Trail Budgets

I've been surprised at how cheaply one can hike the trail. I've talked to several people about their budgets. Red Eyes and a few others are trying to hike the trail on $1 per mile. That is actually doable. However, Red Eyes will never do it on that budget. He is going into town too much. He gets a lot of free stuff by asking.

Thought Foot's budget was $4,000 for the entire trail. He says he is considerablly under budget so far.

I'm spending about $100 to $150 per week on food, hostile stays, beers at hostiles, and other trail supplies. This is way under what I expected.

One of the secrets to doing the trail on a low budget is to check out all of the hiker boxes. Every hostile and motel along the trail has a hiker box where people put stuff they don't want. You mostly find oat meal and roman noodles, but you can also find lots of other stuff too. I found some kind of scrambled egg omlet mix not long ago. I also found an electronic chess game that I left for Shamrock at the Spring Mountain shelter. You never know what you might find.