[at-l] maildrops

[spiriteagle99@hotmail.com (Jim and/or Ginny Owen)]

I have done long hikes with lots of maildrops, with no maildrops, and with a 
few maildrops at strategic places. I have used a drift box, and used none.  
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

1.  If you care what you eat – either nutritionally or you’re a picky eater, 
then you will probably want at least some maildrops.  While you CAN resupply 
as you go, some places will have very limited selection and you may get 
awfully tired of ramen and mac n cheese.   Jim and I aren’t that picky so 
the buy as you go method worked for us, except in towns that were so small 
as to have no real store, not even a gas station mini-mart – there are a few 
like that. We got tired of some foods, but always found something to eat 
along the way.  (And rarely ate either mac and cheese or ramen.)   If you 
have the time, dehydrating can be a fun way of getting some variety in your 
diet.  Or you can buy dried veggies/sauces and mail them to yourself.  Or 
let your friends know you would really appreciate them helping out by 
sending a little something to add variety to your diet.  On our CDT hike we 
got to taste such delicacies as dried brocolli and cantelope that we would 
never have thought of doing on our own, thanks to friends on the list.

2.  Expense – if you can buy in bulk and at sales, you can save money using 
maildrops.  The difference between buying Liptons for $.65 and buying it for 
$1.50 adds up over the long haul. If you choose to resupply as you go, be 
aware that some of the small towns/resorts can be VERY expensive.  I 
remember Fontana!   However, if you don’t live on the East Coast, postage 
will quickly eat up the savings.   We found we were spending at least $20 a 
box to mail to the west coast.

3.  Support – how much are you willing to impose on friends and family?  
Sometimes they really want to help out, to be a part of your hike, and 
sometimes it is a real imposition to be responsible for your resupply.  My 
mother is quite elderly and my siblings can’t be relied on to remember 
things like getting to the post office on schedule.  (Nice people, but 
busy.)  If not for Kahley’s generosity, we would have had to do our last two 
hikes without any support.   If you do a lot of resupply boxes and require 
trading out things you don’t want, it can be a lot of work, besides the 
sheer drudgery of waiting at the post office every week.

4.  It isn’t that difficult to figure out where to do drops – read the 
journals and other people’s maildrop lists, check out the Companion for info 
on long term vs short term resupply, and plan on doing a resupply of one 
kind or another every 5 days or so.  Don’t make my mistake and try to carry 
10 days of food at a time, unless you really love pain (in which case, you 
may already be a thruhiker;-) Figure on starting out slow (how slow depends 
on your level of conditioning – it may be less than 10 mpd or it may be 
12-15 mpd) and then increase the mileage in the middle (15-20 in the 
mid-Atlantic) and slow down again to 12 mpd from NH north.    Don’t worry if 
you guess wrong, there are lots of alternate towns on the AT, you can easily 
go into town to add to your supply if necessary.  One thing – if a package 
says, “Feeds two” don’t believe it.  On the trail, feeds two or even three 
is about the right sized portion for one hungry person.  One of my hardest 
decisions was always, how long will this box of cereal last?  A box of 
cereal that “serves 11” would usually last us two or three days.   Chances 
are, even if you do maildrops, you’ll end up supplementing it along the way 
or throwing out food you decide you no longer want.

5.  How much do you like to organize/plan ahead of time?  Some people like 
to plan everything out before they go (hopefully with the understanding that 
plans can and should change once you’re out there) and others really prefer 
to “wing it.”  Which are you?   No need to drive yourself crazy if you’re 
not an organizer, by trying to do 26 maildrops ahead of time, or drive 
yourself crazy when you’re on the trail by trying to buy everything in town 
when you’d rather have everything ready when you get to town.  What works 
for me may not work for you.   One consideration – if you do buy everything 
ahead of time, what will you do wit hall the extra if you have to go home?  
It helps if the food you buy is stuff you would/will eat anyway.  On the 
other hand, if you do a lot of work before you go, it may provide some extra 
incentive to stay on the trail.  (What on earth am I going to do with all 
that food? Might as well keep hiking!)

6.  A drift box can be very handy, especially if you are buying as you go, 
since you can buy extra and put it in the box to forward to towns up the 
line.  We would buy a big bottle of Tylenol and take enough for a week at a 
time, or just a few bandaids, or a few bags of tea/sugar, etc.   We put 
larger bottles of soap, Aftersun, etc. in the drift box and took out just an 
ounce or two at a time.  Or we would put warm clothes in the box to decide 
whether we really wanted to send it home or not.  Just remember that the 
more mail drops you have the more tied down you are to post office hours.  
On the AT there are a lot of hostels, especially in the south, but then you 
are tied to going to those hostels, whether you want to or not.

It really isn’t that difficult, and if you don’t guess right, it isn’t that 
hard to work things out once you’re out there.  There is no RIGHT way to do 
it – just ways that work for you, depending on your personality and 
circumstances.

Ginny

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