Anyone ever resupplied out of MTR hiker buckets??

When I resupplied there I saw a lot of food in the giveaway buckets. As long as you don't care what you eat I think you could do it. You also have to be flexible on cooking – I saw lots of bags of pasta, for instance, which would require plenty of fuel.

Both times I've been through there, the various buckets had lots and lots of food, would have been easy to resupply. Once was in late June, the other in early September (different years).

That said, seems like quite a gamble to go there *counting* on being able to fully resupply. If I were going northbound, no problem as it's not much distance. Going SOBO, perhaps also not so bad if you figure that an optional side-trip to Independence is a fall-back plan.

I also wonder if they have any issue with folks showing up there with no bucket sent, just there to take food (no idea, maybe it's fine).

Last year I hiked NOBO with a guy for 3 days that was yoyo-ing the JMT. When he got to MTR SOBO his food bucket was not there. He resupplied at the hiker buckets. For his return he got his resupply in Lone Pine, and relied on the MTR buckets to get him to Reds. He did fine.

From the amount of stuff they have in the hiker buckets, I'd guess that the more of it that "goes" the better. I know I did my part by picking up about 1500 calories in bars.

They normally have to ship food out because so much gets left there, so I doubt they'd have any problems with someone just coming in to graze the buckets. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to plan on buying some fuel from them just so they get something out of your visit.

For what it's worth I recently completed the JMT and was at MTR on July 29th in which they had TONS of food/supplies. Honestly I couldn't believe it..haha. Then again this was the first trip where I needed a resupply.