AT Hiking Rates, Section by Section (AT Data and Schedules)

[map man]

I just finished updating this hiking rates article, recalculating all the values after having added in the data for 2006 hikers. That means the info is now based on six years' worth of hikers (a total of 143 now) keeping journals at Trailjournals.com. (And I have since added data for the 2007-2010 classes as well, totaling 240 hikers.) I've also updated most of the supplemental information contained in Post #28, and the info on which towns hikers tend to spend their zero days contained in Post #69. There are no dramatic changes in the results, though some of the figures for the percentage of zero days hikers spent in a particular trail section did change some.

And I now have a new bit of information: since there are now over forty journal keepers in the study who are female, and over thirty journals for a male and female hiking and journaling together, I thought I would go ahead and break the hiking rates down by gender, as a few members have been requesting. (The following numbers have been updated since to incorporate the 2001 through 2010 hiking classes.)

The 165 male hikers have taken a mean 164.5 days to complete (median: 167) with 20.3 zero days (median: 18).
The 42 female hikers have taken a mean 179.7 days to complete (median: 184) with 21.2 zero days (median: 22.5).
The 31 M/F couples have taken a mean 178.8 days to complete (median: 180) with 22.1 zero days (median: 22).

The number of hikers in the latter two groups is still low enough that I'm not confident enough about the results to include a gender breakdown in the main article, but I figured I'd mention it here for you members who have been curious.

And thank you to attroll for enabling the edit function for the article and my posts on this thread so I could get all these changes done.

[terrapin_too]

Well, I'm sure happy to see that my remaining AT miles are mostly in the section with the highest MPD.

[nhalbrook]

Great article.

In reading trail journals have noticed many hikers make note of their progress by 100 mile "mile stones". If the data lends itself to a reasonable tabulation of time to hike each 100 mile segment this would be interesting.

[map man]

Nhalbrook, I can't resist questions like these. The time periods I'm going to list are based on some assumptions, and you can decide if they're reasonable. One, that the 143 hikers in my study are reasonably representative of typical NOBO completing thruhikers. Two, that if hikers in the study average a certain number of miles per day in a section -- for example, the Damascus to Waynesboro section -- that the average will be about the same throughout the entire section (and not be greater after Daleville than before, for example -- this assumption is likely to be a little off, but shouldn't throw the number of days off by more than a fraction of a day, I think). You see, the form the data is in will not let me figure out exactly where each hiker is at the 200 mile post, for example, but instead tells me how many days it took each hiker to get to Fontana (at about mile 162) and Damascus (about mile 459). So, with those things said, here's my best estimate. I list the number of days to hike each 100 mile section and include the cumulative total in parentheses. (The numbers here are based on the 2001-2006 hiker classes in my study. I didn't recalculate them after adding the 2007-2010 classes as the differences would be very minor.)

Mile 0 to 100 -- 10.2 days (10.2)
100 to 200 -- 8.6 days (18.8)
200 to 300 -- 8.2 days (27.0)
300 to 400 -- 8.2 days (35.2)
400 to 500 -- 7.9 days (43.1)
500 to 600 -- 7.5 days (50.6)
600 to 700 -- 7.4 days (58.0)
700 to 800 -- 7.5 days (65.5)
800 to 900 -- 7.1 days (72.6)
900 to 1000 -- 7.0 days (79.6)
1000 to 1100 -- 7.1 days (86.7)
1100 to 1200 -- 7.2 days (93.9)
1200 to 1300 -- 7.3 days (101.2)
1300 to 1400 -- 7.2 days (108.4)
1400 to 1500 -- 7.1 days (115.5)
1500 to 1600 -- 7.2 days (122.7)
1600 to 1700 -- 7.1 days (129.8)
1700 to 1800 -- 7.7 days (137.5)
1800 to 1900 -- 9.5 days (147.0)
1900 to 2000 -- 8.7 days (155.7)
2000 to 2100 -- 7.3 days (163.0)
2100 to end -- 5.4 days (168.4)

[wudhipy]

What a great piece of work......somehow the intimidation is gone and there is a sence of possibility. You have made a great abstract almost tangible.
Thank you.

see ya in the woods

Wudhipy

[Route Step]

Reminds me of the saying "You can always beat a dead horse".
Thanks for the info Map Man. I'll uses it on a lower level then some of the folks on this site.

