Category: AT Thru-Hike 2024

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir

I am attempting to walk continuously for 2,200 miles North Bound (NOBO) from Northern Georgia to North Central Maine along the Appalachian Trail (AT) over the course of roughly 170 days or five and a half months. This type of hike is called a thru-hike. 

A thru-hike is when you hike the entire length of a given trail as one continuous hike within a 12 month timeframe. To be fair, the “continuous” part is subject to some debate, as long as you get it all done (and I mean all) in the 12 month timeframe. There may be times when you have to skip a section (think forest fire or extreme weather or logistics or many other reason), but to complete the thru-hike you need to go back and complete any part that you missed within the specified timeframe. 

Contrast a thru-hike with a section hike. A section hike is, as the name implies, hiking section of a trail. Section hikes vary from a few days to a few weeks to a month or more. Some people hike the entire AT as a series of section hikes over the course of several years or a lifetime. Note that the technical term for these longer section hikes that last more than….say 10 days to several months….are called a LASH. That highly technical term stands for Long-Ass Section Hike. No, I am not making that up. See my FAQ blog for more trail terminology 🙂

Back to what exactly I am doing…I am ATTEMPTING to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail NOBO, starting at Springer Mountain in Amicalola Falls State Park, GA on April 14 2024 and, if all goes according to plan (like that will happen), summit Mount Kathadin in Baxter State Park, ME on or about September 30, 2024. Note the bold on the word ATTEMPTING.

For the more visually inclined, the trail looks like this. 

For my mid-western friends and family who might not have a good feeling for east coast distances, this is equivalent to walking from Washington DC to Kansas City, MO and back….with a bit more hills.

I will be starting alone/solo. However, there are a lot of people on the trail starting at roughly the same time, so I will not be “alone”. Far from it. Mid-March through Mid-April is one of the most popular NOBO starting times. Here is the graph showing the number of people who registered their start dates in the spring of 2024 courtesy of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC).

For example, there were over 80 people who registered to start on April 1, and not everybody who hikes bothers to register! That denser cluster of northbound thru-hikers is called “the bubble”.  Like a soap bubble, it can expand and contract over time and even break into several smaller bubbles. There will be many hundreds of people in the bubble…..at least initially…more on that later. There is a great Web site called Where Are The Hikers that allows you to visualize where the bubble is on the trail at any given time based on 15 years of historical data. Note, this is aggregated data NOT real-time data.

What does that mean for me? I am intentionally starting towards the end of the traditional “bubble” on April 14, 2024 for two reasons. 

First, I want to minimize, not eliminate, my time lugging a 30 pound backpack through 20-35 degree weather being pummeled by snow, sleet, and really cold rain for days at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I love hiking on a crisp winter day with a reasonable amount of snow (2-6 inches). But if I can avoid freezing my ass off on 15 degree nights with howling winds, no camp fire and nothing but a flimsy tent and a sleeping bag, then I am all in! The trail in Georgia and  North Carolina, particularly in the Smoky Mountains, is just not fun in the winter or very early spring. Especially when you are out there for many days at a time with no break. IMHO it can be downright dangerous.

Second, many of you know, my great love for being surrounded by masses of people knows no bounds. Not! While I have spent a week on the trail and seen only one or two people a day and had entire camp sites to myself, that is a bit too in-peopley even for me. At least for 6 months. 

Starting mid-April strikes a balance between the cold wet early spring in the south and the masses of people hiking at the height of the bubble. 

Why not start even later and enjoy fewer people and warmer weather? The answer to that is that the northern terminus of the trial at Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park Maine closes for the season depending on when the heavy snows arrive. For example, in 2023 the park closed on 10/21/2023 for the season. The guidance from the ATC is to make sure you are done with your NOBO thru-hike by October 15. Starting on April 14, hiking at a reasonable pace (starting slow and increasing mileage over time), and estimating 170 days to reach Mama K (Mount Katahdin) equates to October 1. That gives me two weeks of buffer time before October 15 in case I run into any delays on the trail. 

“Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you’re standing outside the fire.” – Garth Brooks & Jenny Yates

After my wife died in 2021, I had to deal with that whole “mortality” thing and I did not like what I was seeing. I had not done any exercise since I stopped playing soccer about 6 years prior and I got winded walking up one flight of stairs. I also looked back on the past 30 years and realized that I had a lot of regrets. I was a workaholic, which caused me to miss a lot of weddings, funerals, graduations, birthday parties, etc. Add to all that the trauma of loosing my partner of 35 years and general depression around trying to figure out what the hell do I do with my life, and I decided that I needed to make some major changes.

I retired on January 3, 2022 at 53 years old and started working on Life Part II. A major part of that included my desire to become much more healthy as well as to NOT putter around the house in my retirement. I wanted to get to a physical and mental place where I could truly enjoy life, try new things, and challenge myself. I have never enjoyed exercise for the sake of exercise (i.e. going to the gym). I decided to embrace hiking for the health/exercise benefits plus the “Spiritual” side of things. 

I started off with 1.5 miles being difficult. Fast forward two and a half years…I have lost 25 lbs, I hike 30-45 miles a week with a 28lb pack on moderate-to-difficult terrain, and I eat better than I have in years (not a health food nut, just generally better eating habits). I have hiked/explored lots of new areas up and down the mid-Atlantic, and I am enjoying life. At some point along the way I realized that I had become a hiking addict. I love finding ever more challenging terrain as well as that “endorphin high” that comes from pushing my body. 

I decided that I wanted to really challenge myself physically and mentally. Long-distance hiking looked like a good way to approach that, and a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail (AT) became my initial goal (obsession?). I spent the second half of 2022 researching an AT thru-hike and doing ever more challenging day hikes to get in shape.

Unfortunately I tore my metatarsel plate on the decent of McAfee Knob in July 2022 and stupidly hiked on it for 3 more months before seeing a doctor. After 3 months of doctored-ordered no hiking, I finally had surgery to repair the tear. That led to three more months of recovery and no hiking. By April of 2023, I was able to start hiking again. Recovery was very frustrating. Going from hiking 10 miles on difficult terrain to struggling to do 4 flat miles on the C&O Canal Towpath sucked! I started to think that there was no way I would be able to ever do the AT. 

With the encouragement of my friends (thank you Dana!) and my orthopedist, I stuck with it. I eventually got back to hiking at least 4 days a week and struggled through several 2 day backpacking trips in the summer of 2023. Side note…dropping 25 pounds of body weight sure makes those miles easier on the feet! I capped out the year with a week-long backpacking trip from Pen Mar MD to Duncannon PA in 90 degree heat with 70-80% humidity and the worst drought we had in the mid-Atlantic in a long time (very very little water on the trail). I figure if I could survive that trip, then I was ready to attempt a thru-hike of the AT. 

As my wonderful sister-in-law Vicki has told me many times (usually as we decide to do something questionable on a black diamond ski slope), that which does not kill us makes us stronger!