Vegans/Vegetarians on the PCT

imported
#1

Wondering if anyone has any experience thruhiking the PCT as a vegan or vegetarian. As my home base is in Miami doing mail drops will be a pricey option. Are there veggie resupply options? When I did the AT I relied pretty much exclusively on maildrops so I was ok. But I’m not sure of the options on the PCT since the west coast is a bit more advanced. Are the stores stocked with veg food? Would I be better off sending veg food to a few locations and just bouncing the excess as I go? Thanks.

Poky

#2

A vegetarian hike is reasonably easy. Mac N’ Cheee, Liptons, cookies, snicker…all staples of thru-hiking that are vegetarian. I pretty much bought as I went along when I did the PCT. Many vegetarians hike the PCT as well.

Vegan on the other hand may be more difficult. Think you’d have to maildrops for that. Ashland, OR (a college town) is about the only place i can think of on the PCT that would have easy vegan options. That, and maybe a few of the larger grocery stores in So. Cal.

Good luck!

Mags

#3

Dave and Lexi are vegetarians and have posted a detailed itinerary from their 2004 thru-hike. There’s also information on what they typically ate in the FAQ section.

I’ve recently become a vegetarian, so if I was to thru-hike the PCT again, I’d be buying food at the better groceries and then mailing it ahead to myself, similar to Dave and Lexi. I’d probably keep a supply of TVP and other vegetarian specialties in my bounce box, just in case I couldn’t find them.

Pacer

#4

Just to clarify, most of the Lipton Sides are not vegetarian…they include chicken and pork products and other “natural flavors”. As far as I can tell, Spanish Rice is the only strictly vegetarian option.

Pacer

#5

Sorry about the confusion. Yes…many seemingly veggie options have some meat products in them. Did not realize Lipton’s was one of them. Thanks for the heads up. Guess the lesson is to read the label.

Having said that, many veggies options are available along the trails.

Vegan options is another ball of wax.

Mags

#6

Ditto Pacer. Depending on how strict you are, a lot of regular hiker staples aren’t veggie. If you are a vegetarian that sometimes eats chicken, then you would be OK. I am hiking next year and am a vegetarian and our plan is to do about 50/50. Drops/resupply in town. Any decent sized grocery store will have some veggie options - at least Annie’s Mac n’Cheese. For the smaller places, like gas station convenience stores, I would have a hard time finding stuff there to eat. For our drops, we have been dehydrating yummy homemade food.

I had a relatively short list of health food stores along the way, but I can’t find it at the moment. I will post it on my TJ site. I plan to do a bit more research to see if there are any more that aren’t on the list. Soon (hopefully) I will post our resupply plan on the TJ website too, or you could e-mail me and I could send a copy of our tentative plan as is in excel.

You may be able to bounce food, but in Washington, that might be tough.

Good Luck!!:girl

jackalope

#7

If you can get rides into towns to resupply, yes you can get by-to a point. Up here in WA state, if you can find your way to a Safeway, you can find a good selection of natural foods.

But your best bet is to do as much at home as you can-that means drying and more drying. Come up with foods you can handle eating over and over. TVP is actually pretty good when put in other stuff. Same for the aesptic packed tofu by Nori. You can use vegetraian broth powder for flavor-and eat a lot of rice, pasta and couscous. Spend your winter getting used to odd foods and learning how to use them.
I was a vegan for quite some time and one of my hiking partners is a very strict vegan/organic food consumer.

A good source for freezedried tofu and vegetables/fruits is www.justtomatoes.com - they even have an organic line. Worth the cost I will say!

But mostly your best bet is to go wander grocery store aisles-and start looking-and reading. Hydrolyzed animal protien is snuck into a lot of things! Learn what you can cook easily-and what doesn’t work :slight_smile:

On my website of backpacking recipes, I have a section devoted to vegans/vegetarians. http://www.freezerbagcooking.com/lowsodiumvegetarianveg.htm
Scan about 1/3 of the way down on the page. I have it broken into 2 sections. It is a good way to get ideas of getting started.

sarbar

#8

If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?

I mean, I ain’t never seen no animal made out of tofu.

Bob J

#9

Why is it Meat Lovers always need to come in and say something on veg threads?
I always say don’t knock soy till you try it :tongue And hey, there is Tofurky!

sarbar

#10

One of the nice things about knowing how to read food labels, if the food product is “kosher”, unless it is a meat product that you are buying you can pretty much know there is NO meat in it, generally kosher products that have meat will state meat next to the kosher symbol, also, if it says “parve” than it contains no dairy products. - it could have egg products so its not a guarantee that its vegan

JG

#11

Be careful! Some of the tofurkey out there is over processed chemical crap. My vegiterean friends won’t eat it.

