View Full Version : Datto's Top Ten Tips for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
Datto's Top Ten Tips for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
10) Bring disposable earplugs and put new earplugs into your maildrops -- lots of people on the AT snore loudly (way louder than you can possibly imagine while sitting in your living room planning your AT thru-hike) -- this is in shelters as well as when they are camped out next to your tent/tarp.
9) Bring four small screw-in hooks from a hardware store and some twine -- some shelters are oriented for view rather than weather so wind and rain pour into the shelter day and night -- string your tent/tarp across the front of the shelter with the hooks/twine in order to block the wind, snow and rain in Georgia/NC and to keep the terrible cold out when you're in Maine. You may be telling yourself from your living room that you won't be staying in shelters but that's not likely, particularly in the beginning (while you're adapting to trail life) and at the end when you're trying to make miles in bad weather through very difficult terrain.
8) Gear will not get you to Katadin so stop focusing so much on gear -- if you're a person who likes to be prepared, there's no better preparation for thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail than to do overnight hikes in the rain and/or snow (anywhere) while carrying your full backpack (carry food, water, gear -- everything) -- hike eight miles per day before camping for the night on your prep hike -- don't do car camping and think that will be helping you. During the last six months prior to starting your AT thru-hike you should be hiking overnight two weekends every month and should have had at least one week-long trip where you've hiked at least forty miles under your belt. If you have a treadmill, carry your backpack on your treadmill -- when you get to the point where you can sustain 6% upslope at 3.0 miles per hour for 45 minutes straight while carrying your full backpack the entire tie, you're probably physically ready for the start of your AT thru-hike. Mentally -- well that's the biggest challenge of an AT thru-hike and that's why hiking in the rain and snow during your prep hikes is useful and important.
7) The two toughest parts of the Appalachian Trail are 1) New Hampshire/Maine and 2) Georgia/North Carolina. If you're going to hike on the AT prior to starting your AT thru-hike in order to see if you're ready, pick one of those areas. There's a very good chance yours will be handed to you and you'll return home with a much better understanding of what you'll be undertaking with an AT thru-hike.
6) During your AT thru-hike, don't take the Aquablaze -- why would you go through all the trouble and expense and life/career-risk to give up your thru-hike just to go on a canoe trip? Why not drive down the highway and throw fistfulls of cash out the window on the way to a canoe trip -- that'll save you the time, money and career risk of an AT thru-hike and you can just return to your existing job on Monday.
5) Information from AT Profile maps and the information from the AT data book are the most important pieces of information to utilize on an AT thru-hike. Next in importance would be town information. All the rest is a nice-to-have information. Geez, don't spend any money or time getting a GPS or GPS software for your phone. In some places on the Trail, the white blazes are literally fifty feet apart. It is literally laughable to see someone using a GPS on the Appalachian Trail.
4) If you will only take your phone out of Airplane Mode every other day, the difference in immersion will be the difference between computer speakers and Bose 5.1. Use your phone for music, pics, recording your thoughts if you want, on-board logistic planning. Constant connection to the Internet will so water down your AT experience and connection to the natural world you might as well stay home and save the money and life-risk for something else rather than an AT hike.
3) If you're wanting to bring your dog on your AT thru-hike (because you have no place to keep your dog while hiking or your relationship is close with your dog), you can make it work on an AT thru-hike if you will do two things; 1) always camp in your tent/tarp every single night without exception and never stay overnight in a shelter and 2) Never take your dog -- even once -- into a shelter during the day. It's this simple -- no one wants your muddy-azz dog. If you think you can impose your dog on others in a shelter, you are sorely mistaken. However, if you will be responsible with your dog, other hikers will grow to like you and your dog. Keep in mind bringing your dog along with you on an AT thru-hike will almost double the challenge of an AT thru-hike for you -- extra logistics, extra food, your pack weight, wear on the dog and common dog injury, extra expense -- all the things that have escaped your brain because you're not thinking things through. Is taking on the challenge of an AT thru-hike not enough for you? There's only a 15% chance you'll complete your thru-hike and that's for people who don't bring a dog along. Completing an AT thru-hike with a dog where you hike past every blaze and walk end-to-end in a continuous journal is tough enough -- bringing a dog along on an AT thru-hike will almost guarantee you'll not be finshing and will be going home early. Why don't you and your dog just take a road trip out west instead?
2) If possible, plan to take thirty calendar days after completing your AT thru-hike before returning to work. Sitting at home right now, you're not going to believe the difficulty you will face when transitioning from an AT thru-hike back into everyday Society. Use that post-hike thirty days to gather up your table manners (I'm laughing as I write this) as well as the time necessary to realize not many back in Society want to hear about the Appalachian Trail as much as you are going to want to talk about your thru-hike when you return from the Appalachian Trail.
1) An AT thru-hike where you walk past every blaze, enjoy town stops, take about six-months to complete will cost you $5,000 door to door, not including gear replenishment along the Trail. If you plan to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail with less, you're wildly fooling yourself.
Datto
Meant to say in Item 1 above, "Not including initial gear purchases but including gear replenishment along the Trail" rather than what's written above.
Datto
Item 9 above -- keep the terrble wind out in Maine rather than what's written -- there's not much you can do to keep the terrible cold out in Maine.
Datto
dudeijuststarted
04-11-2016, 13:44
#2, #2, #2.
have a plan and some spare cash for when you are done, cause its brutal.
Datto's Top Ten Tips for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
9) Bring four small screw-in hooks from a hardware store and some twine -- some shelters are oriented for view rather than weather so wind and rain pour into the shelter day and night -- string your tent/tarp across the front of the shelter with the hooks/twine in order to block the wind, snow and rain in Georgia/NC and to keep the terrible cold out when you're in Maine. You may be telling yourself from your living room that you won't be staying in shelters but that's not likely, particularly in the beginning (while you're adapting to trail life) and at the end when you're trying to make miles in bad weather through very difficult terrain.
The screws are not a responsible suggestion. If hikers start regularly screwing stuff into shelter walls, they will eventually lose their integrity. Much, much better to just bring some extra cord and find existing places to tie your tarp to. Most shelters are already riddled with nails and have plenty of beams or other places you can tie a tarp to. Or, even better, just bring a good enough shelter to handle any weather that comes along.
I liked #3. The majority of people with dogs on the trail think think that every hiker loves their dog as much as they do. At a shelter once, I got up in the night to go to the bathroom. As I was walking back to the shelter, an off-leash dog (belonging to a thru-hiker) was about to lie down in my open sleeping bag. I yanked him out by his tail--the inside of my sleepign bag is the only clean part of my gear, and no way was I going to let a dog muddy it. When I explained what happened, the dog's owner didn't apologize--he didn't even any sign that he cared what his dog was doing.
#2, #2, #2.
have a plan and some spare cash for when you are done, cause its brutal.
This is oh so true.
I can tell you what happened to me.
When I finished my AT thru-hike, at the very end, I almost turned around at Katahdin and yo-yoed south back the Georgia because the experience of my AT thru-hike had been so profound and I really didn't want the experience to stop. Common sense (or uncommon sense depending upon the way you look at life) took over and I ended up deciding to return to Society rather than yo-yoing back to Springer. To his day, years later, I'm not sure I made the right decision. But, you go with what happens and adapt to that -- adaptation is the ultimate lesson from a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
On the plane ride back out, back to Society, I had made up my mind that long-distance hiking was going to become, by force if necessary, a major part of my life. It was just a matter of re-configuring my life to make that happen. You can't go through an Appalachian Trail thru-hike and not think to yourself that this is the way things should be.
So, I change my path and my approach to life to accommodate a life that embraced long-distance hiking as a priority.
Easily became one of the best decisions, for me, that I've ever made in my life. Heh, it was so important to me after my AT thru-hike that I re-worked my career choice to allow it to happen. I have immensely enjoyed my career since my AT thru-hike -- with the guiding idea that whatever happens, whatever goes good or bad, I can always just go take a hike and things will come back into perspective.
