Trail Life

When you consider that the United States was first settled by Europeans in 1620 and that the population remained hemmed in on the eastern seaboard by the Appalachian Mountains until the discovery of Cumberland Gap in 1750 you will realize how difficult hiking in those particular mountains must be. These settlers were used to hardship and hard work, yet they considered the mountains too difficult to travel through. This is the terrain that the Appalachian Trail winds its way through. Hiking on the Appalachian Trail is difficult. Of the three major North South trails in the country, the other two being the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail the Appalachian is considered to be the most physically demanding.

Hikers are athletes. It has been calculated that an Appalachian Trail hiker expends the same amount of energy as a person running a marathon. The difference between a hiker and a marathoner is that the marathoner takes a few days to recover while a hiker wakes up and does it again the next day.

Different people have different experiences depending on their temperament and physical conditioning so someone else's report may be different than mine but many hikers will relate something similar.

The day starts in the morning. You wake up, retrieve your food bag, and start your water heating for morning breakfast. While the water is heating you roll up your sleeping bag and pad, strike your tent or tarp unless you slept in a trail shelter, eat breakfast of instant oatmeal and coffee, wipe out your pot, check your water supply, use the latrine, pick up your pack and start walking.

You very seldom are on level ground as you are generally either walking uphill or down. Within minutes you are breathing hard and your heart is pounding and you realize that it will remain pounding during most of the morning. Good views are not as common as you would expect. In early spring you are frequently hiking in fog, at least you call it fog, the people in the valley below would call it a cloud. Later on the season when it is warmer and clearer views are frequently blocked by vegetation. The Appalachian Trail is sometimes referred to as a long green tunnel.

As you hike you take frequent breaks. I try to hike for 45 minutes and then take a fifteen minute break. I do allow myself as many 15 second breaks as I need in between and sometimes I find that I need to take a 15 seconder every 30 paces or so. About mid morning you come to a stream or spring and notice that your water is running low. You stop and filter enough to get you through to lunch time. Then you continue hiking.. Eventually you will come to a place that looks good for a lunch break. It may be a small clearing by a stream or it may be a trail shelter. At any rate you decide to take a longer break. You may find that you are not hungry. You are too tired to want to take the effort to eat but you eat anyway because you need the energy from the food. As your body metabolizes the food you feel your energy level rising. You pick up your pack and continue hiking through the afternoon, taking breaks and refilling your water supply as needed.

Your goal for the day is to find a place to camp for the night, generally 8 to 10 miles further up the trail. Ideally, you will be able to find a place in the vicinity of a trail shelter. Trail shelters are small three sided buildings that are designed to sleep from 6 to 10 people. Some are a little smaller and some a little bigger. Shelters are generally located near a water supply and a latrine. Shelters are open to all hikers on a first come , first served basis. Reservations or holding a space for a friend is not permitted. The capacity is nominal and it is not uncommon to find10 to 12 hikers sleeping in a shelter designed for 6, especially in stormy weather. During storms the general rule is that there is always room for one more. The downside of shelters involves rodents. Shelters are commonly overrun by mice and they get into everything you own and they have no fear of running over the top of you to get to what they want. Loud snorers are also unpopular in shelters. People are packed in there pretty tightly and one or 2 snorers will make the night miserable for the rest. Since shelters are also generally located on the only level ground in the area they are also the hikers best chance to find a level tent site.

Stover Creek Shelter

You try to reach a shelter or campsite well before dark because the temperature drops quickly once the sun goes down. You reach it as the last of your energy is drained. You don't want to do anything but sit. The thought of unrolling your sleeping bag is almost too much to bear, you have never been so exhausted in your life. There are however evening chores to do. You claim your shelter space by unrolling your sleeping pad and bag or you set up your tent, you get your water for the evening (which may involve another walk ranging from a few feet to a quarter of a mile, prepare your dinner which you are too tired to want to eat, brush your teeth, hang up your bear bag to protect your food for the night, and crawl into your sleeping bag. Then you realize that you are still wearing your hiking clothes, too bad you say, you are not about to try to change. You may make a few notes in your journal, engage in introductions and light conversation with your shelter mates and quickly fall asleep. It's not unusual, at least during the first month or 2 to be in your bag by 6 or 7 in the evening. Your first day is complete. You sleep an amazing 12 to 14 hours and wake up to start again.

Sometime during the second or third day the pain starts. Feet become blistered and tendons start complaining. Moleskin, blister block, and ibuprofen keep you going. You learn ways to tape your feet, ankles, and knees. By the fourth day the pain is really severe and people start dropping out. Just when you think that things can't get any worse the skies open up and it starts pouring rain. A soaking rain that may last for days (one hiker logged 22 consecutive days of rain). When that happens, you walk in the rain and hope that you can squeeze into the next shelter. The trail becomes a small river that is waded rather than hiked. Blistered feet may become infected increasing your misery. You eagerly look forward to the next town where you can get cleaned up, well fed, and rested.

Most hikers eagerly look forward to a town stop. Town life is very hectic compared to trail life. You arrive in town in the mid afternoon. Generally you find a hostel or hotel and establish your lodging for the night. Then you head for the post office to obtain your bounce box if you use one (see resupply section for description of bounce box). You then head back to your lodging, shower, and change into clean clothes. You are then ready for the laundry and a restaurant. After eating you return to your lodging, call home, and check up on your email. The next morning you get back into your hiking clothes, make any equipment repairs that need to be made, visit the post office to mail your bounce box to the next town, and resupply at the local grocery. Keep in mind that you don't have a car and that you have to walk to accomplish all these things. You are finally ready to get out of town by late morning or early afternoon.

Most hikers take an occasional zero day. A day where the entire day is spent in town and no miles are hiked. Some take zero days in each town but doing so gets quite expensive when hotel bills are considered.

After a few weeks, when the pains have subsided, hunger raises its head. For weeks you have been burning calories at a rate of 6,000 to 7,000 per day and have been replacing them with only 3,000 to 4,000. I find that I lose about a pound to a pound and a half per day over the first month. Talk about a weight loss program. This calorie deficit will eventually start to manifest itself and hunger becomes a constant companion. Strong self discipline is needed to ration food so that provisions intended for a week are not consumed in 2 days. Once this phase kicks in town priorities change. While clean up and rest is still important, eating takes priority. Dan Bruce, the founder of the Center for Appalachian Trail Studies has said that it doesn't matter how fat you are when you start, at the end everyone is skinny.]

It is all bad though. A camaraderie with fellow hikers starts being built. Sharing common hardships coupled with goals build strong bonds. Most hikers will go to any length to help any other hiker. This bond gets stronger as the weeks turn into months. Eventually your city life fades into the new distance and you form a new personna unshaped by the constant barrage of advertising messages issued by corporate America. National and world problems fade away as you have more immediate concerns of finding water and a sheltered place to stay for the night. Your world shrinks to the square mile that you are currently in. An inner peace starts to settle in and you find that despite all the hardships that you are probably in better physical condition and happier than you have been at any time in your life. Some call it a spiritual awakening. I don't know whether it involves the spirit or not but I do know that even after my relatively short journeys that my priorities have changed. Things that I once thought were important now seem to be trivial while things that I never considered before seem to be very important.