A friend of mine made a veggie “turkey” this past Christmas that was made out of tofu and tempeh. Was quite yummy. She always make good veggie food.

Living in Boulder, you get a crash course in veggie options wether you want to or not. :slight_smile:

Mags

#12

. . . and that is why I live in Kansas City, where we love to eat cows and pigs!

yogi

www.pcthandbook.com

yogi

#13

Hey…I enjoy meat, but I’ve been known to enjoy veggie stuff too. :slight_smile:

My ethnic background is southern Italian. Lots of food that is veggie (and because it uses olive oil instead of butter, many of the non-pasta dishes are actually vegan, too). Except we did not call it veggie/vegan food…we called it Grandma’s cooking.

I just like good food, period.

Having said that, a KC steak would be nice, too!

Alas, I don’t think homecooked Southern Italian food would be an option for most PCT hikers. :slight_smile:

Mags

#14

I appreciate all the responses! Didn’t realize how many strong opinions were out there on this subject:eek:
Guess I’ll be doing maildrops again for the most part. Part of my problem was that by the time mid October came around on the AT some of my food was pretty darn stale having been sitting in boxes for 8 months.
I mostly did soups from Taste Adventure split pea, minestrone, corn chowder, etc. on that hike and those worked out good since I could buy in bulk.
Mmmm…I’m getting hungry just thinking about trail food.
Btw, yogi, I did once hear of a vegan in KC but I think they ate him;)

Poky

#15

Cows only eat plants. Therefore, if you eat a cow, you are really just eating a plant. See, being a vegan is easy.

Bob J

#16

Wonder why it angers so many trolls?

sarbar

#17

I don’t think doing the PCT as a vegetarian is hard. I hiked 900 miles of the PCT in '04 and mostly resupplied in stores. But, it depends how strict you are - do you care that Liptons has a small amount of animal product? Do you eat rennet? etc. You do see a lot of vegetarians that will eat meat on the trail because veg food is a bit limited and your body is craving calories, but you certainly don’t have to.

I was happy eating mashed potatoes, Liptons and Ramen(no flavor packet) and usually mixed in a dehydrated soup mix for flavor. I did send a couple of homemade dehydrated meals to myself because I missed good food and veggies. Lunch was a bagel sandwich with cheese and veggie meat. A lot of stores (even in small communities) carry vegetarian lunch “meats” - they usually don’t have the goodness that is Tofurky, but they will have some of the more mainstream brands. Depending on how strict you are, there is usually plenty of restaurant food for a vegetarian to eat, too.

Doing the trail vegan is a different matter. I know there have been some vegans on the AT, but I have only heard of one on the PCT (I’m sure there have been more, but one is all I have heard of). I’m sure it can be done, but it would take a lot of planning, mail drops and possible deprivation at restaurants (not too many vegan options, unless you could iceberg lettuce and french fries).

Good luck!

Jenny

#18

Poky,

I hiked the PCT vegetarian this year. Basically i sent a few more resupply packages than my non-veggie hiking buddies did. You can always find veggie friendly options at the larger grocery stores (like some liptons/zatarains which dont contain animal fat, a suprisingly small selection), but at all marginal resupply spots/gas stations where nonpicky eaters might buy, i sent ahead. It really helps if you have a good idea what and how much you will be consuming out there. Dehydrating food is a great idea, but my caloric intake went thru the roof this year. If I had done my boxes ahead of time, i’d would have been a very hungry fellow. I thought TVP would be a great idea, turns out that was just about the first thing i got sick of, plus it makes lots of people gassy. Cheers

Cypress

#19

My partner and I are both vegetarian (lacto-ovo) and thru-hiked the pct this past year. For anyone with a ‘special’ diet (vegetarian, vegan, allergies, low sodium, etc…) mail drops are going to be necessary. Yet we found that if you do it right, buy bulk food, have lots of options and find a nice support person on the west coast, the total cost should be equal or less to that of buying food in towns. Our best kept secret was a little book called “Lipsmackin’ Vegetarian Backpackin’ ”!

-toaster

Toaster

#20

see what eating meat does to you it makes you mad (they feed animals to cow these days or have you not heard that) just look at all the anger in that last REPLY…
I hiked the AT this year on vegan alone. Thinking about the PCT and it looks like mail drops are the way to go.
good luck

VEGAN