The Basics: When, Where, How... (and a little bit more of Why)

I didn't feel satisfied for my reasoning of why I wanted to hike the AT, so maybe this will help:
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I remembered something last week that I had nearly forgotten.  When I was in Middle/High-School, my friend Abbey and I would ride past a certain small creek while on the bus from school.  The water was usually never more than a foot deep, but something about the way that the it tumbled over the jagged limestone slabs forming the creek bed made it seem more formidable, or wild, than it really was.  We joked that we would get on an inner-tube with our few belongings and ride the creek to where it joined the Little Miami River, and then onward into the Ohio, the Mississippi, and in the end we'd come to oceanic freedom in the Gulf of Mexico.  It was only a dream, but I for one liked to believe we'd really do it.  I just wanted to go, to see.  I think that is the drive of any explorer, any wanderer- to find out the world for themselves. 
And so, today it's not the little creek I'm dreaming of, but a big trail.  And I want to hike it just to see the world for myself. 

 

But enough of that- onwards!

 



Do we look ready or what? 

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Let's talk about "when".   Obviously, the trail can be hiked in either direction- Maine to Georgia or Georgia to Maine (Thus, hikers are either known as ME/GA or GA/ME).  Probably 80% (don't quote me on that, I'll give real statistics later) choose to "hike with spring" and start out in Georgia in March or April.  The trail will be crowded and full of excited hikers for a few weeks... that is, until the AT enters the Smoky Mountains.  I think something like over half of the hikers drop out here!  It's trial by fire... and you can either walk everyday or you can't. 

 

Stewart and I have decided our official start date will be March 13 or 14.  I wanted to start on my birthday, which is the 11th, but these were the closest days in which we were able to score a ride to the trail head in northern GA.  Our friend, Windsor, is wonderful and volunteered to drive us to Amicalola State Park. 
Stewart and I have chosen to hike without a set itinerary as to where we will be at any given day.  We don't need or want the stress of having a daily schedule.  What if we love a trail town so much we'd like to stay an extra day?  What if we find ourselves hiking at a dramatically different pace than expected?  Our only real "time goal" is to finish the hike around mid-September, preferably on our 2-year anniversary, which is the 17th.  Hikers going north have to finish before Baxter State Park (in which is located the last leg of the hike) is closed in October for safety reasons.  Maine has some rough winter weather, and they don't want hikers perishing on Mount Katahdin.
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Where: Any quick Google search will show you the exact path of the trail.  For those of you really interested (or who love maps, like me), there's a really cool interactive map of the entire trail at the official Appalachian Trail Conservancy website where you can zoom in and see every nook and cranny of the trail, even showing you the individual shelters along the way.  I encourage anyone who reads this blog regularly to check in on the map from time to time to get a sense of where in the heck we are! 
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I guess the easiest/hardest question to answer is "how"?  How in the heck are we going to do this?!  I'd be lying if I told you I had it all figured out.  The easy answer is to say "By walking."  The harder answer is a question not so much of physical ability, but mental.  Most hikers who've completed the trail say that your body gets very used to the routine of hiking long and strenuous miles, but it's your mind that you need to exercise in order to carry on day after day.  Hikers quit for many reasons, but a lot of it boils to they just can't -or won't- go on anymore.  Can I say that Stewart and I won't be two of those hikers?  Not with certainty, of course.  None of the hikers who drop out in the Smokies (or anywhere else) expect to.  You don't spend thousands of dollars on gear and food without really believing you're going to get to Maine.  But only about 20% of those hikers actually do... only one in five.  So the odds are high against us making it. 
Oh joy...  :)

 

So here's a cute, clean, pretty picture of what how we're hoping to do this (when in fact we know it will actually be a lot uglier and dirtier, both literally and figuratively):

• March 13/14: Drive up to northern GA, stay the night at Amicalola Falls State Park, and begin our trek in the morning up Springer Mountain.  The actual Appalachian Trail begins at the top of the mountain. 
• Spend the first couple of weeks getting acclimated to the hiking.  There's no better way to "prepare" for long-distance hiking than to actually do it.  We'll probably be doing less than 10 miles a day while getting used to the daily routine.
• Supplies and food will be bought along the way whenever we come to a town near the trail.  Sometimes that means the trail runs right through the town, other times it means hitching ten miles into town and back.
• After crossing the Smokies and getting into Virginia/Pennsylvania/etc., the terrain should ease up a little and we should be able to do some good miles every day.  Hopefully we'll be meeting up with Windsor again near Roanoke, VA for a day out on the town!  She's promised us a shower and dinner.  I promised to show her my hairy armpits!  I think we're both already excited. ;)  Should hopefully also meet up with Dad and my Grandparents around North Carolina and Pennsylvania. That will be so amazing!  Please know that I will smell horrible.
• Things start getting hard again (or so I've been told) once we get up into New England.  The White Mountains are said to be some of the hardest on the trail.
• In Maine we have to cross through the "100-Mile Wilderness", which I'm really excited about, and then finally there's the strenuous (but probably incredibly satisfying) final hike up Mt. Katahdin. 
• We will hitch/bus our way to Bangor, Maine, where we hope to hop on the Amtrak that will take us to Columbia, SC.  Here we'll meet up with friends, pick up our pet toad, and move on to Arkansas, Ohio, and finally Oregon.  We need to be in Portland by the start of Portland State's spring semester (January).

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I think that's a pretty good skeleton of a plan we got there.  Too many details and things start to look too much like an itinerary.  We'll have a better idea of where we'll be once we actually get out and start walking, so if you'd like to meet up with us in any of the towns along the way, we will let you know when we'll get there as we get there.

 

This post is quite long, so I'll end it for today.  Maybe I'll share some of our gear in my next post.