ and you’ll probably expect something that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Put it all in perspective though – these are comments from a bunch of nutrient deficient thru-hikers who start hallucinating merely thinking of eating something that doesn’t come out of their food bag.
Best burger at Paradise Valley Cafe? I got there for breakfast so they didn’t serve burgers, but my food was very mediocre (and the coffee was horrible – can we talk about this, btw – finally a country with endless refills and the coffee is awful. I cry.) Best milkshake in Saied Valley? You mean best liquefied cheap sugary ice cream in a glass? Sure. Best breakfast at the Timberline Lodge? Okay, you got me, I LOVE those waffle machines.
Of course you’re not on the PCT for a prime culinary experience. Neither am I. I’m not a food person but I do care about eating reasonably healthy. I hoped the lack of nutrients in trail food would be supplemented by restaurants along the way. Instead, I think my trail food was healthier than what most of the restaurants served.
Some lowlights for me were pancakes (probably made with powdered milk and eggs, tasteless and dry, only edible by saturating the entire plate with syrup multiple times), French toast (which is really supposed to come topped with fruit, but doesn’t – another dish that tastes of nothing and you just have a ginormous plate of bread and eggs that needs to be covered in syrup, yet again, to add some taste) and basically any other cooked food that tastes the way it would if you got the cheapest, least wholesome ingredients and added no herbs or spices (or fruit or veg) but relied on condiments for flavour instead.
Suffice to say, I did not believe the overall quality of food along the trail was admirable. It took me a little too long to stop going to restaurants (I got used to plonking down somewhere and just peacefully gaze ahead and sit still for a while) and go to the grocery store instead – I’d buy lots of fruit and veg for my time in town and always packed out a bag of salad for the first night back on trail.
The cafes and restaurants you shouldn’t miss
Despite my awful review here, there were a couple of places I did enjoy along the trail. A lot of them were independent coffee shops that served food. They ended up being the places I’d seek out whenever I got to a town, especially as I viewed coffee (barista coffee, not diner coffee) as my town treat (cold soaking on trail and all…)
Southern California – Idyllwild: Higher Grounds Coffee Shop
- Technically not food. Lots of coffee and banana bread. They give a free packet of pour over coffee to hikers to drink on trail and the banana bread is lovely.
Southern California – Big Bear: Peppercorn Grille
- A somewhat fancy place with amazing lasagne. They did not judge three scruffy hikers in colourful puffies all ordering large plates of lasagne. It was delicious and you should have it. (Much better than all the ‘best burgers on trail’.)
Sierras – Bishop: Looney Bean
- Lunch bowls, breakfast burritos, bakery goods and coffee. They have great food and it’s a relaxing place to sit and relax.
Sierras – Mammoth Lakes: Stellar Brew & Natural Cafe
- A lovely little shop with healthy options: smoothies, acai bowls, breakfast burritos and salads. A good place to top off on some vitamins you’re probably lacking. I packed out two breakfast burritos and a muffin to bring with me to the trail.
Northern California: South Lake Tahoe – complimentary breakfast at the Coachman Hotel
- An odd entry because you have to stay at the hotel (which gets expensive during high season) but they have a very simple complimentary breakfast with a waffle machine and homemade jam and it’s just blissfully gorgeous. (A lot of hotels have waffle machines but the quality is always low.)
Northern California – Mount Shasta: Yaks Mount Shasta Koffee & Eatery
- Another great place for coffee, burritos, rice bowls and bagel sandwiches. I nearly died of ecstasy after getting stuck in a snowstorm and fighting my way off a mountain top. So much warmth and flavour in my burrito! But I promise it’s a great place without the trauma.
Oregon – Sisters: Sisters Coffee Company
- Popular and for good reason. All the coffees and great food (including a ‘Pacific Crest Sandwich’.)
Oregon – Mount Hood: Timberline Lodge
- Timberline Lodge is right at Mount Hood and famous for several reasons: One, as a historic landmark where you can appreciate the interior architecture alongside many tourists and skiers while wishing you could afford to pay for a room instead of stealth camping just behind the building, and two, as a PCT hiker breakfast buffet favourite. They have a waffle machine with gorgeously thick batter and half frozen raspberries with cream and warm syrup and it’s like the best secret ever. There’s also hot food – quiche and scrambled eggs and sausage and potatoes. They also do a lunch buffet which is equally amazing. Not a stop to pass up on.
Washington – Snoqualmie Pass: Aardvark Express
- Aardvark Express will make up a little for the awful resupply options at Snoqualmie Pass. It’s a food truck with curries and food bowls and it’s all gorgeous and high quality. It moved to a different location in 2020 and I’m not sure if it will move back to Snoqualmie Pass in 2021.
Washington – Leavenworth: Yodelin Broth Company and Beer Garden
- Yodelin serves amazing soups, burgers and rice bowls. I ordered the salmon rice bowl which was coincidentally the most expensive thing on the menu and probably the most wholesome thing I ate on trail. Especially after the poor resupplies in the stretches before, the food was heavenly.
I hope this post has been elaborate enough to convince you to not think about your resupply!
Get your gear together, get yourself to the trail and take it section by section. Enjoy your freedom. Remember that most stores are just a hitch away. So if you’re at a gas station and you’re really on the verge of tears over the awful options, there’s (almost) always another town just a little further out you could go to.
Enjoy the adventure!