Sheltowee Trace

T1DCarnivoreRunner

I'm planning to go out and hike the Sheltowee Trace in Nov. during the week of Thanksgiving. I'll go with a partner and hike at a pretty conservative pace - about 80 miles in 6-7 days. We'll start at the south end in order to avoid roads as much as possible. We have no plans to re-supply - will carry food and perishable supplies for the week, filter water out of the river. It will be cold, so will bring a sufficient sleeping bag, but I honestly don't think it will be that bad. Of course, we will hang food so bears don't take it, and will have some orange on us in case hunters are in the area.

Is there anything else that anyone knows specific to this area that I should consider?

TIA

janiep81

Oh hey... that's my neck of the woods! I went to college near Cumberland Falls. I think Nov. is a wonderful time to hike in SE KY... the weather is crisp but manageable. The bears have been very active in the Smokies this year... I'm assuming its true for the rest of the Southern Appalachians.

T1DCarnivoreRunner

It's getting closer to that time and I'm doing some prep work. I've realized while prepping that there are a big challenge here:

A week of food is super heavy. I now have a better appreciation of the challenge faced by southbound AT hikers entering 100 miles of wilderness after climbing Katahdin, and having to carry supplies for the whole 100 miles.

There is also a 3rd person coming along, so we are going to cook meals out of a single pot (carry 1 stove) to share and have separate bags for trail food. The other people are bringing dinners and 1/2 of breakfasts. I'm bringing trail food and the other half of breakfasts. Ideally, I'm trying to get around 4,500-5,000 calories per day for each person. At this time, I've put together a homemade mix of calorie-dense gorp. I've batched in bags of 1,500 calories per person per day - 7 days is 5 lbs. 2 oz. This is just some trail food. Then we need to carry dinners, breakfasts, and maybe some additional trail food to get to the calorie goals. The weight is really becoming a challenge, and I'm thinking about caching half of it.

Also, I wonder if anyone has ideas of calorie dense breakfast foods that are idea for backpacking. I've never liked the idea of eggs because they are too easy to break. And I would like to get to at least 500 (preferably more) calories per person for breakfast each day. It is going to take a whole lot of oatmeal to get to that many calories.

Does anyone have good breakfast ideas? I'll probably post in the main forums as well, since there is more traffic there.

kasaz

I didn't have to plan the food for the 10 day backpack that I did with the Sierra Club in September, but I can tell you they added a lot of nuts and dried fruit to the oatmeal or cooked cereal. They also brought the full fat powdered milk that you can purchase at Hispanic grocery. With dinner they added ghee or olive oil to the pasta dinners for extra calories. I will say some of these things played havoc with my system because I am not used to that much fat. Anyway, I hope that helps. We had several resupplies.