How three Aussie hikers solved the trail nutrition problem the rest of us just accepted

The Forgotten Fuel

When you’re hiking long distances, your body burns through micronutrients constantly. Prolonged movement, altitude, poor sleep, stress, and a diet made mostly of processed carbs drain essential minerals like magnesium, zinc, and sodium, while limiting your access to vitamins A, C, D, E, and the B-family that keep energy levels and immunity stable.

That’s why the usual “I’ll just take a multivitamin” approach rarely cuts it. Those one-size-fits-all tablets are designed for people sitting at desks, not people hauling 44 pounds up a mountain on three hours of sleep.

You don’t need to be a nutritionist to notice the symptoms of micronutrient deficiency, either. Sore every morning? That’s inflammation. Trouble sleeping? It could be a magnesium or cortisol imbalance. Constipated, bloated, or just feeling off? Your gut’s probably waving a white flag, overwhelmed, and unbalanced.

The bad news is that most hikers don’t notice until their bodies start to show the symptoms of running on fumes. But the good news is that the three of us decided to do something about it.

The Hike That Changed Everything

Back in late 2023, thru-hiker and filmmaker Cam Bostock and his adventure buddy Hursh Dodiha-Shah were high in the Himalayas, on day who-knows-what of a 35-day expedition. Between them, they had enough supplements to open a small pharmacy. They had vitamins, electrolytes, protein powders, probiotics, and herbal supplements, with each one meant to plug a different nutritional gap.

Halfway through the trip, an ongoing trail rant about the ludicrousness of carrying so many pill bottles had become a real plan: to create one high-quality, research-backed supplement designed specifically for outdoor adventurers.

That’s where I came in.

As The Hiker’s Nutritionist, I’ve been road-testing good and bad trail diets for years and am all too familiar with the extreme frustration of wanting to take the good stuff while needing to cut back on grams. In my experience, quality food is almost always the first to be sacrificed, because it’s just too heavy. So when Cam and Hursh shared their idea, I knew instantly it was something special.

Within weeks, we were deep in research mode, cross-checking studies, testing formulas, and figuring out how to pack a full micronutrient profile into a capsule light enough to carry across continents. Living on opposite sides of Australia didn’t make this easy, but we made it work. After much debate, Optiventure was the name we all agreed on, and work continued.

Trail-Testing a Theory

By mid-2024, we’d developed a tiny first batch in a TGA-approved facility in Australia. On the same day they arrived, Cam packed a few hundred of the unmarked capsules into his PCT pack and flew to the US to walk the Pacific Crest Trail. Nothing says suspicious like a hiker boarding a plane with baggies of white pills…

For 2640 miles of punishing climbs, patchy food, and chaotic weather, he used nothing else for micronutrient support. The result? He finished the entire trail in 139 days (the average is closer to 150–180) with steady energy, strong recovery, and, miracle of miracles, zero gut issues. Besides being his longest hike to date, this was his first time emerging at the end feeling as strong as when he started.

After that, we shipped samples to other hikers across the globe, from the Alps to the Larapinta. Feedback started pouring in: better sleep, faster recovery, no mid-trail fatigue crashes, fewer stomach dramas. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect. Some people said it tasted herby, others swore it was a little garlicky, and I knew we hadn’t nailed the gut support side, but the hikers who tried it were rating it highly.

Creating Our Supplement

Many multivitamins are the equivalent of a garnish for outdoor adventurers. They’ve got cheap ingredients, low doses, and have little real-world benefit for people doing serious physical activity. Sure, taking one on trail won’t hurt you at all, but it’s not doing a whole lot to help you either.

Typical multis rely on outdated nutrient forms that your body barely absorbs, or they include token amounts of dozens of vitamins just to fill the label. It’s marketing, not metabolism support. Those formulas are made for the average adult sitting indoors under fluorescent light and not for someone sweating out minerals on an 18-mile alpine ascent.

So, we rebuilt our solution from the ground up. Instead of copying and pasting a supermarket multivitamin, we used bioavailable nutrient forms (like magnesium glycinate instead of oxide) and dosages supported by actual clinical data. We added adaptogens like ashwagandha and rhodiola to regulate stress, anti-inflammatory compounds for recovery, and probiotics to keep the gut calm when your food is on the feral side.

The real breakthrough was realizing we could tap into the benefits of nutrient timing: splitting the delivery of nutrients into a Sunrise and Sunset system allowed us to optimize these pills so much more than we thought was possible. We used our morning capsules for energy, immunity, and gut support, and the evening capsules for recovery, inflammation control, and deep sleep.

Was figuring out powder density, contraindications, different nutrient intake recommendations across multiple countries, and ingredient timing research validity an absolute nightmare that nearly destroyed us? Absolutely yes. But we’d do it again in a heartbeat to get the result we’ve achieved.

Why Micronutrition Matters for Every Hiker

You don’t need to be hiking the PCT to benefit from balanced micronutrition. Whether you’re trekking for three days or training for a big thru-hike, your body still faces the same stresses: muscle breakdown, immune dips, dehydration, and poor sleep.

When you get your micronutrients right, you recover faster, sleep deeper, and feel steadier. Hills get easier, your appetite normalizes, and those “Why do I feel so flat?” days happen less often.

Micronutrients come from real food, so supplements aren’t technically necessary, but they make it much more convenient and lightweight to meet your needs.

If you’re thinking about ways to pack for your next big hike without adding a supplement like Optiventure, you can improve your trail nutrition by:

• Eating the rainbow whenever possible: color equals nutrient diversity.
• Prioritizing recovery foods after exercise: think protein and magnesium-rich options like spinach, avocado, or pumpkin seeds.
• Packing quality electrolytes with potassium, magnesium, and sodium: start reading ingredients and knowing what you’re taking and why.
• Listening to your body: fatigue and poor mood are often nutrient flags, not just low fitness.

The more we understand how our bodies work on trail, the more we can enjoy the journey rather than just enduring it.

Built by Hikers, for Hikers

Optiventure isn’t just another faceless corporate supplement company – if you tuned into our semi-regular meetings, you’d know that immediately! We’re just three hikers who got tired of having to bring our own pharmacy for every hike, and decided to fix the problem. We didn’t start this to make millions or impress investors; we built it because we needed it.

Every batch, every formula change, every new ingredient test still starts with the same conversation: what do we wish we had on the trail? And then we try to figure out how to make that work. Every single day is a new challenge, but getting to solve our own problem and share it with others who love the outdoors as much as we do is such a perk.

To everyone who backed us through our early product runs, we can’t thank you enough for your support. And to any hiker who wants to feel stronger, recover faster, or just trust their body out there, we’d love for you to join us. Say hi in our Facebook group, drop us an email, or try the Sunrise/Sunset Solution for yourself. We built it for you, just as much as for us, and we can’t wait to see what you achieve with it.