[cutman11]

Fascinating that with the exception of the first 100, when getting hiking legs, and the end, when finishing in maine, thru hiking the AT is mainly about just persisting in putting the time in (7 days) to do the miles (100mi). Essentially, if you can do the first 200, its basically a mental game to persist to finish the last 1900, one 100mile week after another.....

[Salvadore L. Vagabon]

This is pretty damn sweet. I think it is awesome you took the time to do this and then posted it, and though some are doubting and sayin its unusable, come on, it is a great place to start the process of planning to do the AT. Great Job and thanx Map Man

-Salvadore L. Vagabon

[Johnny Swank]

Wow - what a cool study you've got going there. Just eyeballing things, your numbers pretty much jive with what I'm finding in my study. I've got about 500 folks or so in this sample spread over almost 40 years, so it'll take a while to wade through things.

Reading the pissing match on the first couple of pages was a good reminder of why I'm 90% sure I'm leaving my PhD program for good though. That kind of pointless hashing is mind-numbing, and ultimately for naught. I don't know how many conference presentations I've sat through and listened to 3 people argue about a silly footnote or model. I'd rather at least argue about dogs or something like that!

Again - great stuff. Enjoyed it.

[map man]

Thanks, Johnny Swank. I'm glad you are finding it useful and apparently matching up some with what your large population of hikers is reporting. Others too have commented on some of the contentious posts in the early part of the thread, but one thing that's important to note is that, though some of those posters with conflicting ideas about the underlying statistical methods did some barking at each other, none of them directed any personal stuff at ME. Some of those guys had a lot more training in statistics than I have (I'm thinking of Alligator, ARambler, dje97001 and Tha Wookie) and some of the things they had to say led me to crunch some more numbers and improve the article, I think.

I hope that when you've done some more work on it that you'll share some of the results here at WB, even if one of the original motivations for the research (the PhD) goes by the boards. (One thing to keep in mind, though, is that if YOU know in your heart that what you're doing is important, whether it be research or new approaches in your field, it gets easier to tune out quibblers -- it might be worth it to keep plugging away.)

Since you've got a sample that spans so many years I'd be particularly curious to know if the way people are hiking the AT has changed with time (as equipment got lighter and information about hiking the AT got more easy to access with the internet revolution). Anyway, good luck with it and thanks again.

[_terrapin_]

Since you've got a sample that spans so many years I'd be particularly curious to know if the way people are hiking the AT has changed with time (as equipment got lighter and information about hiking the AT got more easy to access with the internet revolution). Anyway, good luck with it and thanks again.

Personally I find that a very interesting topic -- changes in hiking habits, regimes, etc. over time. Of all my hiking/thru-hiking books, Roland Mueser's study (of the class of '89) is one of my favorites. Interesting too how some things haven't changed at all.

[Johnny Swank]

I've had to put things on the back burner since The Gathering to work on the book, but I'll be posting interesting nuggets on our blog as they come in. There's enough in that dataset to keep me busy for years it I let it. Hope to birth out a book on the results in about 24 months, but we'll see.

Good job again on your study. Really enjoyed it.

[BearII]

ok, I'm a newbie, but I'm a veteran traveler - having traveled tens of thousands of miles around the USA on my motorcycle. So now I want to try a bit of hiking, AT in particular. Wow, was I ever surprised that the same type of pissing matches that occur on bikes sites happens on hiker sites!!!! Geez, I was hoping that of all people "real" hikers, feet to the trail types, would have finally figured out that is all ABOUT THE FRIGGIN JOURNEY - stop the insanity please!!!!!!!!!!!

If there is one thing I've learned in traveling all over, the journey is so fascinating that all this other stuff, is well, nonsense. No offense map man, but really your initial post was more than enough. This entire statistical BS is just that - BS!!!!!!!!! It's what we really want/need to get away from!!!<O</O

Focus on the journey, grow with it, learn from it, who really cares if you hiked 10 miles from Springer vs 11.4. Yeah, I know so many need to "plan", NO you don't, enjoy it, hike it, work it, let "obstacles" be OPPORTUNITIES for the "trail magic" to occur. Geez folks, I really thought hikers would have this down much more than bikers (well certainly more than HD types but maybe not as much as real bikers). It is ABOUT THE JOURNEY!!!!!!!!!

