A hiker’s appetite is legendary. Of course, I was clueless about the need to eat a lot at the outset. A couple of days into my 2016, 532 mile section hike, my hiking partner and I stopped at the Wolfpen Gap Country Store & Hostel. We planned to stay the night and get a few clothes washed. We were hungry, and it was about lunch time, so we first got something to eat. It has always been my practice to eat light and then stop whether I was still hungry or not. My partner, Bobby, on the other hand dug in and had about three times what I had. Who did it right? The more experienced hiker, Bobby, of course. I had no idea how many calories I was burning and not replacing, but he did.
So, just how many calories does a hiker burn? There are calculators on the Internet to figure it out. One that I found later (http://www.nwhiker.com/calorieburn.html) really opened my eyes. I fed in the requested information: weight – 150 lbs: pace – 2 mph; duration of the hike – 10 hours; and elevation gain – 2,000 feet. There was no input for the weight of a backpack. The calorie burn for a day like that is 3,296 calories. A Google search found that a normal adult will burn between 1,600 and 2,500 calories per day on average. Wow! At the low end of a normal day, a hiker was doubling his caloric burn.
One of the Mountain House freeze dried foods I was eating on the trail had about 650 calories in it for the 2.5 servings dinner. Some of the other meals had substantially less than that amount. As for breakfast, I never ate it and lunch was usually a few pieces of beef jerky. Suffice it to say, I was losing weight rapidly. I started at Springer Mountain on April 3rd weighing 150 lbs. and by May 2nd I was in Hot Springs where I weighed myself – 136 lbs. I don’t think I weighed that little without going back to my early teen years. Very scary!
At that point in May, I was less than a week from ending this part of my 2016 section hike. (I did 207 miles more in October.) With the provisions I was carrying, there was no way to step up my eating; although I did eat everything in sight while in Hot Springs and at a trail magic in Jones Meadow on May 6th.
On May 9th I ended this part of my section hike and made my way to Erwin and eventually Damascus for Trail Days on May 13th. While in Erwin, I tried to undo some of the damage as you can see below in the pictures but never really gained back the weight I lost for several months.
There is something strangely liberating about being able to see your ribs. You can eat breakfast anytime – and a lot of it! Not shown are the biscuits and gravy I downed before this. It all went down really fast.
And you can eat desert, which went down even faster than the main courses.
In October when I continued my section hike, I brought along my favorite Mountain House Freeze dried dinners but also oatmeal for breakfast, beef jerky for lunch and Cliff protein bars to snack on during the day. My weight didn’t drop below 143 lbs and while still concerned, I was comfortable with the weight loss.
My section hike continues in May 2017. We’ll see if I can maintain enough caloric intake to keep my weight close to normal.
