Logistical Planning for the Trip

Well since it is snowing like crazy in Virginia this weekend, it was a good time for me to finish going through our planned resupply locations for the trip, not to mention that the big day is coming up and we need to get it all figured out.

So using "The Thru Hikers Handbook", "The Appalachian Trail Food Planner" and the great articles by Baltimore Jack on www.whiteblaze.net (check the links on the right side), I developed a spreadsheet (sorry, I am an engineer and can't help myself) for all of the locations we want to use as maildrop or resupply locations. Basically I have went through and found the mile markers of the places we plan to stop and then figured out how many days it should take between stops to figure out how much food we need to carry out of each stop.

In general, we are attempting to limit the amount of food we carry at any one time to 7 days at the outside. Except, of course, for the last piece of the hike in Maine where about 10 days are needed for the final stretch. There is a lot of things that we have to consider here, including where we can receive maildrops reliably, what food purchase options are available in each location and how far off the trail we would need to go to get to the resupply point.

As far as receiving maildrops, we are attempting to use as few post offices as possible since their limited hours and non-availability on Sundays can cause delays and other complications. There are a ton of places along the way that are exceptionally friendly to thru-hikers and will hold packages for us to pick up when we get into the town. Baltimore Jack has great descriptions of many of these places in his resupply write-up on www.whiteblaze.net and the plan is for us to document the great people and places we run into right here as we go along.

For the most part, we plan on maildropping the majority of our breakfasts and dinners and buying most of our lunches along the way. But this could be an issue for locations where there are limited or over-priced food purchase options. So some maildrops may have to contain nearly all of the food for the next stretch, while other stops may be for purchasing food only.

Getting from the AT to the resupply location is another consideration. In some locations, we can resupply right on the AT where it goes through towns or at some of the outfitters and hostels along the way. Other places offer free shuttles from certain trailheads or road crossings to a hostel or motel. And in other places, we get to hitchhike from a trailhead into a town.

Overall, it is quite a process to figure this all out and it has been a lot of time in the making to have it all figured out. If people are interested, please feel free to contact us and I can send the spreadsheet to you for your own planning.