The 100 Mile Wilderness is an area in Maine near the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The section is renowned for its lack of town access (just unfrequented back-roads), meaning that many people enter carrying all of the food they’ll need… and the general recommendation is to plan on taking 8-10 days. Even dehydrated food gets awfully heavy when you pack in more than a few days–and even more so when you account for the boost in caloric needs of a hiker. To a northbound thru-hiker with 2000 miles worth of leg muscles built up before reaching the 100 Mile Wilderness, the section probably wouldn’t seem very intimidating. But for most everyone else (including southbounders like we were), it’s an intimidating prospect. When I was doing my initial research, searching for a way to not start our hike carrying 20lbs of food or to, you know, starve, I found that there is there are some wonderful people near the trail who will (for a fee) bring half of your food to the mid-way point of the Wilderness.
There may well be more options, but here are the ones I considered (info is from Spring 2012):
The AT Lodge
–http://www.appalachiantraillodge.com/index.php
-Resupply drop-off–56 mi @ Jo-Mary Rd (crosses AT)
-Will pack out your trash
-Call Paul (Ole Man) for rates
100 Mile Wilderness Adventures & Outfitters
White House Landing
To read a professional point of view of how best to approach the 100 Mile Wilderness click here, or for our on-the-trail accounts click here, here, and here.
So how do you manage those mid-wilderness resupplies? Do you have to say I will be at Jo-Mary Road at such and such a time on such and such a day? I'm worried about setting any sort of deadline, missing it, and not getting my food.
That's a great question–I was worried about the same thing at first. Here's how the drop works: When we arrived at the AT Lodge, the Ole Man gave us a large bucket with a lid that we filled with our resupply. He labeled the lid with our names and described where he would be hiding our bucket–he's done this a lot, so he was able to give us a pretty detailed description. A day or two after dropping us off at Baxter, he drove the bucket out to Jo-Mary road and hid it. I was a little worried about this, but he said he's never had a problem with bears or people taking the food (ours was fine). So as a long way to answer your question, you don't need a time estimate aside from your food planning (we brought 2 extra days' worth and ended up needing it). Hope that helps!