Day 29 Deep Gap, Nth Beauty Spot to Clyde Smith Shelter

Today's miles 13.9.  AT miles 368.1

It was a bit misty and there was a very cold wind this morning, but the sun soon came out.  The cool wind remained all day though, it made perfect walking temperatures.  We left camp at 9:15 and it was straight into an uphill climb to Unaka Mountain, which had dense spruce forest on top.  It's a good job the white blazes were on every 3rd or 4th tree showing the way otherwise it could have got very confusing!  It was straight back down again from the summit.

From there the rest of the day was the normal constant up and down through the forest.  We saw a small group of five Whitetail deer today.  The larger one, the male we presumed, went running and hopping off but his ladies didn't follow so he had to come back.  We stopped at Cherry Gap shelter for a snack/lunch break and also later on by a sign saying we had 6 miles to go to get to our shelter spot for the night, Clyde Smith Shelter.  We saw nobody else all day on the trail until the shelter, Meeple and Odysseus were already at the shelter when we arrived about 4pm.

We've been trying to work out how many calories we are eating each day?  We eat quite well on the trail compared to some, we always have hot oatmeal/porridge for breakfast plus a couple of cups of tea/coffee (me tea, Nigel coffee) before setting out for the day.  Other hikers will just eat cold - pop tarts or cereal bars for breakfast and not bother with a hot drink.  We then snack during the day and have a hot meal in the evening plus hot drinks, tea, coffee or hot chocolate.   They say thru hikers burn anywhere between 4000-6000 calories a day, 4000 more realistic for us I would think.  We walk steady and don't rush or speed like the few really fast 20/30 mile a day hikers.  We have both lost some weight, our trousers are loser, but not loads of weight.

We reckon we are eating on average 2500 calories a day, 3000 max.  Our breakfast porridge is 320 calories.  We now have 2 individual packets each a day and could still eat more, we started with 1 then 1.5 a day each. Our evening meals vary anywhere between 400 to 800 calories a meal depending on what we have.  We eat a lot of flavoured pasta, rice, noodles, mashed potato and gravy meals or Mountain House dehydrated trekkers meals.  All dried foods as they are lightweight for carrying and just need hot water adding. We sometimes have small tuna or chicken pouches or a twin pack of large frankfurters for extra protein in our meals, plus our beef and turkey jerky kindly provided by our sponsor Uncle Fools Jerky Smokehouse.  Milk powder and hot chocolate also account for a few calories so on average we probably get around 1000 calories from breakfast and dinner plus hot drinks.  The rest comes from our snacks during the day which we either eat as we're walking along or when we stop for a brief rest.

We snack on all sorts and it varys with each food shop. The first couple of weeks we carried bread squares, cheese and pepperoni slices and made a sandwich each day but it was heavy to carry and the weather got hotter so not so good for carrying cheese.  Now we snack on an assortment of things. Biggest calorie wise is probably Trail mix around 400-500 calories, at a guess, per day.  We make our own as I don't like nuts and we get a better choice and bag it up into daily portions each.  We usually have trail mix every day.  The bigger supermarkets stock a great range of tubs of dried fruits and other bits and pieces to make your own trail mix. Each time we make some up it differs but usually a selection of slow and fast release energy foods from the following:
Dried fruits: pineapple, mango, apricot, papaya, banana chips and chocolate coated banana chips - even better.
Yogurt coated raisins.
Cashew nuts (the only nuts I like). Nigel sometimes buys a pre made bag of trail mix with assorted nuts to add to his portions.
Gummy bears or Gummy snakes for Nigel.
Chocolate M&M's.
Jelly Beans.
Mini brownies.

We also have an assortment of 3 or 4 out of the following each day:
Protein bars - range from  200-300 calories each.
Belvita breakfast biscuits - 230 calories a pack, good slow release energy.
Oat or granola bars - from 130-230 calories.
Little Debbie's cookie rounds, 50c size - 300 calories - my favourite!
Energy sweets - 200ish calories.
Mini or normal size Mars Bars (Milky Ways here), Snickers or Twix or similar - 230ish calories.
Cheese cracker sandwich wafers/biscuits - 200 calories.
Beef or Turkey Jerky.
If cold weather, mini baby bel and mini pepperoni.

We're always hungry a couple of hours after breakfast.  We find we are needing to eat something about every one and a half to two hours whilst hiking, eating little and often.  Not the healthiest menu but we try and have something more healthy when we hit a town.