Thru-Hikers dropping out after 30 miles

[clured]

I'm not buying. If I take six months off work (or quit), and tell the blue sky and everyone that I'm going to hike the whole AT...and a week later I'm back at work...I would definitely have failed to carry out my plan.

You can argue that the person had unrealistic expectations, and that their plan was faulty, but the word "failure" still applies.

Going home early is definitely quitting. The way I look at it is that hiking the AT is not compulsory, so you're allowed to quit if you want to.

That's why sissies like me use weak words like "try" and "thru-hike attempt." I want more space to manuever.

I agree 100%. Maybe I'm just hardheaded but I'm tired of all this sissy nonsense about how hiking can never be a failure. It devalues the accomplishment of people that actually finish.

[Almost There]

I agree 100%. Maybe I'm just hardheaded but I'm tired of all this sissy nonsense about how hiking can never be a failure. It devalues the accomplishment of people that actually finish.

Yeah, but some of us don't hike for accomplishment, we hike for enjoyment. Quit putting societies' values on my hike!

Look, you live your life for you, so therefore you are only a failure if you believe you are a failure.

As for devaluing the accomplishment...well then you are sissy for letting people determine the worth or value of your own personal accomplishments.

[rafe]

I agree 100%. Maybe I'm just hardheaded but I'm tired of all this sissy nonsense about how hiking can never be a failure. It devalues the accomplishment of people that actually finish.

Clured... I agreed with Marta, but I can't quite agree with you. I'm having some trouble putting my unease into words. Something about "sissy nonsense" and "devaluing other people's accomplishments." Yeah, I tried and failed... no doubt about that. Still, your terms are harsh.

[Dogwood]

When people say it wasn't what I expected, I wonder what they expected, mainly because in my experience, there isn't much difference in my hikes from 1994 or 2001, in the US and in NZ, there seems to be a basic formula that you can always count on.

Let's be honest, a trail is a trail, it's dirt, rocks, blazes, shelters, creeks, rain, mud, roots, steep, rarely flat, aren't they all the same other than the views and the people. and perhaps the rock? Every hike I've ever done, in the US and in New Zealand...generally goes something like this:

- The morning you start the clouds start to form overhead
- Once you start walking it's starts to rain lightly, on and off
- Set up camp in the rain late that night
- My water tastes funny
- After a day or so my right knee start to hurt, then blisters
- I love nutri-grain bars
- The shelter (or hut) is full and 6 tents are already set up, keep on walking
- Eating dehydrated pasta and packaged tuna without mayo for 3 days
- Ohhh, here's the sun, dry out the tent, and there is goes
- Man wet hikers stink so much more than dry ones!
- Space in the shelter but everyone snores keeping you up
- Groggy morning and it's raining again, town only 14 miles away!
- Start playing the food game, your pace becomes faster
- Thank god, the road crossing, I'm starving
- Why won't anyone pick me up! Oh here we go, pickup truck!
- Hot shower might be the best thing on earth
- This hamburger is so good I could cry
- I hate doing laundry in nothing but my rain gear, it's hot
- Do we really have to leave town? It's still raining!
- Why do you have to climb leaving every single town!
- Ahhhh, back in the woods, this makes sense again
- These nutri-grain bars are getting bland

This is my experience over the years...this is what to expect as far as I'm concerned. But if you are expecting trail magic, sunshine and bloomed roses all day long...you might want to walk down a trail for a few days before quitting your job and setting yourself up to fail.

We have a saying in union organisation, it's called the 3 P's:

"Preparation, Preparation, Preparation"

I think it's sound advice for anything challenging

LOLLOLLOLLOLLOLLOLLOLLOL

[Dogwood]

Say what U mean and mean what U say, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

I may be opening up a lot of debate but kind of reminds when people say they have hiked the ENTIRE trail when in fact they have hiked only 1500 miles or decided to skip Shenendoah because it was boring. Seems some define the words entire, all, or complete differently than I do.

[Appalachian Tater]

I met a lot of people who quit their planned thru-hikes and felt like failures, rightly or not.

[Montego]

I met a lot of people who quit their planned thru-hikes and felt like failures, rightly or not.

Was once told that the Marine Corps NEVER retreats, they just start fighting in a different direction, soooo...............maybe people that stop hiking the AT didn't fail, they just went somewhere else

[chezrad]

Hey, no matter how you get there your final destination is still your front door!

I realized that on my second trip across the US on two wheels.

[Lone Wolf]

ain't no hiker trash on this thread

[Dogwood]

If an engineer intends to build a bridge across the Mississippi River and only builds the bridge part way across has he failed? Did he succeed in achieving his original goal? No! In that respect, he has definitely failed. Could he have learned from and enjoyed the experience of building what he did. Sure. Could his goals have somehow change while building the bridge? Sure. Now, enough of this talk about bridges and quitting because there will always be those who define quitting as not really quitting or who are OK with quitting and there will always be those who will finish building the bridge!

[stranger]

Just so we are clear, I never said in my post that I had thru-hiked the AT, I was referring to my experiences in long distance hiking over the past 13 years only.

[clured]

Clured... I agreed with Marta, but I can't quite agree with you. I'm having some trouble putting my unease into words. Something about "sissy nonsense" and "devaluing other people's accomplishments." Yeah, I tried and failed... no doubt about that. Still, your terms are harsh.

I think I should have elaborated. I don't mean to sniff at people who abort thru-hike attempts; I completely understand why people stop. I was ready to be done at Hanover, and everything after that was mostly a blur of discomfort. I think at that point in a thru-hike it becomes a very personal choice of what you are willing to put up with, and there's no right answer; for me, the right answer was to suck it up and truck through the misery because I promised myself to finish no matter what, but for someone else the right answer might be to hang it up.

