To Bounce With it

To Bounce Or Not To Bounce

Last season Butterfly and I attempted to thru-hike the AT SOBO. During the trip we  fell in love with having a bounce box. Butterfly is a Vegetarian so we figured finding food might be tough on the trail. To our surprise it wasn’t to bad (except for Maine). We love our veggies and didn’t want to miss out on have super loaded veggie ramen.

After doing some research, and picking other hikers brains, we decided bouncing a box was our best bet. We made a mass order of select veggies from Harmony House, as well as ordering tons of dehydrated refried beans from Amazon. This aloud us to eat fresh rehydrated greens and get protein packed beans in our meals.

What We Liked

We found that when we got to town to resupply it was nice knowing that if we had extra food, then we could send it forward. We would tend to send the box rough 150-200 miles south of us giving us about 7-14 days till we could resupply out of it. Doing a mix of in town resupply and having a box made for greater creativity with meals. Having the same old ramen bomb each night gets pretty old. Being able to spice it up with corn and peas was a life saver.

Another wonderful thing about bouncing is that you can make multiple servings of a comfort meal and be able to pull from it. For us, It was our beans and rice meal that we read about from Andrew Skurka. We made enough to have this meal once every week or so. Being able to have a meal that reminds you of the comfort of your home you left is a deal breaker.

Other Findings

We also found that bouncing a box was great to put items that we didn’t necessarily need right then. For us it was our down jackets, Pants, and town clothes. We also stored some laundry detergent in the box so it was one less expense in town for laundry day.

If you have some dietary restrictions the bounce box is your best bet over doing only mail drops. Overall the best way for one to find out what is right for them is by trial and error. We started off with mail drops every ~100 miles from Maine to southern New Hampshire. We found it was easier to bounce a box and supplement in town.