Traversing the Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian National Trail is a mountain trail on the Eastern Shore of the United States of America, stretching from Springer Mountain in the state of Georgia to the south, all the way to t. Katahdin in Maine to the north. All in all, the trail covers the entirety of the Appalachia, a mountain range that is circa 2,200 miles long (approximately 3,500 kilometers), spanning across the length of most of the eastern U.S. Walking across its entire length would take somewhere around half a year, and yet people do it. I got a chance to talk with a 2000-miler, as these travellers are called, Jonathan Sheldon, a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, who undertook this Herculean task and succeeded.
So, how long did it take you?
Jonathan: 101 days on the nose. With 14 days off. That means I walked an average of 22 miles per day.
How does a typical day on the trail look like?
Jonathan: There are a couple of different kinds of days on the trail; zero days are when you don’t hike and don’t cover any ground at all, there are days when you just spend walking, and days when you go to town. When you walk all day you wake up, usually about a half an hour before sunrise, eat, pack up and start walking. I tried to start walking before the sun came up and then keep walking for the whole day. I might stop at some scenic spots. At the end I cooked a meal and go to sleep.
On town days and zero days I tried getting close to where the towns are and get supplies; food, fuel, fix broken gear, get a shower, do my laundry. I would usually stay the night in town, in a hostel if it is cold. I had a small ritual. Whenever I would go to town, I got a large pizza and a jug of milk, sit down, and have some quality time with food.
This does not sound like a picnic at all. So why would one do it?
Jonathan: (laugh) It was very appealing to me for a while and I’m not exactly sure why. It is just something I needed at the time. I needed to get away from the noise of everyday life. It was a time of healing. It was very restorative for me in a lot of ways. It put me in a really good calm place. But, yes, there are a lot of reasons why not to do it. It’s the intangible that makes it worth it. You just get up in the morning and walk. It’s very simple and in this simplicity things become very clear.
Seasons changed while you were on the trail. How was it with equipment?
Jonathan: I started in March and ended in early July and I pretty much used the same stuff all the way. When it got a bit cold I got frostbite once. My backpack did get a bit lighter as I went on. My base weight, without consumables, was something like 12 pounds when I started and got down to 8 pounds. At one point, for the tougher stretch of road in New Hampshire, I wasn’t even carrying a stove. I just ate food that didn’t require cooking. But other than that I stayed pretty much the same for the whole trail.
The trick is carrying just what you need and attempt to push the boundary of carrying less and less. You start walking at 5:00 AM. and keep going until seven, so you spend 14 hours a day just walking. So to make the hiking experience more enjoyable it is better to travel light. If you can be comfortable with less, it’s better to carry less.
Carrying a heavy load will also wear on your body and it is pretty harmful on your joints. And walking 2000 miles is pretty bad for the joints anyway.
Speaking of hard things, what was the toughest part of the trail?
Jonathan: Depends on what you mean by hardest.
There are tough stretches of trail, like in New Hampshire, where it is very mountainous, and you would climb up to 4-5000 feet of elevation and you have to do it three or four times a day. It was very tough physically.
And there were other parts that where very flat and tough mentally, like in Pennsylvania. You just walk on a straight narrow path for days.
Some days were just very cold. When I got frostbite, because I already sent the winter clothes home, I ended up walking 27 miles in the snow wearing nothing but shorts. I haven’t slept for something like 60 hours. That was a hard day. I had to stay focused just to stay moving and I knew that if I stopped moving I could have gotten a dangerous hypothermia.
What’s the deal with trail names?
Jonathan: It’s kind of an old custom that has been passed down. Some have compared it to American hobo tradition. People would get names based on stories that happened to them. I met a guy who was struck by lightning and so his trail name was Lucky Strike. Mine was much more boring. For a while I was walking with a pair of wooden sticks and a guy just called me Sticks. Not the band, though. It was a thing that people started asking me.
How many people decide to do the whole trail and how demanding is it?
Jonathan: I think it’s something around 20 percent of people that go from south to north end up finishing. When going from north to south, there is an 80 percent of completion, as they know that they are doing the toughest part first.
Going northbound, for first few days every shelter was just a tent city. You could see maybe 200 tents put up. After the first rainstorm there were maybe seven people in the shelters. In March it was still cold, and after rain when it is 40 degrees outside, it can be really demoralizing,
A lot of people start climbing the first mountain and they realize how tough that is. Summiting five, six, seven, eight mountains every day takes a toll on the people. They say that they must have walked ten miles up a mountain, but it ends up being only two.
Even if you spent thousands of dollars on gear it’s impossible to stay dry and that demoralizes a lot of people. Sometimes people get two out of three days of hiking on the trail of rain. It was certainly with me. At the end, walking from Connecticut to Maine I had 4 out of 5 days of rain. At the end I had a solid week and a half of rain. It got to the point where the river crossings were flooded and you just ended up waiting for the rain to stop. So, yes, the rain is what gets a lot of people too.
In the end he added:
One of the things that’s really great about the trail community and living on the trail are the people that you meet. Because you have these very transient but intense relationships. You get these big families, going along the trail. You might meet them one day, eat dinner with them, sleep shoulder to shoulder with them and then never see them again. Or maybe you spend a month walking with them. It’s really cool how people are just there for each other on the trail. I heard it said that if people treated each other as good as they do on there, the world would be much better place. It’s all about that shared experience and at the same time working individually to a common end.
People of different backgrounds come together. And that’s the special thing about life on the trail, how there is a difference between the trail and the rest of the world. How certain things no longer matter and people just come together.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
