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If a man dragged a little cart behind him, and also wore a backpack, he could go months on dense food. Even if you just put two 10kg bags of oats in your backp
by b112 4y ago
If a man dragged a little cart behind him, and also wore a backpack, he could go months on dense food.
Even if you just put two 10kg bags of oats in your backpack, that's going to last.
20kg? Soldiers have that much to carry, and often more, with weight of gun, ammo, rations, bedroll, and more... yet march day long.
- gbronner 4y agoLong distance hikers do this all the time. I think I carried 50# of stuff including food and water made it around 200 miles with leftovers. If I'd been willing to carry more and started out in better shape and was willing to go a bit slower, that distance could have been augmented significantly
- hammock 4y agoA typical rule of thumb for backpacking is 2lb of food a day. With a 15lb base weight and a maximum of say 95 lbs backpack weight, that’s 40 days worth. (Yes I have carried a 95lb pack on 2week mountaineering expeditions)
- jamiek88 4y agoHumans are u uniquely good at covering distance, our only competitors are horses really ‘cos we both sweat effectively. it would be interesting to calculate for a horse. There’s a lot of variables though!
- b112 4y agoIndeed. The fall in Canada, cool sunny days, 5C to 10C, is great for a brisk walk, without loads of sweat. A far cry from 35C, as another option. 35C, you'd almost have to factor in the weight of salt you'd take on a month's trip.
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoIf you allow cold weather to help out (no sweating needed), Huskies are really good at covering long distances too.
- sleightofmind 4y agoThose dog teams they use in the Iditarod Race seem to be able to cover distances that would do man or horse proud. I don't know how dogs would do pulling a sled in a more temperate climate (assuming efficient, wheeled sleds) as their inability to sweat might drastically reduce their output. Years ago I saw a man using dogs to pull a sled at about 6500-ft of elevation in the summer in Southern California (near Big Bear). I suspect it was only for short trips, perhaps just a quirky hobby. EDIT: Oops! Should have read farther in the comments. FartyMcFarter already mentioned Huskies just a couple of comments down.
- gruez 4y agoNot that far, according to another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32239566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32239566 >in practice about a month and a half’s logistics buffer is the maximum that’s possible and even doing that is expensive.
- b112 4y ago? My first paragraph is about a man, a backpack, and a little cart behind him ... to carry food. My last paragraph has nothing to do with food, only to show that a man can march with full kit, all day with 40kg. That it is done all the time. You response mixes the two, and then replies with a quote about an army, which must drag a full kit and food too. It is not applicable to this thread...
- vkou 4y agoIs the man with the cart going on a road, or cross-country? Do we count the caloric cost of building/maintaining the road in this equation? Is it a dirt road, a paved road, cobblestones..?
- hammock 4y agoHow long are expeditions to the south pole? Seems like they are at least a month and a half long.
- MereInterest 4y agoExpeditions can set up supply depots along the route, to be used for the final push, so it's not quite a fair comparison. If you can carry enough food for X days, you could travel out X/4 days, leave a cache with enough supplies for X/2 days, then travel back with the last X/4 days of supplies. During the actual push, take X/4 from the cache on your way out, and X/4 from the cache on your way back. By using the cache, your range has increased from 0.5X to 0.75X. (This is a simplified example that assumes only a single cache of supplies is being used, and that the same size party is used for both trips.) More extreme resource planning can also be used for expeditions, though can raise questions of ethics. The first successful expedition to the South Pole [0] set off with 52 sled-dogs, 45 of which survived the first month of the expedition. At that point, the supplies were light enough that they only required 18 dogs for the final push. The remainder were killed and butchered, both to reduce the number of mouths to feed and to provide food for the humans and remaining dogs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedi...
- malandrew 4y agolookup Colin O'Brady, the dude who crossed Antarctica solo
- imiller 4y agoI would recommend reading this article on Colin O'Brady. His "impossible first" wasn't exactly either of those things. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/the-problem-with-colin-obrady https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/the-pro...
- dendrite9 4y agoI remember that article. This podcast about the nutrition and planning for an unsupported 100 day crossing of Antarctica was absolutely fascinating but somehow felt nearly useless in terms of things to apply to my own (far far less substantial) trips. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keto-2700-km-through-antarctica-akshay-nanavati-dr/id1363389413?i=1000555698233 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keto-2700-km-through-a...