Following up on his gear-centric Q&A, this article explores everything food-related from Kurt Refsnider’s 3-month adventure last summer riding the length of the Continental Divide Trail (the bike-legal sections, that is). That trip was documented here on The Radavist in a series of articles – if you want to read more about the adventure, you can find those here.

Food is fuel, and on any multi-day adventure, getting sufficient calories to keep energy levels high is literally what keeps us going. It’s not just about calories, though – consuming enough protein is critical for recovery for the days to come, and having food that you actually want to eat is just as important as having enough food. All that takes some intentional planning, relies on learning from past experiences, and can be more than a little daunting! Beyond that, finding space to pack more than 2 or 3 days’ worth of food can be a real challenge. 

I spent 3 months traversing the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) last summer, a trail along which resupply options are quite limited. I was eating 5,000+ calories a day, and with numerous carries of 4 and 5+ days (which sounds like nothing compared to carries of 10+ days that CDT hikers have in places!); that meant I had to pack a lot of food. And 3 months of eating on the trail can get pretty dang tiresome, so variety and as much “real” food as possible was key for me to keep wanting the food I was carrying right up to the final miles. I received quite a few inquiries related to all this, so below are the most frequently-asked questions and my answers to those. I really hope some of this is helpful for your own food planning process ahead of your next multi-day bike adventure!

How do you know how much food to carry between resupplies? Did you plan out food based on calories, weight, or something else? How do you know how much your body needs? 

This all gets back to trip planning and creating a reasonable (and reasonably well-informed) itinerary. For this trip, I spent a lot of time in Ride With GPS figuring out my route, estimating how much was singletrack, 4×4 road, actual roads, etc. and looking at elevation gain for each section in order to estimate how many miles I might be able to cover per day. Since the majority of the CDT is singletrack, and hard singletrack at that, I planned for an average of 35 miles per day (yes, that’s how slow the CDT tends to be), and for some of the Wilderness/Park bypasses that included more dirt road, I planned on something more like 50 or 60 miles per day. I plugged all that into a spreadsheet along with the resupply options along the way, and then I was able to easily estimate if I’d need to carry 3, 4, 5, or more days of food. For the resupplies of 4 or more days, I mailed a box of food ahead to a post office (more on why coming up below…); for resupplies of 3 or fewer days, I’d usually resupply out of whatever stores were available. 

I generally plan food for long trips around calories. I knew these would be big, demanding days, so I estimated I’d need 4,300+ calories per day (for comparison, I was eating close to 7,000 calories per day on my winter tour on Alaska’s Iditarod Trail earlier in the year). After the first month on the CDT and feeling like I wasn’t getting enough food, I upped my goal to 5,000 calories per day. All that was based on past experience and keeping some quick notes about what worked well (or didn’t) from those prior adventures. 

What sorts of meals are you cooking when on the trail? What do your breakfasts look like, and how big are they? You carried freeze-dried meals, right? What brand seems to be the biggest bang for the buck?

I often will prepare my own meals ahead of time for shorter trips – they often taste better and are less expensive than freeze-dried meals. But for the CDT, I found myself short on time for that sort of prep, so I bought a bunch of Peak Refuel freeze-dried meals. Most of these are 800 to 1,000 calories per meal with ~50g of protein. And equally important, they’re tasty! I added some freeze-dried chicken and mashed potato flakes to a lot of the meals to get them up to ~1,100 calories per dinner. I also did prepare some meals for myself – dried sweet potato cubes, freeze-dried chicken, and a bouillon cube was always delicious, and cheese added to that was a treat. An easy convenience store meal was often mashed potato flakes, tuna, and cheese. 

For breakfasts, I aimed for ~800 calories. I often had either Trail Butter granola or instant grits, and I’d add some other protein- and fat-rich ingredients to bulk the meals up. Grits with bacon bits and pine nuts is delicious! Granola with added protein and powders, cashews, and shredded coconut was also great. When resupplying out of stores, instant oatmeal with added nut butter was usually my go-to since both are ubiquitous in even tiny markets.  

