Repackaging Supplies and Thru-Hiking

Can you use a bounce box? This is one tactic employed by many people hiking a thru-hike.

For the types of items you seem to be concerned with, “sunscreen, bug-repellent, tooth powder, soap/hand sanitizer, etc”, I just got the smallest containers I could buy and went with that, replacing when needed. Besides the costs the extra time it would take to repackage all of this every 4-5 days would get old fast. As your hike proceeds you will probably find your food doesn’t always work out exact either, sometimes rolling in to resupply with a fair bit left over and other times being a bit short on the last day. As long as you are not totally relying on mail drops you can sort this out as you and get a better feel for your actual needs. The bounce box is a good idea for bigger items, an extra jacket, micro spikes, etc.  I think staying as flexible as possible will add to your enjoyment.

Which trail are you thru hiking? If its the AT you will easily hit a town every 3 to 5 days. And also a lot of places in town will have hiker boxes where hikers leave excess stuff and unwanted stuff. I’ve gotten soap, hand sanitizer and lots of food out of hiker boxes.

I never use mailings to resupply. Sometimes to send home extraneous items. I carry at least two weeks of supplies. I manage to resupply somewhere in that time. Even if it is only a quick stop at the local fill station. Rice, macaroni and jerky always go into my pack and are easily resupplied.

Thanks for your replies!

Bounce box – My understanding of the bounce box is that once I open it, I cannot forward it for free. So using it to take regularly needed, pre-packaged (by me) amounts of supplies wouldn’t really work that way.

George – I think that’s the answer. Just buy the smallest amount possible, and recognize that I’ll be carrying more than I need (i.e. more than is required to get me to my next supply stop).

Jimmy jam – I’ll be hiking the PCT. My issue isn’t the distance between resupply, but that the smallest possible packages for sunscreen, for instance, will last for far longer than the distances between resupply. (say, it might last 30 days). So, on day one, I’ll be carrying 30 days worth of sunscreen, even though I’ll be resupplying in 3-6 days. Normally when I go hiking, I take just enough supplies to get me through my trip; I’ll take small amounts of soap, bug spray, etc. But on a thru-hike, it doesn’t seem practical to take 4 days of sunscreen even though I’ll hit my next supply stop in 4 days, because how am I going to get my next 4 days of sunscreen? Having to get mail every stop seems inflexible, and you can’t buy 4 days worth of these kinds of supplies in the store. Even the smallest containers last a long time.

So I think I’m just going to have to carry more of some things than I need to carry for any given segment of my trip.

Just accept that you have to pay to remail your bounce box.  It’s better than carrying it for the next 100-150 miles, right?

Look hard for the smallest factory containers of sun screen, DEET, etc.  Cause they’re labeled, chemically compatible, etc.  And look at professional sample-sized containers for drugs and complimentary hotel sizes of toothpaste, etc.  But go to after market containers when you must.  Also, use little after-market containers for resupplies – by themselves or to top off your daily-carry containers.  And ask at trailheads and resupplies if other hikers could or need to share those items if you get low or have excess.

I find hypodermic needles sold at the grocery store for injecting turkeys very handy for filling / refilling small containers at home.

I’ll line up all my empty and partial 5g tubes of toothpaste and 15g professional samples of high-end sunscreen and refill a dozen of them at one time.

I don’t use as much DEET as I expect to (and I mostly hike in Alaska!) and that a hat and umbrella are more effective than any sunscreen.

Check out this post about small (disposable) containers (they are cheaper in bulk):

http://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/108591/#post-2238070

If you resupply every 7 days for example, you can carry 9 days (to be safe) worth of sunscreen, soap, sanitizing gel, DEET, etc. in individual small containers, and just pick up fresh bottles each at each resupply without a bounce box. Butr with a bounce box, just squirt more of each solution from the manufacture’s bottles (kept in your bounce box) into your small containers to refill while resupplying.

+1 on Dave’s DEET comment – wearing a light sun/bug shirt (RailRiders) has allowed me to really cut down on using this stuff.

John,

First, think carefully about what you really need. If you’ve got a long shirt and long pants, you don’t really need that much DEET and sunscreen. On the PCT in 2014 we used one 5mL dropper bottle of DEET for my wife and I for the whole trail. Weighed maybe 8 grams and we’d just use a drop or two on the backs of our hand and necks.

For sunscreen, it’s not that hard to find sunscreen in hiker boxes as other hikers will buy some and refill their container and then leave the rest. So bring a small container that will do you for a week or two (e.g. 20ml) and then refill that from hiker boxes or buy sunscreen once in a while as necessary and then leave the rest for other hikers. So the general strategy is (1) reduce the amount you use, then (2) carry about 2 weeks worth and (3) resupply from hikers boxes while (4) occasionally biting the bullet and being the one that resupplies the hiker box.

If you use a bounce box you can save a lot on shipping costs by mailing it 2-4 resupplies ahead instead of every town. We could have saved a little weight with this (e.g. battery chargers) but the cost and hassle meant we never did do a bounce box.

