John Muir Trail Gear List no.2

One really important gear I didn't include the food I brought.

Food I was eating on JMT is as below.  

I did JMT in 15 days. I resupplied food at the half way at Muir Trail Ranch. Basically I had two set of exactly same food and half was carried from beginning and the other half was sent to Muir Trail Ranch in advance for resupply. 

The picture is food I sent to Muir Trail Ranch to resupply, so food for the second week 7.5 days.  To pack in the bear canister, I unpacked everything and put into ziplock bags and squeeze into the bear canister.

My meals on JMT per day:

Breakfast at 6 am: ochazuke with fish or oatmeal (every other day), and coffee

Ochazuke consists of rice, salted seaweed, dried Japanese apricot in hot water. There is a packet for one ochazuke meal. Usually 8 packs for $4. You can get at Japanese grocery stores or even on Amazon. Instant white rice can be available any grocery stores. Ochazuke is great for backpacking, because it contains so much salt. 1 packet contains 830 mg of sodium. With rice, ochazuke has 250 kcal.

9 a.m. Anpan (Japanese bread filled with sweet bean paste). Beans contains a lot of protein around 10 gram. Sugar and bread contains calories. 1 Anpan is around 250 kcal.

11 a.m. Japanese energy bar One bar is 137 kcal, protein is 4.2 grams.

1 a.m. Jerky I like turkey jerky.

3 a.m.  Cookies, chocolate, banana chips, half of tuna pack

I use half of tuna for ochazuke for breakfast and the half for afternoon snack. Protein in one tuna pack is around 17g. From sweets, I got around 300 kcal.

5 a.m. Japanese or American energy bar

Japanese bars are in the picture: labeled as "SOYJOY". I sometimes bring another Japanese bars called Calorie Mate. 

7 a.m. Ramen with dried vegetables, soup

I ate every night one pack of Myojo Chukazanmai instant ramen. This is 370 kcal. Salt is....2940 mg! 120% of daily requirement. Protein is 8 g contained. Ramen packets are in the picture (just left of LET'S DO THIS bucket).  

Miso soup contains 3 g of protein, sodium 740 mg, 35 kcal. Miso soup packets are available at Japanese grocery stores and even on Amazon. 1 packet is around $1. 

Dried vegetables are also available at Japanese grocery stores. Spinach,
Japanese mustard spinach, daikon radish are the kinds I brought to JMT (these are the green stuff in the picture, right in front of the "LET'S DO THIS" bucket).

To have "feast" at Muir Trail Ranch when I pick up this food, I put some non-dried food. On the very right in the picture, there are two orange gels (desert). and below the orange gels, there are canned fish. I had Pacific saury can and sardine can. Those Japanese fish cans have 400-500 kcal/can, 20-30 g of protein/can. So it is great to have them at the middle point of JMT, and it WAS really a feast at MTR. 

It is around 1600-1800 kcal/day. I was not sure if it was enough or not for a long distance/time backpacking, because I had never done backpacking more than 2 night/3 days. Apparently this was not enough.

Looks like a lot of food, but it is for 7.5 day/100 mile hikes with a lot of ups and downs at high altitude. 

I lost 14 pounds (7 kg) in 7 days. Definitely I didn't eat enough food. 

For next long distance hikes, I might need trail mix, peanut butter, etc...something disgusting (for me), but really high calories.