Now that I have been able to leave corporate life and live on a beautiful mountain top in North Carolina, one of my biggest urges is to have people -- particularly prospective AT thru-hikers -- understand that life does not have to be how others have planned it out to be for you. There is an entirely different viewpoint that you can entertain after completing an AT thru-hike. It doesn't have to be a rat-race of a life all the way to death.
Instead, you can accept the fact that the sole purpose of life on ths earth is to be happy. That's it. Nothing else. Your purpose is to be happy. There's no necessity to toil and work to the bone if that will not bring you happiness. Once a person realizes their reason for living is to be happy, it opens up a wealth of positive thought -- both strategic and tactical methods to be and achieve happiness.
The elements of happiness are simple:
1) Have Fun
2) Live Fully
3) Peace
Getting all those to happen concurrently, well that is the challenge of life. Most times people can get, with effort, two out of the three to happen concurrently. Getting all three to happen at once is bliss.
Datto
One of the greatest parts of the experience of an AT thru-hike was the encountering and experience of meeting people who were way different than me.
It's difficult to put this into a measurable, quantitative element of an AT thru-hike but I value this as an important facit of my AT thru-hike. An enjoyment.
Take, for example, this guy and this girl who I had met during the beginning days of my AT thru-hike.
She was 27 years old, quite attractive. In shape, was adaptng to the AT very well (probably better than me at that time -- at least by Atkins or so -- even though I had started the AT well prepared).
He was a ski bum who was a fervant Boston Redsocks fan with a constant smile on his face no matter the weather or terrain or condition. It was a qualty I had wished that I had acquired but I had not. This guy should have been in sales or motivational speaking. You couldn't have a bad day around this guy. He was one of several people I had met in the beginning of my AT thru-hike who was like that -- people who just were fun to be around. Everything was good to them.
See, there was this party. In February -- after she had decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. She had been a little concerned about safety issues on the AT (not entirely different than most women who undertake a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail).
He hadn't known her before that particular party.
She had announced at that party and before, quietly I had imagined, that she was looking for someone to start the Appalachian Trail with her that Spring.
Him, being February and all and the upcoming ending of ski season, became interested at that party. Hadn't really known much about the AT.
By the end of the party the two had decided, sure, they'd start the AT together and go from there.
I remember seeing the two of them at a place along the Appalachian Trail called "God's Thumb". I was sitting uphill from the two of them and had thought to myself after a few hundred miles of hiking on and off near the two of them, "Those two are made for each other."
Five months later I would be sitting in a bar in Rangley, Maine with a group of AT thru-hikers who had, remarkably, made it to the same spot in Maine where I had arrived that evening. Locals (non-hikers) had been buying shots and beer for all of us AT thru-hikers there in the bar and a tray of shots had arrived where another thru-hiker and I -- she was 22 years old -- were sitting while watching the broken-knee other thru-hikers dancing in front of the band.
She had said to me, "Datto, what are you going to do when this is all over?"
I had thought about her question for a while -- thru-hikers don't have the speed to response as you would have back in Society -- and when I had turned to her to respond she had tears streaming down her face. She said to me, "Datto, I can't go back to the way it was. Not after all of this." I said, "Yeah, I know." We pounded down the shots a local had bought.
Datto
Datto's Top Ten Tips for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
10) Bring disposable earplugs and put new earplugs into your maildrops -- lots of people on the AT snore loudly (way louder than you can possibly imagine while sitting in your living room planning your AT thru-hike) -- this is in shelters as well as when they are camped out next to your tent/tarp.
9) Bring four small screw-in hooks from a hardware store and some twine -- some shelters are oriented for view rather than weather so wind and rain pour into the shelter day and night -- string your tent/tarp across the front of the shelter with the hooks/twine in order to block the wind, snow and rain in Georgia/NC and to keep the terrible cold out when you're in Maine. You may be telling yourself from your living room that you won't be staying in shelters but that's not likely, particularly in the beginning (while you're adapting to trail life) and at the end when you're trying to make miles in bad weather through very difficult terrain.
8) Gear will not get you to Katadin so stop focusing so much on gear -- if you're a person who likes to be prepared, there's no better preparation for thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail than to do overnight hikes in the rain and/or snow (anywhere) while carrying your full backpack (carry food, water, gear -- everything) -- hike eight miles per day before camping for the night on your prep hike -- don't do car camping and think that will be helping you. During the last six months prior to starting your AT thru-hike you should be hiking overnight two weekends every month and should have had at least one week-long trip where you've hiked at least forty miles under your belt. If you have a treadmill, carry your backpack on your treadmill -- when you get to the point where you can sustain 6% upslope at 3.0 miles per hour for 45 minutes straight while carrying your full backpack the entire tie, you're probably physically ready for the start of your AT thru-hike. Mentally -- well that's the biggest challenge of an AT thru-hike and that's why hiking in the rain and snow during your prep hikes is useful and important.
7) The two toughest parts of the Appalachian Trail are 1) New Hampshire/Maine and 2) Georgia/North Carolina. If you're going to hike on the AT prior to starting your AT thru-hike in order to see if you're ready, pick one of those areas. There's a very good chance yours will be handed to you and you'll return home with a much better understanding of what you'll be undertaking with an AT thru-hike.
6) During your AT thru-hike, don't take the Aquablaze -- why would you go through all the trouble and expense and life/career-risk to give up your thru-hike just to go on a canoe trip? Why not drive down the highway and throw fistfulls of cash out the window on the way to a canoe trip -- that'll save you the time, money and career risk of an AT thru-hike and you can just return to your existing job on Monday.
5) Information from AT Profile maps and the information from the AT data book are the most important pieces of information to utilize on an AT thru-hike. Next in importance would be town information. All the rest is a nice-to-have information. Geez, don't spend any money or time getting a GPS or GPS software for your phone. In some places on the Trail, the white blazes are literally fifty feet apart. It is literally laughable to see someone using a GPS on the Appalachian Trail.
4) If you will only take your phone out of Airplane Mode every other day, the difference in immersion will be the difference between computer speakers and Bose 5.1. Use your phone for music, pics, recording your thoughts if you want, on-board logistic planning. Constant connection to the Internet will so water down your AT experience and connection to the natural world you might as well stay home and save the money and life-risk for something else rather than an AT hike.
3) If you're wanting to bring your dog on your AT thru-hike (because you have no place to keep your dog while hiking or your relationship is close with your dog), you can make it work on an AT thru-hike if you will do two things; 1) always camp in your tent/tarp every single night without exception and never stay overnight in a shelter and 2) Never take your dog -- even once -- into a shelter during the day. It's this simple -- no one wants your muddy-azz dog. If you think you can impose your dog on others in a shelter, you are sorely mistaken. However, if you will be responsible with your dog, other hikers will grow to like you and your dog. Keep in mind bringing your dog along with you on an AT thru-hike will almost double the challenge of an AT thru-hike for you -- extra logistics, extra food, your pack weight, wear on the dog and common dog injury, extra expense -- all the things that have escaped your brain because you're not thinking things through. Is taking on the challenge of an AT thru-hike not enough for you? There's only a 15% chance you'll complete your thru-hike and that's for people who don't bring a dog along. Completing an AT thru-hike with a dog where you hike past every blaze and walk end-to-end in a continuous journal is tough enough -- bringing a dog along on an AT thru-hike will almost guarantee you'll not be finshing and will be going home early. Why don't you and your dog just take a road trip out west instead?
2) If possible, plan to take thirty calendar days after completing your AT thru-hike before returning to work. Sitting at home right now, you're not going to believe the difficulty you will face when transitioning from an AT thru-hike back into everyday Society. Use that post-hike thirty days to gather up your table manners (I'm laughing as I write this) as well as the time necessary to realize not many back in Society want to hear about the Appalachian Trail as much as you are going to want to talk about your thru-hike when you return from the Appalachian Trail.
1) An AT thru-hike where you walk past every blaze, enjoy town stops, take about six-months to complete will cost you $5,000 door to door, not including gear replenishment along the Trail. If you plan to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail with less, you're wildly fooling yourself.
Datto
Wonderfully written, and so important for the newbs as well as for experienced hikers. Thank you so much, Datto.