My only point is that it is reductive and just incorrect to say that both of these choices constitute "success." Sometimes choosing to "succeed" could be the wrong choice if the misery coefficient outweighs the benefits. I'm not judging, just saying that recognizing quitting the trail as "success" devalues all the crap I put up with Maine.

PS, while the last 300 miles of my hike were miserable at the time, I am incredibly glad that I finished. Those 300 miles were the most important experience I've ever had.

[sarbar]

I met a lot of people who quit their planned thru-hikes and felt like failures, rightly or not.

My first long distance hike was The Wonderland Trail. I had no clue what I was getting into - and I had many trips under my belt. But what I didn't realize was how hard doing day after day of up and down was. And yes, I bailed 1/3rd of the way through. My feet were shredded, I had blisters on blisters. But most of all? I had no excitement. I didn't want to be there. In 3, yes, 3, weenie days I had climbed over 11K in elevation. And that was only a small part of what was to come.

But from that flaming failure I learned a lot. And learned how to suck it up mostly. I found I enjoyed going on 3 day or less trips. But that I could do long miles if needed. For me, the up and down daily kills my spirit. I'd rather section hike for the rest of my life than dedicate 6 months at once. I learned to compress a week trip into a couple days - that kind of thing.

Oh yeah, and I learned how to eat and dress right as well

Then again, I also figured out that as long as you get out there, life is good. Doesn't matter if you hike one day or 150 days

[freefall]

I read a surprising statistic that 20% of thru-hikers drop out after only 30 miles. What do you think went wrong for these hikers - lack of planning? inexperience (e.g college kids not realizing what they were in for)? Other unforseen factors?

There is a romanticism that most hikers ( or potential) attach to the trail. That feeling overrides the sheer struggle that is needed to make it the entire distance, let alone more than 30 miles in some. In `06 I saw a guy just hanging out on the veranda at Mountain Crossings. He had already had his pack looked at and had talked just about every other hiker that had been through there. But he decided that he was done because it was colder than he thought it would be. I didn't think any less of him but I did wonder how cold it would have to get before I thought it was too cold for me.
It wasn't until I incurred a sociable problem (lack of money upon return) several months that I decided to get off Trail. So after 30 miles, I guess it has a lot to do with preparation and expectation.

[Marta]

This is going to be a little hard to explain--

To me, the difference between a successful hike and a failure is whether you can be honest with yourself and others about it.

1) You got off the Trail because you missed your S.O./kids/whatever, and were sick of hiking. Fine.

2) You got off the Trail because you were badly hurt/sick, and were sick of hiking. Fine.

3) You got off the Trail because you discovered to your surprise that hiking is not as romantic as you thought it would be, and you really don't like it much. Fine.

4) You got off the Trail because you made a bunch of misjudgements and bad decisions, and had unrealistic expectations to start with, and you panicked and ran home. Not so fine.

5) You got off the Trail because you couldn't deal with your fears and loneliness...so you took some minor injury and used that as an excuse to quit. Not so fine.

6) You got off the Trail for any reason whatsoever, but go around telling people that you could have finished, if you wanted to. BS--the difference between finishing and not finishing is making yourself keep going. In other words, if your will to keep hiking fails, you can't finish.

The last three people will be lying to themselves and others. They will be haunted by feelings of failure--and rightly so. Things they post on Whiteblaze will cause the BS detectors to go off...and probably bring on a couple of well-deserved, snarky comments from Lone Wolf.

[rickb]

I think its easy to get side tracked by the word "failure". For whatever reason I think most of us attach a whole lot more emotion and personal baggage to that term than we realise.

I think the whole concept is pretty well summed up by the four points I have copied below that an experienced hiker wrote in his book. To my way of thinking, those who push through the hard parts (and for many, hiking the AT might be a job as much as recreation) reap great rewards for their work. Whether you want to call dropping out failure or use some other word, doing what you set out to do on the AT is a beautiful thing.

Anyway, here are the 4 points I borrowed that I thought summed everything up so nicely:


1. walking the ENTIRE Trail in one hiking season is a challenging task

2. many people when they start at Springer or Katahdin hope to complete the ENTIRE Trail in one hiking season;

3. those who finish their journey at the place where they wanted to get to when they first started tend to have a more satisfying Trail experience (i.e.,memories) than those who stop

4. although almost all of the learning is between Springer and Katahdin, the final chapter is more fulfilling when experienced atop those once distant summits.

[superman]

Is this thread about justifying a failed thru hike? It is what it is.

[Bearpaw]

This past summer, I intended to thru-hike the Tahoe Rim Trail and the John Muir Trail. The Tahoe Fire forced me off the TRT after 65 miles. A stress fracture that caused my left ankle to look like a golf ball was growing from under the left ankle forced me off the JMT after 57 miles.

I had some fantastic times on both treks. But I definitely failed to complete both thru-hikes.

I'm just hungrier now, and have a 500 mile corridor hike of the rest of the TRT, the TYT (Tahoe-to-Yosemite-Trail) or PCT, and JMT planned for 2009. Maybe I'll succeed then.

[rafe]

There's something about the American psyche here that deserves mention. We're pretty hard on losers over here. Winner take all. Losers are forgotten. It's black and white, win or lose. No halfway. A recent football game comes to mind.

[superman]

Is this thread about justifying a failed thru hike? It is what it is.

That last post of mine sounded too curt when I re-read it. It is just a hike. It is not the measure of your whole life. It is what you make of it. It's a hell of a hike and requires more than a casual effort.

"If thru-hiking isn't the most important thing in your life at the time
you are doing it, then stop doing it and go do what is." --Wingfoot