You'll hike 3-5 days between roads in southern California. You have two reliable methods of resupply in Southern Cal: mail your food or shop at a store after hitching a ride to town from the trail. I didn't know very much and didn't do much research aside from getting Halfmile's trail guides (free) and using the given addresses to mail my food. You'll find hundreds of blogs, as I did, on the internet about this. I was overwhelmed by the info and just drew a blank.
If your diet is flexible, you can re-supply at trail towns, most of which are a short hitch from trailheads. Most have regular grocery stores. Resupplying this way cuts out the headache of timing your arrival to the opening hours of post offices where you might otherwise ship supplies.
- Powdered laundry soap--really cheap from home, poured in a ziplock bag, really expensive from a laundromat. If you don't use it, drop it in the hiker box for someone else.
- travel size hand lotion.
- toilet paper in a ziplock bag and an extra ziplock bag for carrying used paper out.
Mailing it:
I mailed boxes of food to myself at places where I was sure I'd be getting off trail. I didn't know if I could walk 50, 75, 100 or 125 miles between resupplying. One thing about resupplying at the shorter distances is you make yourself ease up on yourself a bit and keep the walk from becoming a forced march.
Fuel. It's legal to mail stove fuel, but the law requires you to label it appropriately. I've mailed alcohol fuel in a 500ml drink bottle--the bottles never leak and their flammability is nowhere near a canister of butane, nor is the bottle pressurized.
For packages going to post offices, I addressed my boxes like so:
; My name
; General Delivery
; city, state zip code
The zip code needs to be correct. Half Mile has it on his trail guides.
I sent the Boxes by Priority Mail to post offices three to four weeks before my predicted arrival-- once you're on the trail you'll need someone reliable to ship boxes for you. If you skip a pick up at a post office you can call them -- they will forward the package once for free.
Some delivery addresses will be at the homes of Trail Angels or at retail businesses. Some will assess a handling fee to receive your package. This fee is totally worth it and you should consider it a trip expense.
