The Choir of Dehydrators…. A New Beginning and a Second Attempt

For my 18th birthday, I had ambitions of hiking the Arizona trail. When I started looking into the details of resupplying, water caches, dry stretches etc… I quickly came to the conclusion that hiking the trail was beyond my level of expertise. Instead I settled on a long distance bicycle tour of the state, something that solidfied my love of self-propelled long distance travel.

Now, I am about to turn 27. I’m looking at a couple hunded pounds of dehydrated and vacuum sealed food, conveniently packaged into relatively small proportions. I’ve got refined bombproof gear that weighs little to nothing, and a great friend to walk by my side. As we make the final preparations before setting out on back-to-back thru-hikes, it brings me great joy to be so well equipped.

It’s been nearly 3 years since we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, and we have been itching to walk another long trail since. With that, we had ample time to revise our approach towards resupplies. With the Arizona Trail on the immediate horizon, followed by the Appalachian trail on the East coast, we started dehydrating food nearly 6 months before our planned departure. Nonetheless, we are down to our last few days, and the dehydators are still running….

While a lot of thru-hikers prefer to buy the majority of their food along the way, food allergies and a mostly vegan diet make this more difficult for us. As a result, we prefer to prepare our own meals and ship ourselves regular resupplies. With this we get great variety in our meals along with a balanced diet suitable for thru-hiking. On the Pacific Crest Trail we were some of the very few people to actually gain weight. If you are interested in learning more about our food prep, be sure to check out the food section in The Ultra-Heavy Guide to Sustainable Thru-Hiking.

It would seem that we stumbled upon a good year to hike the Arizona trail as water should be abnormally abundant. Even here in Tucson Arizona, we have recently received “Significant” snowfall. With water availability being of little concern, our focus has shifted towards cold weather. Last year around this time, we camped up at Baldy Saddle, below the summit of Mt. Wrightson. With the wind chill, it was a chilly -10ºF. After talking with some friends in Patagonia Arizona, it sounds like we could find some very similar conditions.

Our goal is to complete the Arizona Trail by the start of May, at which point we will traverse to the East coast and begin the Appalachian trail, Southbound (Maine to Georgia). But then again, people plan and universe laughs. We’ll see what happens.