I am posting getting another dog until I complete my thru-hike. I don't want to force a dog to walk 2,100+ miles.
For me, your most important point is #2. I have always felt sort of lost in that liminal space after returning from a meaningful trip. Even after a few days biking around the Cape (Cod) and the islands, adjustment for me is hard. Nota bene: stories about the mythic hero, and the hard transition back to civilization (such as Gilgamesh). Go easy on yourself.
One of the greatest parts of the experience of an AT thru-hike was the encountering and experience of meeting people who were way different than me.
It's difficult to put this into a measurable, quantitative element of an AT thru-hike but I value this as an important facit of my AT thru-hike. An enjoyment.
Take, for example, this guy and this girl who I had met during the beginning days of my AT thru-hike.
She was 27 years old, quite attractive. In shape, was adaptng to the AT very well (probably better than me at that time -- at least by Atkins or so -- even though I had started the AT well prepared).
He was a ski bum who was a fervant Boston Redsocks fan with a constant smile on his face no matter the weather or terrain or condition. It was a qualty I had wished that I had acquired but I had not. This guy should have been in sales or motivational speaking. You couldn't have a bad day around this guy. He was one of several people I had met in the beginning of my AT thru-hike who was like that -- people who just were fun to be around. Everything was good to them.
See, there was this party. In February -- after she had decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. She had been a little concerned about safety issues on the AT (not entirely different than most women who undertake a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail).
He hadn't known her before that particular party.
She had announced at that party and before, quietly I had imagined, that she was looking for someone to start the Appalachian Trail with her that Spring.
Him, being February and all and the upcoming ending of ski season, became interested at that party. Hadn't really known much about the AT.
By the end of the party the two had decided, sure, they'd start the AT together and go from there.
I remember seeing the two of them at a place along the Appalachian Trail called "God's Thumb". I was sitting uphill from the two of them and had thought to myself after a few hundred miles of hiking on and off near the two of them, "Those two are made for each other."
Five months later I would be sitting in a bar in Rangley, Maine with a group of AT thru-hikers who had, remarkably, made it to the same spot in Maine where I had arrived that evening. Locals (non-hikers) had been buying shots and beer for all of us AT thru-hikers there in the bar and a tray of shots had arrived where another thru-hiker and I -- she was 22 years old -- were sitting while watching the broken-knee other thru-hikers dancing in front of the band.
She had said to me, "Datto, what are you going to do when this is all over?"
I had thought about her question for a while -- thru-hikers don't have the speed to response as you would have back in Society -- and when I had turned to her to respond she had tears streaming down her face. She said to me, "Datto, I can't go back to the way it was. Not after all of this." I said, "Yeah, I know." We pounded down the shots a local had bought.
Datto
Did they marry?
Meant to say in Item 1 above, "Not including initial gear purchases but including gear replenishment along the Trail" rather than what's written above.
Datto
For someone who is very hard on her feet, how much do you think for footwear alone? Even just walking around the city or walking around Middlesex Fells, I go through shoes like crazy.
Again, a wonderful list, Datto.
My only quibble -- and not from personal experience, exactly -- is item #5. I'm a paper-map guy myself, but I've watched thru-hikers making great use of these apps. And I have lost the trail a few times.
Did they marry?
Yes. Tw of the great people I met on my AT thru-hike.
Datto
For someone who is very hard on her feet, how much do you think for footwear alone? Even just walking around the city or walking around Middlesex Fells, I go through shoes like crazy.
Again, a wonderful list, Datto.
Thanks. I've not been able to get a pair of hiking shoes of any type to last much more than 450 miles when on a long-distance hike (although I have stretched a pair further than that to my detriment). I went through, as I remember, five pairs of hiking shoes (those were Saloman trail runners on my AT thru-hike, New Balance on every hike after that). I pull out the existing footpads inside the shoes that the shoes come delivered with and instead, substitue Spenco inserts in their place (model was HIker from Spenco if those are available now) which has made my feet oh so much more comfortable. Also, when I started my AT thru-hike I wore 10.5 sized street shoes. Previous AT thru-hikers had advised me my feet would grow 1.5 sizes or more (thanks everyone here) so I was prepared when my feet started flattenng out lengthwise and width-wise. Today I wear a 13.5 4W shoe.
Datto
rocketsocks
04-11-2016, 19:46
I could care less if somebody aqua blazes and tells me they did a thru hike...whatever!
One of the encounters with dog owners on my AT thru-hike:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=175696
Datto
rocketsocks
04-11-2016, 19:49
...and not fer nothin' but if I saw someone jerk a dog by the tail, we'd be lockin' horns.
I could care less if somebody aqua blazes and tells me they did a thru hike...whatever!
It depends upon whether truth is important to a person or not.
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." -- Richard Nixon
Nixon would have taken the Aquablaze, driven his car to Katahdin and applied for his 2000 miler designation.
The key thing Nixon didn't understand and people who take the Aquablaze don't understand -- Nixon didn't have to lie. It cost Nixon dearly and he spend the rest of his remaining days trying to convince people he wasn't a liar and wasn't a crook. Just like people who took the Aquablaze keep telling people they thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail -- on water without any blazes to pass, as it is.
For people who are 2017 thru-hikers in planning, the Aquablaze and this "Hike Your Own Hike" malarky are Trojan Horses. As soon as you let the first Trojan Horse into your AT thru-hike, it's over. You can try to Nixonize it all you want in your head afterward, but your AT thru-hike is over.
Datto
evyck da fleet
04-11-2016, 19:58
#2! and leave the screws at home.
It's also amazing how dog owners are either the most considerate people you meet, regardless of whether or not you're a dog person, or you immediately understand why they are hiking alone.
Starchild
04-11-2016, 20:06
I could care less if somebody aqua blazes and tells me they did a thru hike...whatever!
I would give them additional credit for HYOH, also the 2000 mile AT award.
Yellow blazing, not so much, but HitchYOH if you must.
Well okay, if an AT thru-hiker is sitting in a shelter and the rain is driving in and hitting the back wall of the shelter -- and "Billy" in 1964 has carved his name and arrival date in eight inch letters into the sidewall for all to see. along with oh, 262 other hikers some with love potions...I guess an AT thru-hiker must assume they are under Double Secret Probation if said hiker uses screw hooks, twine and their tent/tarp to block the driving rain into the shelter.
The real situation is when another hiker bounds into the shelter to get out of the driving rain and says, "I hope you don't mind" and before you know it, she changes shirts to get out of wet clothes. Of course right then the AT Boob Police show up in the rain and start issuing a summons to all the AT thru-hikers for seeing too much skin. I hate when that happens.
Wapner at 4:30. Wapner.
Datto
Sarcasm the elf
04-11-2016, 20:28
#2! and leave the screws at home.
Taken statement sounds hilarious when taken out of context. :D
It's also amazing how dog owners are either the most considerate people you meet, regardless of whether or not you're a dog person, or you immediately understand why they are hiking alone.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. I've section hiked hundreds of miles of the A.T. with my dog. Hiking responsibly with a happy dog is absolutely awesome, unfortunately encountering other hikers that are being irresponsible with their dogs has become my least favorite part about the trips.
I also wish that more people who were contemplating long distance hikes with their dog would do a full two week hike with said dog beforehand to see how it goes. Most people don't grasp that humans are true long distance animals and can easily out-hike an average domestic dog over the course of multiple days. While I love backpacking with my dog (and especially with my buddy's border collie, possibly the best trail breed ever.) I don't think that either of them would be able to handle keeping up for the long haul on a thru hike.
and says, "I hope you don't mind" and before you know it, she changes shirts to get out of wet clothes.
By the way, that happened all the time in a shelter on my AT thru-hike. Wasn't that big of a deal to me but then again, Ball State University required that I take and pass two nude drawng courses before I could graduate. Everyone in the first nude drawing class pretty much stayed on-task after the initial model showed up and subsequent models arrived for the remaining classes -- right up until that guy model in the jock strap showed up halfway into the second required class. Man was that funny! My drawing that day featured a shakey word "BIKE" in the drawing because I couldn't stop laughing. The instructor returned to nude women models from then on for the rest of the remaining classes.