[map man]

A little over a year ago iamscottym asked about elevation gain and loss on the AT, wondering how it correlated to the hiking speeds that I reported in this article. Well, I have now calculated the elevation change for many sections large and small on the AT and published it in "AT Elevation Gain and Loss, by Section," in the articles forum (and hopefully it will be moved to the articles section on the front page in the coming weeks). So here is a table showing average elevation gain and loss per mile for each of the eleven sections in this article. In this table MPHD is Miles Per Hiking Day, EGPM is Elevation Gain Per Mile (expressed as feet per mile), and EGPD is Elevation Gain Per Day (expressed as feet per day). So in the two elevation categories the number "3100" would mean a hiker had gone 3100 feet up and also 3100 feet down. (The numbers in this table are based on the 2001-2007 hiker classes. I did not recalculate them after adding the 2008-2010 classes to the hiking rates study. The differences would be very minor.)

EGPD~~EGPM~~MPHD~~~SECTION
3100.......307.......10.1........Springer - Georgia border
3310.......276.......12.0........Georgia border - Fontana
3780.......270.......14.0........Fontana - Damascus
3970.......248.......16.0........Damascus - Waynesboro
3610.......215.......16.8........Waynesboro - Harpers Ferry
2350.......139.......16.9........Harpers Ferry - DWG
3160.......196.......16.1........DWG - Kent
3600.......231.......15.6........Kent - Glencliff
4090.......353.......11.6........Glencliff - Gorham
4250.......335.......12.7........Gorham - Stratton
2890.......198.......14.6........Stratton - Katahdin
3470.......236.......14.7........Entire Trail

People can decide for themselves how much the changing distances hiked each day is due to increasing fitness (or increased breaking down of knees and other body parts in latter stages ) and how much to changing ruggedness of the trail.

[excuses]

Just goes to show, people always asking me how is the trail? My answer "up and down".
Thanks for the big view.

[1Pint]

Well, I have now calculated the elevation change for many sections large and small on the AT

Thanks for all your work Map Man. This stuff is really interesting.

[emerald]

I assume the data includes both northbound and southbound hikers. It would be interesting to be able to compare northbound and southbound averages for the same sections.

[longwe tru]

Some of this thread sounds like the math professor of "Numbers" Way way over my head...but I find this thread very helpful...as I just spent the last two days trying to figure out where I would be when...how...and what to do with maildrops.

Thank You

[map man]

Shades of Gray, the sections in post #93 are long enough that the difference in feet/mile doesn't amount to much in NOBO vs. SOBO, which is why I just went with the average. All sections have ten feet or less difference between the two, except for the Georgia border to Fontana section which is a shorter section and has a big elevation difference between end points (Georgia border is around 2000 feet higher than Fontana). NOBO experiences 264 feet of elevation gain per mile while SOBO has 287, for an average of 276. Still not a huge difference.

In the article I wrote on elevation gain I do include both NOBO and SOBO in the tables dealing with shorter sections.

Edit: I just realized you may have meant to talk about the differences in hiking rates in SOBO and NOBO, rather than the difference in elevation gain. If that's the case, the hiking rates study only uses NOBOs. There are still fewer than 10 SOBO thru-hike journals at trailjournals, as of the last time I checked, that are detailed enough to use for this study, and that number isn't high enough yet to get a representative sample, I think. I would some day like to compare the two, though, when there are enough SOBOs to compare.

[map man]

I've updated the "AT Hiking Rates, Section by Section" article to incorporate the class of 2007, so it now includes 173 hikers from the classes of 2001 through 2007. I've also updated most of the illustrations and tables in Post #28, and Post #69 showing the popularity of various trail towns for taking zero days, and Post #80 breaking down the numbers by gender, and Post #93 comparing sections for hiking speed and trail ruggedness.

The numbers just don't change much now as I add recent hiker classes. For instance, the mean number of days to hike in my original study of 105 hikers from 2001-2005 was 167.8 days. Now after having added 68 more hikers from 2006 and 2007, that mean number is 167.7. I'm not certain I'm going to keep updating the article in future years.