Alright, so you’re vegan and want to hike the PCT and don’t know where to start. I got you fam.
As vegans, we have less options in towns hiking the Pacific Crest Trail but it isn’t impossible and can be pretty easy. You just need to plan a little more and send some more resupply boxes.
I went southbound so all the info is going to be oriented that way. If you’re going northbound, first of all, why? And then read this backwards.
Also, join the Vegan PCT Hikers and Supporters Facebook page. There’s a ton of resources and support there.
Vegan Resupply
Download this spreadsheet. It lists all the places vegans should send boxes to and notes on vegan options there. It was created by two other vegan sobos and updated by yours truly. You’re welcome.
Mailing ahead of time, buying along the way, or both?
There are three strategies to resupplying on the PCT:
- Buy, pack, and mail yourself everything. Usually requires a lot of time up front and someone off trail to mail you stuff.
- Buy all your resupply as you go. This can get expensive af and not every town has good (or any) vegan options
- Combination of both. Mailing some boxes and buying as you go in some places which requires either.
b. Buy food to send yourself while in a major town and mail it to yourself
I recommend 3b because that’s what I did.
Pros and Cons of sending boxes from the trail:
+ you can send yourself more or less food as you figure out how much you need
+ you can change your food up so when you get sick of eating dry granola every morning in Washington you can switch to oatmeal or bars in Oregon
+ you don’t have to prep a million boxes before you set off
+ you don’t need to rely on someone else sending you boxes
+ if you have to get off trail for whatever reason you’re not stuck with a bunch of boxes full of food
– it makes those few town days where you have to mail food stressful. You can’t just head to town and chill. You can mitigate this by going to town with a game plan/list of what you need to buy
– might be hard to get from a grocery store to a post office with a ton of food (South Lake Tahoe and Bishop especially suck for this since the grocery stores and post offices are on opposite sides of town)
For me the pros outweigh the cons and except for sending less food early on I wouldn’t have changed much about my strategy.
Where to mail boxes
The Halfway Anywhere PCT survey results list 10 places where hikers should send boxes to. Vegans definitely need to send more boxes than non-vegans as some of the town options are more limited for us.
Places you should definitely send a box to:
Washington
- Stehekin
- Stevens Pass
- Snoqualmie
- Whites Pass
- Trout Lake (optional if you don’t mind doing a big carry from Whites to Cascade Locks)
Oregon
- Cascade Locks (if not going to Portland)
- Timberline Lodge
- Big Lake Youth Camp (if not going to Bend)
- Shelter Cove
- Mazama
Northern California
- Seiad Valley
- Etna
- Castella
- Burney Mountain Guest Ranch
- Sierra City
The Sierra
- Kennedy Meadows North/Bridgeport
- Tuolumne Meadows
- Kennedy Meadows South
Southern California
- Agua Dulce
- Warner Springs
Towns you where you can def get a good vegan resupply:
- Seattle
- Portland
- Ashland
- Quincy
- South Lake Tahoe
- Mammoth Lakes
- Bishop
- Tehachapi
- Wrightwood
- Big Bear Lake (not Big Bear City)
- Idyllwild
- San Diego
Towns where you can maybe get a decent resupply:
- Leavenworth
- Packwood
- Bend
- Burney Falls Guest Ranch
- Truckee
- Tuolumne Meadows
- Red’s Meadow
- Muir Trail Ranch
- Kennedy Meadows South (Triple Crown)
- Agua Dulce
Towns where you can get a shitty vegan junk food resupply if you’re desperate or not picky or willing to spend a boatload of money:
- Skykomish
- Snoqualmie
- Whites Pass
- Trout Lake
- Cascade Locks
- Shelter Cove
- Mazama
- Tuolumne/Yosemite Valley
- Independence
- Agua Dulce
- Julian
- Lake Morena (Oak Shore)
Here’s what I did for my resupply:
From home (Bay Area) I mailed boxes to:
- Stehekin
- Stevens Pass
- Snoqualmie
- Whites Pass
- Trout Lake
From Portland I mailed boxes to:
- Timberline Lodge
- Big Lake Youth Camp
- Shelter Cove
- Mazama
From Ashland I mailed boxes to:
- Etna
- Castella
- Burney Mountain Guest Ranch
- Sierra City
From Bishop I mailed boxes to:
- Kennedy Meadows South
- Warner Springs
I bought resupply in these towns:
- Portland
- Ashland
- Quincy
- South Lake Tahoe
- Reds Meadow (yogi’d enough vegan food from day hikers/JMTers/hiker box at the campground for 4 days)
- Bishop
- Kennedy Meadows South (sent a 2 day box but decided to skip Lake Isabella and buy 3 more days from Triple Crown)
Note about bear canisters
You can mail a bear can UPS to Kennedy Meadows North or USPS to Bridgeport.
Kennedy Meadows South will also receive (nobo) or mail out (sobo) bear cans for you.
Triple Crown will buy bear cans from you if you don’t want to keep it as will the General Store (but then where would you put your stickers?)
My girlfriend picked me up at Sonora Pass and brought me my bear can and food. Otherwise I would have sent my bear can full of food to either Kennedy Meadows North or Bridgeport.
Sonora Pass resupply is also an option though when I checked their inventory a lot of vegan stuff was sold out. YMMV.
Mailing boxes
I mailed most stuff through the United States Postal Service (USPS) in flat rate priority boxes either medium or large, usually large.
As of this writing, large flat rate priority boxes are $18.90 to mail. Weight doesn’t matter for priority boxes. Stuff them full of however much delicious vegan goodness you can. I could fit up to 6 days of food in one box. Your stuffing capabilities may vary.