Datto
Another Kevin
04-11-2016, 23:44
The perspective of a clueless weekender:
(10) I can sleep through anything, including my wife's snoring. :)
(9) Maybe. I think I can come up with a less destructive way to block the wind.
(8) I carry what I need. Do I have to do the treadmill thing? Can't I go hiking instead? (Typical daily mileage when hiking: 8-16 depending on terrain. Minimum daily mileage when not hiking: 2-3 miles with a daypack that outweighs my pack for a three-day weekend. Every ******* day, come heat, snow, rain, wind, or whatever.) I didn't call it a prep hike (because I've no thru-hike plans) but I've done a 138-mile trip with two resupply stops that included two forty-mile sections without road crossings (or, indeed, any way out shorter than the trail). It rained and sleeted for most of the trip. I had fun.
(7) I'm guessing that Northeast peakbagging is pretty good practice. In any case, I've done the Presidential traverse at least once, done Moosilauke and Smarts multiple times including in deep winter, and think I'd be going in with my eyes open. And yes, New Hampshire handed my arse to be when I first moved there.
(6) I'll do as I please. I can always go back and pick up the missing section. So what if it isn't a "thru" hike? I won't claim 2000-miler without having done 2000-miler. Although I mightn't worry about missing a white blaze if I should happen to wander a bit down trail while coming back from a cathole or something, or making sure I start on the same side of the road after a town stop. That's just silly.
(5) I blue-blaze, bushwhack, and generally wander. I like my GPS. Agree it's a bit silly on the AT, though.
(4) My phone goes out of airplane mode daily if there's a signal, to send one text to my wife. She worries. I've been on trips where I haven't had a signal for 3-4 days straight, though. She knew it was coming, and got by, but I won't inflict it on her unnecessarily.
(3) I haven't got time to train a trail dog. More's the pity.
(2) If I ever thru-hike (unlikely!), it'll be in retirement.
(1) I don't think I'm going to outlive my money. Might as well spend some in trail towns.
(0) Whom am I kidding? I don't really want to thru-hike that badly. I like hiking, but thru-hiking would be a bit much.
Different hiking styles mean different answers, but I think we understand each other and are basically on the same page. Good post! :)
Another Kevin
04-11-2016, 23:56
While I love backpacking with my dog (and especially with my buddy's border collie, possibly the best trail breed ever.) I don't think that either of them would be able to handle keeping up for the long haul on a thru hike.
I still want to meet that pooch some day! But you were wise to leave the dog at home for the Catskill trip. A dog would really have struggled in that terrain. (Although dogs have done the 3500's - the first one was Smokey Spangenberger in 1969. Dogs don't have to pay dues, but they can't hold office or vote in the club.)
...and not fer nothin' but if I saw someone jerk a dog by the tail, we'd be lockin' horns.
Ditto. (Not Datto, ditto.)
Animal; abuse.
Now Datto (ditto):
Very helpful shoe ideas. Thanks again!
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tips 15 through 11 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
15) Take along some Bodyglide (there are competing products under other names). Bodyglide is a super slippery product that a hiker applies to places on your body that get chafed in order to help to prevent abrasions. Typical locations are hips where your hipbelt rubs and where your two legs come together just below your crotch. On my AT thru-hike I saw more than a few people with very ugly rub marks. If you're doing prep hikes prior to the start of your AT thru-hike you'll easily be able to see on your body where Bodyglide is needed and can then take preventative measures and apply the Bodyglide on a daily basis.
14) Sending cold weather gear home -- For northbounders, never send your cold weather gear home before Mt. Rogers in Virginia (Mt. Rogers is just north of Damascus, VA near Thomas Knob Shelter -- about milepoint 495 or so). The weather on Mt. Rogers can get really bad at a point in time where you would think the cold weather is over. If you're at the front of the pack you may have to wait until Waynesboro, VA to send your cold weather gear home. If you're near the back of the pack it may be Pearisburg, VA. During my northbound AT thru-hike I reached Mt. Rogers and Thomas Knob Shelter on May 22nd, still had my cold weather gear and I froze that night it was so windy and cold (temps were in the 20's).
13) Picking up cold weather gear up north -- For northbounders you'll want to pick up your cold weather gear at either Glencliff, NH if you're at the back of the pack or at Hanover, NH if you're at the front of the pack. On my northbound AT thru-hike I arrived at Glencliff, NH on September 8th (you'll want to be here earlier than this). The reason for picking up cold weather gear at these spots is you'll be entering the White Mountains just north of Hanover, NH and the weather in The Whites can get bad quickly -- much more quickly than you can imagine so you'll want to be prepared. On my northbound AT thru-hike I had arrived at Mt. Washington on Septeber 16th (you should plan to arrive here earlier than this) and the wind was 72mph and the wind chill was minus 19*F. The building on top of Mt. Washington had many day hikers who were suffering from hypothermia and were incoherent. I was wearing every stitch of clothing I had in my backpack and I still froze going the 1.4 miles or so from Lake of the Clouds Hut up to Mt. Washington.
12) You'll want to finish a northbound AT thru-hike no later than the first week of October so in your planning you should shoot to finish your AT thru-hike no later than the last week of September (you'll likely have at least a week or more of unexpected delays along the way). The reason for this is the weather in central Maine gets bad or worse the later you arrive at Katahdin (this is regardless of all the date monkeyshines that go on about Baxter State Park about closing the park). I can tell you I finished my northbound AT thru-hike on October 21st and that date was way too late and I barely made it in time from a weather perspective (I was in a blizzard for 3.5 days in central Maine). In your planning, shoot for finishing your northbound AT thru-hike no later than the last week in September. By the way, if you're at the front of the pack, you're not going to want to rush just so you can finish early. This is not a race -- you'll want to savor every moment you have on the Appalachian Trail.
11) The start date of my northbound AT thru-hike was April 10th. If I had to do it all over again I would start on that same date again. It's late enough to likely miss much of the snow in Georgia/North Carolina but still gives you the necessary time to reach Katahdin in Maine before the snow in Maine gets too bad to finish. Plus, that start date allowed me to hike directly into Damascus, VA at Trail Days without having to backtrack nor race ahead (Trail Days is a big hiker get-together/celebration and lots of fun).
Datto
April starts are good. You may still get short-lived snow events and your share of cold rain for the first month or so, but there's still plenty of time to get to Maine. I've met NOBO thrus near Katahdin who started in May. Expect a bit of that cold rain and snow up in NH and Maine as well.
IMO, the value of early starts is overrated. Tough to make big miles in severe winter conditions, especially as a newb. So lots of hikers end up sinking $$ into town stops and making little forward progress.
DuneElliot
04-12-2016, 09:38
It's also amazing how dog owners are either the most considerate people you meet, regardless of whether or not you're a dog person, or you immediately understand why they are hiking alone.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. I've section hiked hundreds of miles of the A.T. with my dog. Hiking responsibly with a happy dog is absolutely awesome, unfortunately encountering other hikers that are being irresponsible with their dogs has become my least favorite part about the trips.
I also wish that more people who were contemplating long distance hikes with their dog would do a full two week hike with said dog beforehand to see how it goes. Most people don't grasp that humans are true long distance animals and can easily out-hike an average domestic dog over the course of multiple days. While I love backpacking with my dog (and especially with my buddy's border collie, possibly the best trail breed ever.) I don't think that either of them would be able to handle keeping up for the long haul on a thru hike.
Very well stated. I hike (or horse ride) a lot of miles with my two border collies and they are definitely one of the best trail breeds out there due to their endurance, but I continue to advocate hiking with them responsibly. My two have been welcomed everywhere by everyone, but only because they are well-behaved, disciplined and under my constant supervision. When on the trail I keep them in sight at all times (they are on e-collars) and always put them in a down-stay off the trail when we encounter others. I don't know if I've been lucky or just live in an area with responsible people, but I have never encountered a problem dog on the trail.
dudeijuststarted
04-12-2016, 11:29
This is oh so true.
I can tell you what happened to me.
