If you’re planning on doing a relatively long trek in Europe, and you don’t feel like carrying all of your food and consumables from the trailhead to the end of the trek (and then, of course discover that you’ve been carrying tons of food for nothing) – read this short guide and discover how you can easily lighten your load.
What you want to do is what pro-hikers call “drops” – this basically means sending bits of your gear (mainly consumables) ahead of your arrival to spots along your trail.
A lot of ultralight hikers prefer eating only one hot meal a day. Usually it’s dinner that’s eaten after shelter was set and shoes were taken off at camp. The kind of meal that suits most is pre-packed freeze-dried (lyophilised) food portions. These have several advantages:
- They’re very lightweight (the “standard” being around 150g / 5.3oz)
- They preserve most nutritious values and flavours (about 97%) compared to non freeze-dried foods and especially compared to “traditionally dried” foods.
- They’re quite nutritious and satiating. A standard portion is about 700Kcal
- They’re quite compact and do not take too much room in their packed state. A vacuum sealed portion would be the size of a male adult fist in terms of volume.
If you adopt the ultralight style of hiking you’ll be eating one hearty dinner and you’ll be snacking along the way on things like beef-jerky, trail-mix energy-snacks etc on stops along the way or sometimes while still on the move.
My rule of thumb is to make a “drop” of food and consumables every 4 days of hiking. My aim is not to carry on me more than 4 days worth of calculated food and consumables. I’ve emphasised the word “calculated” because it is quite important to plan ahead your meals for a trek. You might be eating dinner in a refuge at some night or you might be passing trough a town around lunch-time which means you could maybe eat in a restaurant or just buy yourself something in the local supermarket. These moments and days should be accounted for. It is very common for people to carry extra pounds of things they’ll never consume. Sometimes over hundreds of kilometres / Miles… Don’t be that person. Your back and knees will thank you.
After quite a few years of trekking, I’ve come to the realisation that my typical “day worth of food” as it is carried in my backpack is about 350-400g / 12-14oz It consists usually of:
- 2 freeze-dried portions (one being soup, the other being a dish like Chilli con Carne or Salmon stew etc)
- A bit of trail mix
- A small portion of beef jerky (50g / 1.75oz)
- 3-4 small energy snacks that I eat usually ahead of hard ascents
This means that on a standard multi-day hike I won’t be carrying over 1.5 kg / 3.3 pounds (4 days worth of packed food) on any given time. This allows for “good autonomy” all the while not being too charged and heavy. If you’re trekking in Europe, there’s a good chance you won’t have to carry too much drinking water either – 1L / 2 pints – Are enough in most cases if you’re carrying a water-filter of some sort. So if your base weight is around 5-6 kg / 11-13 pounds – on your most “charged” day your total carried weight (in Europe) should not exceed 8.5kg / 19 pounds. – Very reasonable.
The question is – What is the best way to do these “drops”?
Easiest and simplest (but not the cheapest…) – If like me you’re a bit spoiled – you’ll aim at sleeping in a Youth Hostel / BnB every 4th night on your hike so that you could also take a decent shower and sleep in a real bed. In this case, just ask and in nearly 100% of cases you’d be granted – to send a small package ahead of your arrival to be kept for you until your staying day.
If you’re not into Youth Hostels every 4th night or if there aren’t any “mid trek available accommodations” – you can aim at any commune along the way (or not too far off from your trail) that has a post-office. This will allow you to use one of the oldest and “most exciting” postal services (that most people aren’t even aware that exists) – called “Poste Restante”. It’s actually quite rare to find a post office that does not offer this service. What is Poste Restante? – It’s a service that allows you to send a parcel to the post office itself where it’ll wait for you to pick up (usually up to a month).
The means of doing it vary slightly but in most cases just consist on sending the parcel with this address format:
To: <Your name>
POSTE RESTANTE
<Target post office address>
In any case, the kind and helpful staff of your local post office could probably help you do it the correct way once you show up with your parcel and ask them how to use this service.
Since every Airport has (at least one) post office, the poste restante solution can easily solve once and for all the eternal question “could I carry my hiking poles / stakes / knife without checking my bag?” Why take the risk? Just send yourself those gear items that might get confiscated to the destination’s airport’s post office via poste restante and voilà! Problem solved.
Now that you know how to perform a proper “drop” – you have two options: Either buy all the food and consumables and send them to your desired points along the trek (careful! You’re normally not allowed to send fuel of any kind via snail-mail!!) Or: Do as I do for over a decade now whenever I’m trekking anywhere in Europe (and it probably works outside Europe as well) – I’m using this excellent, super-reliable French website.
The great advantage of this website is that not only it contains nearly any kind of freeze-dried meal you could possibly imagine from a huge variety of manufacturers and brands; not only does it feature a great variety of excellent snacks, energy snacks and advanced stuff like pemican or Biltong – It also offers a standard delivery services to any point in Europe (costs 6.95€ to 14.95€) This means that for 8 to 17$ you could basically have a parcel waiting for you anywhere on continental Europe (Prices and locations may vary please check this page ). This is such a hassle-free solution. I have tested their services dozens of times on dozens of destinations – never have they failed me. They also have a perfect customer service and discounts for returning clients. A no-brainer. Really.
All of their stocks are updated live – so you don’t need to worry that a certain item you’ve ordered will be missing. If you can order it – it will arrive!
Also, for an extra fee they can offer special rapid delivery services. All parcels are prepared within 24h of your order and in some cases for some destinations, for a certain fee – you can get delivered within 48-72h. This is very interesting if you decide to extend or divert your trek in the middle of the trail. All you have to do is make sure you have an internet connection and you can get sorted food-wise.
I don’t know of any similar service operating in the US or the rest of the world. If you know of such service please let me know in the comments below.
Have a safe and light trip!