So you cooked meals? I know a lot of thru-hikers skip the stove to save weight.

Yes, I carried a little old SnowPeak stove and 100g fuel canisters. I could get 5 or 6 days off one of those little canisters with just heating up water for coffee, some breakfasts, and most dinners. I know I ate better and enjoyed my food (and coffee!) much more having it warm, so in my opinion, it was very worth carrying that bit of “extra” weight.

How do you avoid trail food/convenience store burnout? Do you get bored of your trail foods after a week or two? How much variety do you try to incorporate?

Having actual meals (rather than just more snacks) for breakfasts and dinners is critical for this, and for me, variety is absolutely key – too much of almost anything and I get tired of it pretty quickly. When I’m shopping along the trail for the next section’s rations, I simply buy whatever sounds good. If it sounds good in the store, it’ll probably sound good on the trail, too! 

What foods were most and least appetizing by the time you made it to the end of the trail?

Salty potato chips (and really almost anything savory) was always something my body seemed to be craving, and those tasted great right up through the end of the trip. Burritos always sounded good but were tough to come by along the trail. Cheese was another savory food that was consistently appealing, so I’d buy some every chance I got. Amazingly, I consistently looked forward to the Peak Refuel freeze-dried dinners in my resupply boxes, and the savory grits I had for breakfasts in some of those boxes were also always delicious. Really, anything savory usually hit the spot. 

I grew weary of bars of any sort even with attempts to have as much variety among them as possible, as well as instant oatmeal. 

What’s your approach to coffee? 

My approach was to carry enough so that I never experienced running-low-on-coffee stress! I usually would just drink a mug of it in the morning; on some days, I’d mix up a mug of cold coffee at lunch, too. I don’t carry any sort of fancy coffee apparati on trips like this – whatever instant coffee I could find was just fine by me, and it’d be a treat if I could find some dried milk or coconut milk powder. 

You mentioned sending boxes to post offices. Was that most of your food, or did you also supplement from gas stations, etc.? And you were able to include fuel canisters in these boxes? 

As I mentioned above, I shipped resupply boxes ahead to post offices whenever I would need to carry 4 or more days of rations. Depending on what was available for stores in that small town, I sometimes shipped meals and bought all my snacks in town, but in other cases, there simply were no stores, so I’d ship everything I needed. Part of this was out of necessity, and part was making sure I had the food, calories, and protein I felt like I wanted/needed. If I were to walk into a store and buy 5 days’ worth of food, pack it down as small as I could, and try to fit it in my bike bags and backpack, it simply wouldn’t fit! Re-packaging all my freeze-dried meals, choosing calorie-dense breakfasts that take up less space, and choosing dense bars over bulkier trail mix/snacks makes all that food take up less space. That was the only way I was able to fit 5+ days of food into my bags on this trip. 

I mailed all these boxes ahead to post offices via “general delivery,” one of the most incredible services offered by our postal service (in my opinion, of course). Post offices will generally hold mail sent via general delivery for 30 days, and I always write an anticipated pick up date on the box. It’s also a good idea to call a post office ahead of time just to verify that they do indeed accept packages via general delivery as I have encountered a few in bustling tourist towns that do not.

And yes, fuel canisters can be included in boxes shipped USPS ground. The box must be labeled with the “DOT limited quantity hazardous material square-on-point” symbol (see this hazmat reference). When you drop the box off at the post office, let them know about the hazmat contents, and they’ll likely require a signature and add a hazmat sticker to the box.

How did you get enough protein to recover well? I always struggle with that on longer trips. 

My goal was to get 150g of protein per day on as many days as possible. Breaking that down, I generally got 25g in my breakfasts, 50+g in my dinner, 25g from Trail Butter nut butter or bulk nuts, 20g from something like a Gu Recovery drink mix in the evening, and another 30+g from lunch and other snacks during the day. This took some intention when doing all my food planning, and it was more of a challenge on the stretches when I resupplied solely out of stores. 

