Eating Cheaper (and still Vegan) on the PCT

In the first month and a half on the PCT until about Aqua Dulce or Tehachapi I spent too much money on food. First of all, in every town I was buying too many trail bars like Pro bar, fig bar, kind bar or Luna bar and their cost quickly adds up. Second, as a hungry and curious hiker I visited at least one or two restaurants in every town. Third, I ordered most trail food in packages from "Outdoor Herbivore" company. The meals are really delicious, nutritious, healthy and quick to prepare with minimum effort. And having a huge variety of pre-packaged foods for every meal makes eating on trail a pleasure. However the seven day meal combo (vegan) with seven breakfasts, seven lunches, and seven dinners costs $122 (this cost includes shipping). If I order that every week, I won't get very far on my budget.
That said I'd still highly recommend the trail food from outdoor herbivore for shorter backpacking trips, and the meals are a great inspiration of what you can eat on the trail. If you're smart, you can prepare many similar meals yourself (especially breakfasts) for a fraction of the cost.

Here's the food I have in bear canister for the next 10 or so days on trail:




Bottom half or more of the canister is filled with a mix of oats, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, banana chips, raisins, and a couple of other nuts and seeds. About one third of the content (oats, nuts, seeds) comes from free hiker box food, the rest I bought in Mammoth. The cheapest place to get oats and raisins is often in the "bulk food" section of grocery stores. The oats donated in hiker box are often the "Quaker oats" packets with added sugar. Mixed with plain rolled oats, the combination tastes right enough: a little sweet, but not too sweet.




The next layer in the bear canister is rice. The "5 minute" rice, while more expensive and bulky than usual rice, is really easy to prepare - you just bring water to boil, add rice and let stand for five mins.




The next essential trail food is couscous. Couscous is very easy to prepare (just bring water to boil and add couscous), space-efficient, and easy to digest. A great option for lunch! There are few brands of couscous, apart from the plain one there's "tri-color couscous" and also the "near east" couscous packets with many different flavors.




To add good taste and flavoring to the rice and couscous I use olive oil, soy sauce, and "cholula" Mexican sauce. The olive oil and Mexican sauce I took from hiker boxes. The soy sauce I bought and then donated half of the bottle to hiker box in turn. The little plastic bottles that hold the sauces and oil I also found in hiker boxes.




To add more greens, I have packages with dehydrated veggies and pre-cooked dried dehydrated beans. Both of them are hiker box findings.




Garlic is also a great fresh ingredient for any kind of food and it is very durable.




Tea is great to warm me up on cold mornings. All the black and green tea bags here are from hiker boxes.




Trail bars taste delicious and give quick energy. But my problem with trail bars is that I always eat too much of them too fast. They also generate a lot of trash from the packaging that I need to carry around. For this reason I don't usually buy trail bars any more. If I do, then the "nature Valley" oat and honey bars are my favorites. Thank you Robert again for your generous gift!



Finally on top of the bear can comes spoon, toothbrush and toothpaste. Let's see how long my supplies will last.

How much tis food costs?

$ 5.79 ... Minute rice (1.5 pounds)
$ 4.99 ... 2 pounds of oats
$ 1.18 ... garlic
$ 2.60 ... banana chips
$ 2.00 ... sunflower kernels
$ 4.49 ... walnuts
$ 2.00 ... soy sauce
$ 4.70 ... couscous (1.25 pounds)
$ 0.00 ... rest of the food from hiker box donations
Total: $ 25.73

More on trying to eat cheap and healthy bin towns in another blog post!

In a few days there is a little village and store in Tuolumne Meadows and I hope there's a rich hiker box there :-)