Great post! I flip flopped so I took Amtrak home from Harper's Ferry to Florida. All I could do is walk, walk, walk, and as soon as February rolled around I was back on trail. I'd go back to the hostels just to sleep and soothe my heartache. Eventually after spending all of my time and remaining money seeking solace in the Appalachian corridor, I drove west to seek out new trails and a new life, much like getting away from an ex-girlfriend for a while. I hiked a little in CO and CA, and set foot on the PCT. Living in CA now, the financial feasibility of a PCT thru is not within reach, and quite frankly from what I've seen of it I don't find desert hiking appealing. I'm hiking the Grayson Highlands in May and hoping for a CT thru in July, ultimately returning home to my beloved AT later this year. I don't think all thru-hikers experience that sort of longing, but I grew up in the Appalachians, and I think that's why being there is so comforting to me.
Another Kevin
04-12-2016, 12:39
(15) Body Glide isn't good enough waterproofing where I hike, but maybe would be good for the A-T except for Vermud and Maine. I use Gurney Goo, since they don't make Hydropel any more.
(14-11) I hate crowds. If I ever were to do a thru, it would be a nontraditional pattern (a flip-flop, leapfrog, flip-flap-flop or just a SOBO) so the specific advice of timing of cold-weather gear or start/end dates wouldn't be relevant. (I'd need to be a lot more confident about visiting Baxter, though.) I agree with you about the 'late' start. I live Up North, and don't do long-distance hiking in winter. (I switch to peak bagging.)
Different styles, different answers, and it's all good.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tips 20 through 16 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
20) The photos you take of people during your AT thru-hike will easily have the most value to you after you complete your AT thru-hike. Note that some people on the Appalachian Trail don't like their photo taken (for various reasons) so be sensitive, particularly in the beginning of your AT thru-hike where you don't know many/any people. Scenery shots may not be that valuable to you after your AT thru-hike when compared to photos with people.
19) Don't wear anything that has an odor when you're on your AT thru-hike -- no perfume, no cologne, no deoderant that has a scent (or deoderant at all for that matter). A hiker's sense of smell is enhanced during an AT thru-hike and if you're wearing perfume/cologne you'll just stink up the shelter and the Trail for people who are behind you. To this day I have to get off an elevator if someone is wearing perfume or cologne so I don't gag. If you have a maildrop support person or are using a bounce box, make sure you don't put any type of detergent or soap into either type of box -- food or other supplies could end up smelling like soap forever and you may end up having to throw some of the contents away because of the taste/stink.
18) If you're a northbound AT thru-hiker and need to make up time someplace (due to injury, having to go to a wedding back home, lollygagged in the beginning), the area to make up time is the stretch from Wanesboro, VA north to Duncannon, PA (that stretch is about 285 miles or so in length). It's not as difficult on that stretch of the Trail (note I didn't say easy). You'll have your trail legs by then, your backpack will be at its lightest point and the daylight hours will be at their longest. You will cruise through that stretch and if you need to, you can average 20 miles per day or more for the days you are hiking. For example, during my northbound AT thru-hike I arrived on the AT at US 30 in Pennsylvania from my town stop at Gettysburg at 12:30pm and hiked the 20.8 miles or so in the rain to Iron Master's Mansion in seven hours and 15 minutes. It was no problem at all. If I had been in a hurry, I could have easily gotten up earler, hit the Trail and made a 25 mile hike that day or maybe even a 30 miler that day if I had wanted to. I just wasn't that much in a hurry. Note it is unlikely, even for a northbound AT thru-hiker, that any time can be made up in Maine or New Hampshire -- it's probably difficult to even make the miles per day you're planning to do while you're sitting in your living room looking at a spreadsheet.
17) If you are a northbound AT thru-hiker -- while you are sitting in your living room doing planning and think that you might wish to hike with someone, you won't need to arrange that someone ahead of time. There will be so many people on the AT with you that you'll see many times per day that you'll naturally swing toward those who's company you enjoy (and them back to you also). Plus, it'll give you a chance to meet them and scope them out before you start hiking together.
16) If you're a northbound AT thru-hiker and someone back home wants to come out and visit with you via driving and you're trying to figure out where would be a good place to meet up, see if they'll drive to Trail Days in Damascus, VA and meet you there. Trail Days is a sizeable hiker get-together that happens every year in May and usually there are rides for hikers to jump to Trail Days and back (I hiked directly into Trail Days on my AT thru-hike). Another option would be for you to meet the person in Washington, DC and you take the train from Harper's Ferry, WV to Washington DC in late June to early July to meet up at the Capital Building (the difficulty is you won't be able to know the date much more than a week ahead of time). If you haven't ever been to Washngton, DC it's a fabulous place to visit as a tourist and all the famous places in DC can be easily reached by walking if you are so inclined (I'm laughing as I type this). Trains are also available from the AT to New York City and back although New York City might be a bit of a shell-shock for a northbound AT thru-hiker.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 21 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
21) When you're preparing for your upcoming AT thru-hike and you're shopping for whatever gear you think you need, pick up a spare no-see-um headnet. It's probably an ounce of weight or less. That spare one ounce may lead to one of the best lessons you'll receive from a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
Here's why.
After you start your thru-hike you will encounter people on the Trail -- other thru-hikers -- who have never heard of Whiteblaze or ultralight backpacking or McAfee Knob or a cat food stove. Or have thought to bring a headnet.
For northbounders, along about, oh, North Carolina you may run into people ahead of you -- other thru-hikers -- who are swinging like a madman at invisible demons. Sometimes to the point of almost falling down. It might make you bust out laughing before you catch up to them because it is so hilarious to see.
So, it will return to you in spades. if you just will.
During the final mile to complete my AT thru-hike I was hiking with another thru-hiker. Each of us considered ourself to be one of the luckiest people on the planet to have been able to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. During that last mile we had decided to mention out loud all the people who had helped us along our thru-hikes. We had slowed way down to savor the last mile, coming to a complete stop at least five times during that last mile.
Neither of us ever completed the list out loud before we had reached the end.
Datto
As a section hiker I've done a disproportionate share of the trail in late summer, so bugs are much less of a problem. The times when I've used or needed a head net were always early summer. There's a hilarious scene in Chris Gallaway's film where he's trying to outrun the skeeters in MA or thereabouts. You can feel his pain.
#3 goes for children as well. Those under 12 need to be on a leash. Over 12 at your discretion if they are well behaved. The truth is that these days children are worse than dogs and need to be treated as such. Though I do disagree about the shelters. If you want to crowd into a dirty wooden box with 12 strangers then you really have no right to complain about anything that goes on in there...in fact I hope somebody farts in one ear and snores in the other.
DuneElliot
04-13-2016, 14:43
The other issues I see with dogs is people not picking up after them. Generally my dogs need or want their privacy and disappear into the undergrowth to do their business, but on the rare occasion they don't I make a point of using a stick to knock it off the trail and get it out of the way (sometimes easier said than done). It really frustrates me that other dog owners don't have the same consideration and leave their dog's poop in the middle of a hiking path...it doesn't take much to move it!
Sarcasm the elf
04-13-2016, 14:49
The other issues I see with dogs is people not picking up after them. Generally my dogs need or want their privacy and disappear into the undergrowth to do their business, but on the rare occasion they don't I make a point of using a stick to knock it off the trail and get it out of the way (sometimes easier said than done). It really frustrates me that other dog owners don't have the same consideration and leave their dog's poop in the middle of a hiking path...it doesn't take much to move it!
While I agree, I find that on the A.T. people not cleaning up after their dogs is mostly a problem that only exists within 1/4 - 1/2 mile of the trail heads. What I find amusing is when I encounter hikers in the middle of the woods who are complaining about people not cleaning up after their pets while pointing to what is obviously coyote/fox/raccoon scat, I've come across this situation more than you'd expect. :rolleyes:
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tips 20 through 16 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
20) The photos you take of people during your AT thru-hike will easily have the most value to you after you complete your AT thru-hike. Note that some people on the Appalachian Trail don't like their photo taken (for various reasons) so be sensitive, particularly in the beginning of your AT thru-hike where you don't know many/any people. Scenery shots may not be that valuable to you after your AT thru-hike when compared to photos with people.