I just don’t understand how you were able to fit 5 days worth of food on that setup. Where did you put it all?

This was probably the most commonly-asked food-related question I received. It was also an aspect of the trip I was rather nervous about, especially in New Mexico where water sources were much farther apart, so I’d need to carry 5 or 6 liters of water and 5+ days of food for a couple stretches. As I mentioned above, calorie-dense foods and repackaging things to take up less volume was important. And some of my other gear choices were based on the food/water capacity conundrum. I opted to carry a tarp rather than a tent because (1) the former takes up less space, and (2) I was actually able to sandwich the tarp between my handlebar bag and harness, so it didn’t actually take up any space in my bags. 

I also carried a ~20L Patagonia Dirt Roamer backpack in which I could stash a fair bit of food – after resupplying, most of my breakfasts and dinners went in the pack. Bikepacking on full-suspension bikes is always a bit of a challenge for storage (especially for folks on small full-sus rigs), and I almost always carry a pack. It not only increases space for gear and food, but on techy trails, getting some of the weight off the bike helps with bike handling. And if you’re going to be off the bike and pushing relatively frequently, whatever weight is on your back instead of your bike decreases the work your arms have to do while pushing. It seems like some folks eschew a backpack when bikepacking, but I’d strongly argue against that attitude. 

What did you do with your food at night in grizzly bear country?
I used an Ursack Major XL “certified bear resistant” bag – all my food, cook kit, and smelly items went in there every night, and I’d tie it to a tree ~100 yards from where I slept. I’d also leave my bike there as the bags smelled like food. And I’d cook a good distance away from both that tree and where I slept (the ol’ Bear-muda triangle).

What are your suggestions on where you pack your food? I always end up having mine in different bags, snack bags, pockets, etc., and then it takes awhile to compile it into an Ursack each night. 

My food ended up being everywhere, too. In bear country, I try to keep food away from my sleeping bag, but the reality is that food usually just got crammed in wherever it would fit. So at night, it did always take a few minutes to pull it all out to put in my Ursack, but I think that’s just a reality for this style of travel. 

I’m interested in hearing about the balance between packing food/water for the CDT versus other trails.

Since the CDT sticks on, or close to, the Continental Divide proper as much of the time as possible, the trail doesn’t go through all that many towns. Hikers typically will hitchhike off trail at road crossings to get to the nearest town to resupply, but I didn’t really feel like dealing with hitchhiking with a bike in tow. However, many of my Wilderness/National Park bypasses went through a town, so I was able to conveniently resupply along the way without hitchhiking or riding off my route. That approach meant I had quite a lot of 3- and 4-day carries, as well as a few 5+ day carries; those are longer than I think I’d have on any other long trail popular with bikepackers.

Water along the CDT is an interesting challenge – in some seasons, it’s quite plentiful depending on what direction you’re traveling. In Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, I rarely carried more than 2L of water aside from in the evening since I dry camped most nights (one of my goals was to sleep up on hilltops or summits as often as possible). Even the arid Great Divide Basin of southern Wyoming had plentiful water – I think the longest dry stretch was only 25 miles. New Mexico had some very long carries in between water sources, so long that most CDT hikers opt to take one of several alternates through the Gila River country that stick closer to perennial streams (those are in the Gila Wilderness, though, so they weren’t an option for me). I had ~6L water capacity for New Mexico and used all that a few different times. The southernmost miles in New Mexico through some very dry sections of the Chihuahuan Desert have water cache boxes installed by the CDT Coalition, and several amazingly dedicated local volunteers keep those boxes stocked during peak seasons (late spring and fall for northbound and southbound hikers, respectively).

Planning and packing enough food can be one of the most difficult aspects of camping by bike, and the only way to learn is by learned experience. We hope that the information provided in this two-part series will give some of you the inspiration you need to get out there! Thanks to Kurt for sharing the stoke!