It’s a little pricey but the cheapest and fastest option. The boxes themselves are free. Sometimes post offices will make you buy their packing tape but most places let me use it for free.
It takes usually 1-4 business days to get a box from the place you mail it to the address. Make sure you take into account weekends though as Sundays don’t count as business days.
Shipping also comes with a tracking number. Personally, I never had any issues with not getting my boxes on time but I did hear of others having delays.
A few places only accept boxes through UPS. The price of mailing a box UPS varies depending on the size and weight. In the two instances I shipped boxes through UPS it cost me less than the USPS flat rate priority boxes.
Pro tip: UPS will ship the flat rate USPS boxes though not for the same price. Grab a flat rate box from the post office and cover up the USPS logos with tape or something and you got yourself a free box instead of having to buy an overpriced one from UPS.
The UPS stores in Ashland and Portland are super helpful since they get hikers mailing stuff all the time.
Note for international hikers
If you can’t mail yourself food ahead of time from wherever you live then you can mail boxes from Seattle (sobo) or San Diego (nobo). Three other international sobos I started off with mailed themselves food the night before we got a ride to Harts Pass.
How I mailed myself food from the trail:
First, I figured out how many days I was going to be between towns. The simple formula is:
distance between towns / estimated miles per day = days between towns
For example: 107 miles between Stehekin and Stevens Pass / estimated 20 miles per day = 4.9 days between town.
I typically rounded up to make sure I had enough food. So for this section I mailed myself 5 days of food.
I did this for every section between towns. For convenience, I made this spreadsheet. You can input your estimated pace per section and it’ll give you the days between towns. Feel free to steal it. You can also use Craig’s PCT planner or make your own spreadsheet, idk you do you
I downloaded Google Sheets and was able to update it from my phone as I hiked (please sponsor me Google). I was pretty conservative to start, only planning on hiking 20 miles a day but quickly stepped it up to 25, 27, and 30+ by the end of Oregon except in the Sierra where I mostly did 25s.
Once I knew how many days I needed per box and how many boxes I was going to send, I made a grocery list.
I shot for around 4,000 calories a day, mostly in bars. What was in my resupply boxes is below.
Once I had all the food, I went to the post office where I usually spent an hour packing up my boxes and mailing them out. I slapped some colorful af duct tape on them to be able to spot them.
In Portland and Ashland I had to also mail boxes from UPS which thankfully weren’t too far from the post offices. Same deal as the post office.
“But what did you eat while hiking???”
First of all, calm down. Second, check out this instagram post I made about what I ate on trail or just keep reading.
Here’s what was in a typical 4 day resupply box:
Breakfast:
- Nature’s Path instant oatmeal x4
- Nature’s Path Breakfast Bars x4
- Peanut Butter x1 jar (yes I ate at least an entire jar between resupplies)
- Instant coffee x4
Lunch:
- Tortillas x8
- Dehydrated hummus or peanut butter
- Trail mix
- Dried fruit
- Vegan jerky
- Something salty like fried snap peas or Fritos
Snacks:
- Clif Bars x8
- Clif Nut Butter x8
- Larabar x8
- Pro Meal Bar x4
- Clif Builder Bar x4
Dinner (I cold soaked):
- Uptons’ Naturals Real Meal Kit
- Couscous x1 cup or so
- Ramen x4
- Instant refried beans
- Nooch
- Hot sauce
Desert:
- Oreos
- Complete Cookie
- Dark chocolate peanut butter cups
Note about macros and nutrients:
I never really worried about protein or carbs or fats while hiking. I mostly worried about getting enough calories which is hard for any hiker, vegan or not.
I did always carry at 1 Clif Builder Bar for dat protein but for the most part just tried to eat a diverse amount of food. Got enough protein to recover after the long days and my legs actually got ripped af. My upper body, not so much. RIP.
Note about bars
I ate a lot of bars. A lot. I usually ate 6-8 bars a day. I typically ate 4 before lunch and 4 after, one every hour. This kept me well fueled and energized and let me hike without stopping. From Southern Oregon on I was hiking around 30 miles a day on non-town days which means I needed to be able to eat while hiking. In order to not get sick of them, I ate a lot of different bars every day.
Most Clif Bars are vegan (except for the shitty whey protein builder bars) as are most Pro Meal Bars. Watch out for honey or whey in bars.
Hot take: honey isn’t vegan
If you’re curious, here’s the calorie breakdown of what I ate:
And the macros:
Note about B-12:
I’m no doctor or registered dietician but I do know vegans need B-12 (chill tf out meat eaters, you need B-12 too, you just get it from abused cows that have been given it as supplements).
I carried multivitamins that had B-12 or to start and then eventually just switched to fortified nooch. If you’re vegan and don’t know about nooch what is u doin bb. I bought nooch in the Bay Area (Berkeley Bowl), Portland (Food Fight), Ashland (Shop n Kart), South Lake Tahoe(Natural Food Store) and Bishop (Blue Lupine). I sprinkled it on erryting.
Vegan Town Food:
A surprising amount of places had veggie/vegan options. Most of the time it was a shitty veggie burger or fries but I could usually get something to supplement my resupply in town.
You can check out my Instagram story on my favorite vegan town food here: @plantstho_
The vegan PCT spreadsheet also lists some of the best in-town vegan options.
My favorite vegan town meals:
- Basically all of Portland especially the vegan wings and pizza at Rudy’s Cafe
- Veggie dogs at Locks of Dogs, Cascade Locks, OR
- Sun Tacos at Paystreak Brewery, Etna, CA
- Vegan Gluten Free Pancakes at Seiad Cafe, Seiad Valley, CA
So that’s basically it. If you have any questions about anything post ’em below or slide into my Instagram DMs
Peace out,
Plants 🌱
Plants Outside 