19) Don't wear anything that has an odor when you're on your AT thru-hike -- no perfume, no cologne, no deoderant that has a scent (or deoderant at all for that matter). A hiker's sense of smell is enhanced during an AT thru-hike and if you're wearing perfume/cologne you'll just stink up the shelter and the Trail for people who are behind you. To this day I have to get off an elevator if someone is wearing perfume or cologne so I don't gag. If you have a maildrop support person or are using a bounce box, make sure you don't put any type of detergent or soap into either type of box -- food or other supplies could end up smelling like soap forever and you may end up having to throw some of the contents away because of the taste/stink.
18) If you're a northbound AT thru-hiker and need to make up time someplace (due to injury, having to go to a wedding back home, lollygagged in the beginning), the area to make up time is the stretch from Wanesboro, VA north to Duncannon, PA (that stretch is about 285 miles or so in length). It's not as difficult on that stretch of the Trail (note I didn't say easy). You'll have your trail legs by then, your backpack will be at its lightest point and the daylight hours will be at their longest. You will cruise through that stretch and if you need to, you can average 20 miles per day or more for the days you are hiking. For example, during my northbound AT thru-hike I arrived on the AT at US 30 in Pennsylvania from my town stop at Gettysburg at 12:30pm and hiked the 20.8 miles or so in the rain to Iron Master's Mansion in seven hours and 15 minutes. It was no problem at all. If I had been in a hurry, I could have easily gotten up earler, hit the Trail and made a 25 mile hike that day or maybe even a 30 miler that day if I had wanted to. I just wasn't that much in a hurry. Note it is unlikely, even for a northbound AT thru-hiker, that any time can be made up in Maine or New Hampshire -- it's probably difficult to even make the miles per day you're planning to do while you're sitting in your living room looking at a spreadsheet.
17) If you are a northbound AT thru-hiker -- while you are sitting in your living room doing planning and think that you might wish to hike with someone, you won't need to arrange that someone ahead of time. There will be so many people on the AT with you that you'll see many times per day that you'll naturally swing toward those who's company you enjoy (and them back to you also). Plus, it'll give you a chance to meet them and scope them out before you start hiking together.
16) If you're a northbound AT thru-hiker and someone back home wants to come out and visit with you via driving and you're trying to figure out where would be a good place to meet up, see if they'll drive to Trail Days in Damascus, VA and meet you there. Trail Days is a sizeable hiker get-together that happens every year in May and usually there are rides for hikers to jump to Trail Days and back (I hiked directly into Trail Days on my AT thru-hike). Another option would be for you to meet the person in Washington, DC and you take the train from Harper's Ferry, WV to Washington DC in late June to early July to meet up at the Capital Building (the difficulty is you won't be able to know the date much more than a week ahead of time). If you haven't ever been to Washngton, DC it's a fabulous place to visit as a tourist and all the famous places in DC can be easily reached by walking if you are so inclined (I'm laughing as I type this). Trains are also available from the AT to New York City and back although New York City might be a bit of a shell-shock for a northbound AT thru-hiker.
Datto
Or a side trip to Great Falls if you prefer to stay nature-y. (Oy, but the crowds!)
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 22 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-planning
22) Expanding on Tip 8 above -- Adaptability is key to completing an AT thru-hike. You have to learn to accept how things are, not how you wish them to be. Those who don't accede to being very flexible significantly reduce their chances of completing. Inflexibility adds to the challenge, adds to what is required to complete an AT thru-hike. That's not to say Type A people who are rigid thinkers have never completed an AT thru-hike -- it's just they're few in number. The vast majority of people who have completed a northbound AT thru-hike are those who accepted the rhythm, the adjustments, the course corrections -- sometimes requiring multiple significant changes be made during a single day -- while still making consistent day-in and day-out northbound progress.
So, this is what hiking in the rain, snow and mud during your prep hikes is for -- the overnight, weekend-long and week-long prep hikes you take (carrying your full backpack) prior to starting your AT thru-hike. Those may help you accept (or not) that it rains for days on-end and come to grips with what are you going to do about it. Go home because it's raining all the time? If you're a northbounder starting at Springer Mountain, GA, whew boy, you are in for a very big surprise if you can't get accustomed to hiking in the rain and mud. You'll likely go home early -- probably before Fontana Dam at milepoint 135 or so. Hiking in the rain and mud is just one of the many adjustments/acceptances you have make if you're going to hike northbound from Springer Mountain on an AT thru-hike. Combine that with the food you've packed becoming ugly to you after two days of eating it, the fact that most things in your pack are soaking wet, the fact you got yourself turned around and just unknowingly walked .6 in the wrong direction and now have to walk back, the fact you just face-planted into a rock (complete with the requisite all-encompassing expletives that you never say back home). All this and then you show up to the shelter in the evening looking for drinking water and it's .5 down the steepest hill you've ever seen -- a cliff face to anyone else. Then after your trip down and back to get water, your stove catches fire at the front edge of the shelter while you're cooking your evening meal. Just another day in paradise!
You need to flesh out your reactions to all of this -- PRIOR TO -- turning in your resignation at work, Prior to leaving your family, friends, spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend and spending gobs of money to start an AT thru-hike. You need to find out if you are going to be adaptable enough, or not going to be accepting of the conditions of an AT thru-hike. Before it's too late.
The single biggest reason people stop their AT thru-hike is the Appalachian Trail was not what they had expected. Not surprising if you set your expectations while sitting in an easy chair in your cozy living room back home.
Datto
I hiked 11 hours in the rain yesterday.
At sea level. :D
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 23 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Plannng
23) For AT thru-hikers who enjoy town stops, the costs for a northbound AT thru-hiker are back-end loaded. Reason: Costs in the northestern US are much more expensive for a northbound AT thru-hiker than in the southeastern US states. If you have a fixed, rigid amount of money available to spend on your northbound AT thru-hike, you'll likely need half of your total thru-hike money available to you when you enter Connecticut. This to allow you to have enough money to finish your AT thru-hike without running out of money beforehand or changing the last part of your northbound AT thru-hike to avoid towns.
For northbound AT thru-hikers who made it north of Harper's Ferry, WV, running out of money was one of the top issues causing people to stop their AT thru-hike and head home. It is very easy to get lulled into thinking the low costs you're experiencing at the beginning of your northbound AT thru-hiker are going to extrapolate all the way to Katahdin.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 25 and 24 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
25) Floors in AT sheters are culinary disaster areas. If you lay your sleeping bag or sleeping pad directly onto an AT shelter floor there's a good chance you're going to get spaghetti or barbeque sauce or something even worse all over your equipment.
Instead, bring along some Tyvek (cut slightly larger than your sleeping pad/sleeping bag combo) to place under your sleeping pad/sleeping bag when sleeping in the AT shelters at night. Tyvek is available over the Internet or sometimes at Home Depot/Lowe's type stores. Always place the lettering of the Tyvek on the side toward the shelter floor (or mark the Tyvek with the word "nasty side").Then in the morning always fold up the Tyvek sheet with the nasty side folded inward so goo on your Tyvek sheet doesn't get all over the rest of your gear, If you have a maildrop support person, have them send out to you a new sheet of Tyvek at Harper's Ferry, WV to use or the remaining miles of your AT thru-hike.
24) In case you didn't know this already, washing a down sleeping bag with standard laundry soap will immediately destroy the warmth of your down sleeping bag. Also, washing your down sleeping bag in a top-loading washing machine may destroy your sleeping bag.
Instead, use only soap that is designed specifically for washing down sleeping bags (such as a product called Down Wash) and only use front-loading washing machines at the laundromat There will be way fewer front-loading washing machines, if any, than there are top-loading washing machines in a laundromat and a front-loading washing machine may cost more money to use than a top-loading washing machine. Before you put your money and sleeping bag into a front-loading washing machine, stick your head into the washing machine and check to make sure there is not any caked laundry soap or mud still remaining in the washing machine from the last customer. If there is, you either have to switch to a cleaner front-loading washing machine or pay to run an empty washing machine in order to clean it. You can not be in a hurry and dry your sleeping bag on High Heat in a laudromat dryer or you will surely damage the outside surface of your sleeping bag. You have to keep temperatures low when your sleeping bag is in the dryer (or air-dry your sleeping bag outdoors if you have the time and inclination). Drying at low temps will take more time and money. If this sounds like a lot of hassle to wash your down sleeping bag, it is. To do it right you will have to be patient and have more money than you expect to need and the right kind of down soap.
