Section 3
The beauty of the John Muir Trail (JMT) is undeniable, but a successful thru-hike requires much more than just physical conditioning. It involves careful planning for backpack weight, resupplies, navigating potential reroutes, solar charging, organizing meals, and adapting to the constantly changing trail conditions over the next three weeks.
Nearly three weeks into the preparation, we initially considered dehydrating regular meals, but as the days went by, it felt more cumbersome. The options for dehydrated food available online outweighed the time investment required. We calorie-counted, electrolytes, and water consumption since we came from endurance hikes at high altitude a few weeks back in Colorado, which helped, as we were physically conditioned and used it as a template.
The breakfast and dinner were the dehydrated foods and we estimated the weight of packaging and rationed into light weight ziplocs as per day.