One crucial item for the desert that is a bit hard to find is wet wipes. They’re essential for wiping of body salts from chaff prone areas.

Regarding buying food on the PCT, I think planning it all ahead of time is a huge hassle, shipping is costly and you’ll probably find you didn’t plan that well. Resupplying on the go also sucks because you’ll run into stores with lame selection and crazy prices, plus it takes a lot of your down time to do all the shopping and repackaging. My wife and I settled into a routine where we would resupply for a few legs at major towns and then mail the next couple boxes ahead. The lower prices at bigger stores offset the cost of shipping and we spent a lot less time in the grocery store.

We resupplied for the rest of California at South Lake Tahoe and then bought 4 boxes of food for Oregon at Ashland and then bought food for Washington at Hood River near Cascade Locks. If you use this technique then it’s easy to mail sunscreen, zip locks bags etc ahead.

“One crucial item for the desert that is a bit hard to find is wet wipes.”

Great suggestion about wiping the salt and grit away from the chaff-prone areas.  But can’t you pack a few paper towels, even ones snagged at a gas station, wet them, and wash up with those?  The diaper wipes in the water-proof containers are super convenient, yeah, but maybe overkill?

Also, back in my diaper-changing days, I found that diaper wipes that had dried out could be easily, quickly, and completely resurrected by adding water.  Since these is BPL and we endless discuss how to dehydrate our food, shouldn’t we grab that easy weight-savings of letting the diaper wipes dry out in advance and carry the re-wetting water only since the last water-stop that day and not from the last resupply?

>”DEET comment – wearing a light sun/bug shirt (RailRiders) has allowed me to really cut down on using this stuff.”

I can vouch for this, having spent a lot of time idly counting mosquitos on different clothing in the north woods.  Light clothing really makes a difference.  By a factor of 4 to 8x.  I don’t know why, but moose, bear, etc tend to be dark brown to black while I don’t see a lot of baby-blue, tan, or all-white animals in summer when the mosquitos are out so maybe they’ve evolved to seek dark, CO2-emitting objects.

On the AT I never had an issue getting food in town, and the guys who were mailing ahead had often gotten sick and tired of eating whatever they had pre-rationed months in advance. If I was sick and tired of rice sides I could get into instant mashed potatoes for a week or two, and by the time I was sick of that, be craving some mac & cheese and tunafish (in foil).

I remember planning on supplementing calories with peanutbutter, 3 weeks in I was so sick of spoonfuls of peanutbutter, I didn’t eat any peanutbutter for about a year.

When I thru-hiked the AT, I was very concerned about weight and only carried what I needed for the next stretch. However, I found that I cared less and less as I hiked because the hassle outweighed the weight savings. Also, it was hard to justify portioning out my sunscreen after I had bought a 3 pound mason jar full of moonshine that I’d bought from a local. (Worth every once, by the way) I also was completely surprised by how my estimations of what I would need in my drop boxes was completely wrong! Sunscreen sounds like a great idea, but after applying it for a week straight without a shower, it starts to seem less and less practical. I’m still using sunscreen and DEET from my thru-hike in 2011.

The reason to save weight in your pack is to make you more comfortable and faster, but if you spend 20 minutes repackaging everything, you’re not moving faster. And if you have to wait a few Sundays in town for the post office to open, you’re definitely not moving faster. Honestly, after carrying my pack for two months, the difference in a pack that weighed 17lbs in total or 18lbs didn’t make a difference.

Oh, and I definitely shared the peanut butter experience. I couldn’t look at peanut butter for about a year either. I’ve still never felt the same about it.

Everybody always piles on the mail drops — twice I’ve bought and packaged 20+ mail drops and both times I came back and was eating leftover clif bars, peanuts, etc. within a week :) !

David: Good ideas for the wet wipes alternatives. A paper towel + water + few drops of soap would work just as well. We were buying those travel size ones where you get ~10 wipes in a light plastic bag (as opposed to 100 in a hard plastic case) but just using paper towels would probably work great too.

To answer your question about non food consumables…..you are just going to have to see how much you actually use. Start out carrying the minimum amounts you’d think you need for a week or so. Civilization is not that far from the trail until you get to the northern part of the PCT and you won’t have a hard time getting more sunscreen and the rest as there’s usually plenty in hiker boxes to top off small containers. Many people will buy a bottle of hand sanatizer or sunscreen and leave most of it in the box when they move on. By the time you get to the middle of California you will know exactly what you need when. As mentioned above, the only thing I try to make sure I have plenty of between resupply is wet wipes. For some reason they are not a common item in small stores. Not so sure paper towels on chafe is a fun thing but it’s better than nothing…oh and Dermatone in their tin packaging is a great multi purpose ointment and lasts a long time. Try not to worry too much, it’s amazing how when you need something the trail provides. The stories I could tell you about my good fortune at the appropriate moments….trail magic!

You’ll be surprised how it works out. The bounce box is a good way to go at the beginning until you see what it’s really like. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to come by the things you need in the quantities that you need them.