Q&A Thruhiking Sweden: Food & Packing

Food & packing

• How many days worth of food did you carry at most?

  12 days of food for the section Treriksröset to Abisko. There are no stores or any ways to resupply here on the Swedish side of the border, so you have to carry everything on your own. We only needed 10 days of food though.

• How often did you buy food?

  Whenever there came a store, whenever I wanted something or whenever I needed food for the upcoming days. It was very different depending on which section! But check out our plans - here and here you can see where and how often we resupplied. Keep in mind that you can resupply more often in some places than I did!

• What kind of food did you carry?

  In the beginning we had oatmeal for breakfast, home-dried food or freeze-dried food for lunch and dinner and then looots of protein bars, chocolate, nuts and other sweets for snacks. But from Grövelsjön and onwards my diet slowly changed, and I started carrying more and more food that didn’t need water. My diet also got worse because I lost some of my appetite. In the end I had sandwiches with butter and cheese (or sometimes nut spread) or a cold Billys Pan Pizza, and then during the day and in the evening I ate Billys Pan Pizza, more sandwiches, Snickers, chocolate, fruit and the like. Not so healthy but it kept me going!

• How did you solve food and fuel? Did you have food prepared in different places or did you buy food along the way?

  I’m not sure if you’re actually allowed to do so, but we sent fuel in our food boxes in the mountains. Way too much though, and you are normally able to buy fuel (we use gas) in the mountain stations. In the mountains (Treriksröset-Grövelsjön) we mainly sent food in boxes and further south I bought food in stores. We sent way too much food in the north though, and unless you only send home-dried food, I’d actually recommend just sending a really small amount and buying the rest along the way. Your taste buds might change along the way, and you might eat more or less than you planned for! Sending food back home, giving away or throwing food is both really stupid and time-consuming as well as expensive. I’d do this differently if I had known.

• How much did you carry and how many clothes did you bring?

  See my Lighterpack! This list is what I started with and this is what I had when I arrived in Smygehuk. It changed several times along the way.