What are the chances you're going to want to wash your sleeping bag during your AT thru-hike? Pretty good. Mud gets onto and into everything, including you. Also, there's a good chance somebody's mangey, muddy dog at a shelter is going to jump all over your sleeping bag after you have layed out your sleeping bag on the shelter floor for the night (with you in it or you out of your sleeping bag). During my northbound AT thru-hike I witnessed this happening significantly more times that I had expected.
Note some thru-hikers avoid washing their sleeping bag for their entire AT thru-hike just to avoid the hassle factor. For northbound AT thru-hikers, those sleeping bags are just plain nasty by the time New England states arrive on-scene. On my northbound AT thru-hike I washed my down sleepng bag more than once using Down Wash each time (sent to me by my maildrop support person).
You could use a sleeping bag liner to protect the inside of your sleeping bag from the mud caked all over you but a sleeping bag liner is just more stuff to carry. During the summertime on your AT tnru-hike the liner alone would not likely be enough to keep you warm at night when you are supposed to be sleeping and letting your muscles recouperate from the stresses of an AT thru-hike.
If you're thnking to yourself, "well I'll just carry a set of clean sleeping clothes to use those only for sleeping at night", heh, those "sleeping clothes" will likely be one of the first things you send home when you get a taste of the difficulty of the terrain of the Appalachian Trail combined with the weight of your backpack.
Datto
An always-dry thin silk base layer weighs very little, is comfortable to sleep in, keeps bag clean from your own body's dirt, and keeps your body from directly contacting the fabric surface of the sleeping bag. I have successfully washed down bags in top-loaders, but for sure, if you have a choice, go with front-loader.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 25 and 24 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
25) Floors in AT sheters are culinary disaster areas. If you lay your sleeping bag or sleeping pad directly onto an AT shelter floor there's a good chance you're going to get spaghetti or barbeque sauce or something even worse all over your equipment.
Datto
Stopped at a shelter in mid Virginia last year, and there was a fellow cutting up his vegetables for his dinner, right on the shelter floor. He seemed ok with it. [emoji40]
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 26 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
26) Sleeping bag orientation inside a shelter.
This is what I did on my northbound AT thru-hike:
During the weeks where the weather was cold, I slept with my head toward the back of the shelter. This to avoid rain, snow and wind blowing into my sleeping bag and freezing me out. The down side of this approach is the mice, snakes and varmints run and slither all along the back wall of AT shelters. To counter the situation I wore a balaclava while sleeping during the cold weeks on my northbound AT thru-hike. I don't like something running directly on my face when I'm sleeping. Call me nuts.
During the weeks were the weather was warm I faced my head to the outside of the AT shelter in order to avoid the varmints (some nights I went to sleep wearing a headnet to keep the gnats and mosquitos from wakng me up). If the weather started blowing rain in on top of me during the warm months I had to wake up and get turned around.
During the beginning month of my northbound AT thru-hike I had a skunk jump from the rafters of an AT shelter and land on top of my head in the middle of the night. This was when I was asleep facing the back wall of the shelter. I woke up swinging at the skunk with the clothes bag I was using as a pillow -- right up until I realized the varmint I was swinging at was a skunk.
Doh!
The skunk kept hanging around wanting to be my pal most of the night.
It wasn't funny until the next morning. Geez I was tired the next day.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 27 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Plannng
27) "Oh, the people you'll meet"
- Dr. Seuss / The Muppets
This is not a gathering of outdoorsey types who meet to discuss the relative merits of the dandelion. Far from it for people who start an AT thru-hike.
The people you'll meet on your AT thru-hike are the same people you would pass on the sidewalk of your home town. Carpenters, history teachers, hairdressers, people just out of the military, .org staff, insurance executives, computer techs and programmers, housewives, househusbands, law enforcement people, firefighters, landscapers, waiters and waitresses, franchisees, Peace Corps volunteers, and on and on (those are the careers of just some of the people I met on my northbound AT thru-hike and that is a good relative sample). Canadian scientests have discovered there is no single, common type of person who decides to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
Except...
Many (most?) of the people who thru-hike the Appalachian Trail are at a transition point in their life. Here's a listing of transition points for some of the people who thru-hike the Appalachian Trail:
* Just out of college, headed to the workforce soon
* Just out of high school, waiting to see what's next
* Just out of a relationship (voluntarily or involuntarily)
* Just lost a job or changing careers
* Just retired
* Just out of the military
* Just lost a loved one
* People who live abroad and have chosen, at this point in their life, to see America (I would venture to guess, from my observations, the most common countries/areas of origin for people who live abroad are Great Britain, Israel and Germany -- I don't consder Canadians or people from Mexico to be living abroad)
* For a very few, just out of prison
If, at the beginning of your AT thru-hike, you start asking people what they do for a living (like you might do at a party back home when you're making small talk), you might as well prepare a scarlett letter for yourself while you're preparing for your AT thru-hike back home.
Most people who come to the Appalachian Trail want to get away from all of that. They're on the Appalachian Trail to find and experience something different than what they had back home. They're not going to tell you they just got fired for shooting their mouth off again, or they just got layed off because the company they had depended upon felt they were no longer useful. No one is going to tell you their spouse just died and they're so broken up about it they can't function. Recent college graduates may not even tell you they came to the Appalachian Trail because they're just not ready for the real world at all and are fearful of the change. Housewives/Househusbands aren't going to tell you they came to the Appalachian Trail to find a mate because their spouse turned out to be a dud.
So don't ask too many questions -- there is plenty of time for people to open up about themselves if they choose to do so during their AT thru-hike. You don't have to make them feel they're at a job interview.
Some people will become wildly changed during their AT thru-hike from how they were back in their home town prior to starting their AT thru-hike. For some, the experience of an AT thru-hike will be a catharsis. A few on an AT thru-hike will return home after an AT thru-hike and just pick up life as it was before and continue on.
If you enjoy the company of others on the Appalachian Trail you will likely congregate with other people who are like you. It is human nature. College students hike with other college students, military people congregate with other military people, couples hike with other couples, retired people may hike with other retired people. People who are slow hikers hike with other slow hikers.
The thru-hiker I finished with, summitted Katahdin with, one who I had hiked with way back in Virginia -- he worked in the exact same industry as me and we had very similar jobs in that industry before we had started our respective AT thru-hikes.
As I remember, I didn't find any of that out until just before Katahdin when we were stranded in a blizzard together for several days. We were talking about all kinds of things for days on end while we hunkered down in a shelter during that blizzard. Somehow we had gotten on the subject of what each of us had been doing prior to starting our AT thru-hikes. It had surprised me at the time to find out we were in the same industry (maybe I wasn't paying attention -- wouldn't be the first time). I wouldn't have thought his career back then was anywhere near what I was doing for a living. On our thru-hikes we laughed quite a bit, enjoyed life on the Trail immensely, discussed serious topics a few times, were driven to complete our AT thru-hikes, were harsh and unrepentant with certain kinds of people on the Trail but each of us showed great kindness to other types of people we had encountered.
Canadian scientests are probably running this through the mice experiments as I write this. Their major discovery to this point: Never dangle a piece of cheese in front of an AT thru-hiker and expect a civilized response.
Datto
Another Kevin
04-15-2016, 15:00
An always-dry thin silk base layer weighs very little, is comfortable to sleep in, keeps bag clean from your own body's dirt, and keeps your body from directly contacting the fabric surface of the sleeping bag. I have successfully washed down bags in top-loaders, but for sure, if you have a choice, go with front-loader.
