I came to the Appalachian Trail the way most people come to bad decisions, desperate and convinced I was being clever. The plan was simple. Walk twenty-two hundred miles, burn fat all day, emerge transformed. My body had become a stranger to me, soft and apologetic, and I figured the trail would carve away everything I didn’t need.
The first week taught me that hunger lives in your bones.
I’d packed my food bag with the precision of an accountant, calculating calories per ounce, measuring portions with a digital scale. Rice cakes. Instant oatmeal. Protein bars that tasted like cardboard soaked in artificial vanilla. I was feeding my body just enough to keep walking, nothing more.
That’s when I heard about the ramen bomb.
“Best meal you’ll ever have on trail,” said Freight Train, a section hiker with arms like tree trunks and a belly that suggested he’d never met a calorie he didn’t like. “Ramen noodles, instant mashed potatoes, throw in whatever else you got. Tuna packets, cheese, hot sauce. Then wrap it up in a tortilla. Hell, I’ve seen people put gummy bears in there. “
He demonstrated that night in the Fontana Dam Shelter, dumping ingredients into his pot like a mad scientist. The smell hit me first, salty, rich, absurd. My stomach cramped with desire.
“Want some?” he offered, holding out a spoonful of the steaming mess and an extra tortilla.
I shook my head, pulled my own measured portion of plain rice from my pack. “I’m good.”
But I wasn’t good. I was starving myself thin, and watching him eat that ridiculous concoction felt like watching someone else live my life. The decision solidified in that moment, stick to my plan and waste away, or give in to the hunger that was beginning to follow me like a shadow.
I made the ramen bomb the next night. Just once, I told myself. Just to see what all the fuss was about.
The first bomb filled me in a way I’d forgotten was possible. My stomach, shrunk to the size of a fist in just under 200 miles of trail, protested against the sudden abundance. I felt sick and satisfied and guilty all at once. But something else happened too, the hunger stopped screaming.
For exactly four hours.
When it came back, it came back wrong. This wasn’t the gentle suggestion of an empty stomach. This was something primal, insistent, demanding. I tried to ignore it, to stick to my careful portions, but my body had tasted abundance and wouldn’t be denied.
I made another bomb. And another. My food bag emptied faster than the miles accumulated.
Before I could reach Clingmans Dome and possible resupply, I was rationing like a man preparing for siege. Other hikers chatted about resupply strategies while I calculated whether I could make it to the next town on rice cakes and determination. The hunger had become a separate entity, whispering suggestions, making plans.
The answer came to me in Silers Bald Shelter. Twelve hikers, twelve food bags hanging from the mouse hangers like piñatas. All just hanging there above us. Most people were sloppy about their bear hangs, too many hikers in one place, not enough trees, everyone assuming someone else would deal with the bears that never came.
I waited until the snoring started.
My headlamp had a red filter designed to preserve night vision. Perfect for midnight activities. I’d learned to move quietly, weeks of careful footwork on rocky trail teaching me where to step. The first bag came down easy, just a gentle tug on the paracord, quiet as prayer.
The alcohol stove was genius. Silent compared to my Jetboil, efficient enough to cook a ramen bomb in minutes. I used someone else’s HEET fuel, my own titanium pot, someone else’s ingredients. The guilt lasted exactly as long as it took to light the stove.
I told myself I was only taking what I needed.
The stealing became routine. I developed a system, never the same hiker twice, never more than one or two items per bag, always leave something behind so they’d think they miscounted. I became a ghost in the shelters, a whisper in the night.
The bombs got bigger. More elaborate. I started carrying a mental inventory of everyone’s food, planning combinations like a chef planning a menu. A ramen bomb with trail mix and instant rice. Beef jerky and hot chocolate packets. Squeeze butter and crushed pretzels.
My body began to change in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The weight loss had stalled, but my stomach had adapted to the massive meals. I could pack away portions that would have made Freight Train proud, but the hunger never fully disappeared. It just went dormant, waiting.
I thought I was being clever until I met the hunger face to face.
It happened at Deer Park Mountain Shelter, close enough to Hot Springs that I lost myself in delusions of resupply. I’d been living like this for weeks, careful thief, midnight chef, invisible predator. I hung my own food bag like everyone else, played the part of the struggling hiker who’d lost too much weight.
But that night, I woke up to find my own bag empty.
Someone had beaten me at my own game. The irony might have been funny if not for the way my stomach clenched like a fist. I lay in my sleeping bag, listening to the forest, and felt something shift inside me. The hunger wasn’t just demanding food anymore.
It was demanding everything.
I looked around the shelter at the sleeping hikers, their bags swaying gently in the night breeze, and realized I’d been thinking too small. Why take a little from each when I could take it all?
The revelation came with the kind of clarity that only arrives at three in the morning when your blood sugar crashes and your moral compass spins like a broken needle. I wasn’t just hungry anymore. I was the hunger.
I took down every bag.
The alcohol stove burned blue in the darkness as I cooked the ultimate ramen bomb. Every packet of instant potatoes, every flavor packet, every random ingredient I could find. Tuna and peanut butter and gummy bears and hot sauce and cheese and jerky and chocolate and rice and oatmeal and everything else that hikers carry when they think they’re being practical.
The pot wasn’t big enough. I used three pots, four pots, every piece of cookware I could grab from the shelter. The smell was intoxicating, salt and fat and artificial flavoring creating something that existed beyond the boundaries of normal food.
I ate with the focused intensity of a man trying to fill a hole in his soul. Spoonful after spoonful of the impossible mixture, my stomach expanding beyond what seemed physically possible. The other hikers started to stir, drawn by the smell or the sound of my desperate consumption.
“What the hell?” someone whispered.
I kept eating. I had to keep eating. The hunger was finally satisfied, and I couldn’t let it wake up again. I could feel my body stretching, accommodating, adapting to this new reality where I was nothing but appetite and ability.
That’s when I understood the truth about ramen bombs.
They’re not just food. They’re the physical manifestation of trail hunger, that desperate need to consume everything within reach. And like any bomb, they’re designed to explode.
The pressure built slowly at first. My stomach, trained by weeks of careful rationing, rebelled against the sudden abundance. But I couldn’t stop. The hunger wouldn’t let me stop. I shoved in another tortilla wrapped mouthful, then another, my body expanding like a balloon at a gas station.
The other hikers were awake now, watching in horror as I consumed their entire food supply. Someone said my name, but it sounded distant, unimportant. Nothing mattered except the eating.
Nothing mattered except the inevitable conclusion.
I felt it coming, the moment when physics would reassert itself, when my body would admit defeat. The final mouthful felt like swallowing a grenade.
The explosion wasn’t violent. It was almost gentle, really. A sudden release of pressure, a brief moment of weightlessness. Then I was painting the three walls of the shelter with noodles and mashed potatoes and the dreams of a dozen hikers who’d never make it to Katahdin.
They found me the next morning, or what was left of me. The trail register at Deer Park Mountain Shelter got a new entry that day, written in someone else’s hand.
“Ramen Bomb – attempted thru-hike. Exploded at mile 272. Do not attempt to recreate this feat.”
But hikers never listen to warnings. They’re too hungry, too desperate, too convinced they’re different from everyone who came before.
The trail has a way of teaching you that hunger is patient. It can wait.
It’s always waiting.
If you enjoyed this taste of trail horror, check out Hiker Midnight – a collection of 13 fictional stories of terror taking place on the Appalachian Trail. Available free on Kindle from July 3-7.