I always wonder when I hear the hiking pundits tell me what I'd be send home from Mountain Crossings. I've done hundred-mile hikes in reasonably difficult terrain before. If I've hauled my current gear over the Northville Placid and a big slug of the NY Long Path in the Catskills, why is forty miles in Georgia going to change my mind about what is and is not worth the weight?
A baselayer and pair of socks for sleeping, a bucket and piece of Sham-Wow, a coffee funnel, and a battery pack are perhaps the most frequent things I hear the Real Hikers telling me that I should abandon. I use all of them on just about every trip. Once in a while I even bring a pair of Crocs. When I bring them, I wear them.
But I don't need to justify my pack to anyone else. The guy who's telling me, "you don't need that," isn't the guy carrying it. I'm sure that my pack weight slows me down. I'm not in a hurry.
Oh, and my sleeping bag looks really nasty. I had an accident where the glue from a piece of duct tape got on it. I haven't found a good way to strip the glue that won't wreck either the DWR or the down, so the glue accumulates dust and dirt in that one patch. The rest of the bag gets clean when it needs it, but that one patch will always look gross, I'm afraid.
rocketsocks
04-15-2016, 15:16
I have successfully washed down bags in top-loaders, but for sure, if you have a choice, go with front-loader.I have too, just fill, skip the agitation mode and do it by hand, then go drain and spin mode by depressing lid switch...much easier on the knees than doing a bag in a bathtub.
Another Kevin
04-15-2016, 15:47
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 25 and 24 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
25) Floors in AT sheters are culinary disaster areas. If you lay your sleeping bag or sleeping pad directly onto an AT shelter floor there's a good chance you're going to get spaghetti or barbeque sauce or something even worse all over your equipment.
Instead, bring along some Tyvek (cut slightly larger than your sleeping pad/sleeping bag combo) to place under your sleeping pad/sleeping bag when sleeping in the AT shelters at night.
...
24) In case you didn't know this already, washing a down sleeping bag with standard laundry soap will immediately destroy the warmth of your down sleeping bag. Also, washing your down sleeping bag in a top-loading washing machine may destroy your sleeping bag.
Except for the digression into having a baselayer set aside for sleeping, these are things that I agree with 100%. Perhaps the first two on the whole list that I don't have reservations with. There's all sorts of **** on shelter floors (literally: I've seen mouse droppings, bird droppings, bat guano, ...) and having something between it and my gear is welcome. (On the rare occasions that I use shelters.) The Tyvek also serves me as a tent footprint if I'm pitching on something abrasive (hello, Catskill sandstone!), a doormat in the tent vestibule, and a bath mat so that I'm not standing or sitting in a mudhole when I'm taking a bath.
I just mentally ran through my list of sites on a two-week hike: It added up to 9 nights in my tent, 2 nights in shelters, 2 nights in towns. Three of the tent sites were next to shelters, and all three shelters were unoccupied by humans. (I was hiking a less-popular trail well outside of peak season.) I didn't use them because I didn't want to be sharing my bed with the nonhuman shelter guests. Still, using my tent instead of the shelters is another thing you say I won't be doing. I'm glad I'm a clueless weekender, because your description of the thru-hiker style doesn't appeal to me very much.
Further disclaimer: The planned two-week hike of which I speak turned into three shorter sections because of illness and injury. But the bailout points were both to the towns where I had motel stays planned, so the pattern of campsites didn't change. I just took a bunch of zeroes and picked up where I'd left off. Had it been a thru hike, it would have forced me into a nontraditional pattern. I would have lost about a week for the illness, and about six weeks for the injury, so would have had to leapfrog or flip-flop. But that sort of thing happens to a lot of thru-hikers who don't quit, as well as to a lot of those who do.
Another Kevin
04-15-2016, 15:49
I have too, just fill, skip the agitation mode and do it by hand, then go drain and spin mode by depressing lid switch...much easier on the knees than doing a bag in a bathtub.
The biggest single risk from doing down gear in a top-loader is that you'll rip the baffles (they're typically very fine no-seeum mesh) lifting it out of the tub while it's wet and heavy. In a front-loader, you can get your arms underneath to pick it up.
DuneElliot
04-15-2016, 16:15
Except for the digression into having a baselayer set aside for sleeping, these are things that I agree with 100%.
+1 on this. My sleepwear is extremely light and I am extremely picky about what I sleep in. My "pajamas" are going with me, and staying with me for a good night's sleep, no matter what.
Wouldn't you want to wash down sleeping bag (or jacket) with the same mild detergent or mild dish soap used on birds that are victims of oil spills?
Hiking partners - See, this is why I don't understand why Rumpus thread on a hiking partner wasn't taken seriously; was misunderstood; was flamed. She wasn't looking for a hiking partner as sub lover (not my cup of tea, but so what) but for someone who understood her. Yet she was dismissed by those who replied to her.
Wouldn't you want to wash down sleeping bag (or jacket) with the same mild detergent or mild dish soap used on birds that are victims of oil spills
From a risk/reward standpoint I wouldn't wash my down sleeping bag nor my down jacket with any soap that isn't specifically made for use with insulating down.
Reason: For an AT thru-hiker, a sleeping bag is extremely important piece of gear, quite costly to replace on-trail if damaged and the downstream ramifications of a damaged sleeping bag are considerable for an AT thru-hiker. If the down in a sleeping bag gets damaged, an AT thru-hiker is going to freeze at night. That means sleep will be terrible, body repairs won't take place as well they should, the AT thru-hiker may not be willing to make the miles needed and probably isn't going to be as happy as they should be on their AT thru-hike.
One of the biggest problems on this issue is actually obtaining the down-specific soap. That likely means the AT thru-hiker has to plan ahead to obtain the down-specific soap or plan to wash a sleeping bag in a town where there is a hiker-related store that carries the down-specific soap and isn't already sold-out. Stores being sold-out of certain thru-hiker type products is common for people who are toward the back of the AT pack/bubble -- the store may have in inventory lots of stuff that AT thru-hikers would never use and the store may not stock items that are really important to AT thru-hikers. The reason for this is their sales aren't all that dependent upon AT thru-hikers. Some LL Bean type guy out of a cubicle who comes to his/her store to buy for car camping or for an overnight campout is where the store's bread and butter lies.
The other thing is mental accuity disappears for some AT thru-hikers while on their AT thru-hike (I'm laughing as I write this) so planning is not quite as successful of an endeavor as what might happen if that same AT thru-hiker was back at his living room still working at a job. So an AT thru-hiker may intend to wash their sleeping bag at a particular town stop only to find there is no down-specific soap available in-town. So the washing of a sleeping bag gets punted up-trail. And then at the next town stop there's no down-specific soap in-town again.
Now anyone reading this from the comfort of their easy chair sitting in their living room might say, "Well, they should just buy the down-specific soap in a town where the soap is available and put it into their bounce box so it's available when they plan to wash their sleeping bag up-trail." Yes, that would be logical thinking of getting the sequence of planning steps done correctly.
On an AT thru-hike, planning and logic and sequencing doesn't always happen as easily as when you're back at home for some (many?) AT thru-hikers.
This is why some thru-hikers never wash their sleeping bag for their entire AT thru-hike -- it's too much work and thinking and stress to make it happen. It's easier to forget about that and just keep getting into a dirty, crushed sleeping bag every night at the shelter.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 28 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
28) Comedy is rampant on the Appalachian Trail. Hilarity abounds.
Prior to starting my northbound AT thru-hike, a past thru-hiker had told me, "Things are funny on the Appalachian Trail."
I'd responded, "Funny -- you mean weird?" which was my suspicion.
"No, you will laugh a lot on your thru-hike."
Of all the comedy clubs I have been to, of all the places in the world I have visited, the Appalachian Trail is easily the funniest place I've ever been.
The belly laugh humor started for me on the mountaintop plateau at Springer Mountain, GA and just continued north day-after-day from there.
How can you, on the initial days of your AT thru-hike, meet another thru-hiker for the first time along the Trail, see he's brought his ice hockey equipment with him on his AT thru-hike and not bust out laughing? Hockey stick, hockey puck, hockey jersey, hockey paraphanalia hanging off the outside of his backpack -- how can you see that and not have to strain to keep from laughing out loud so you don't embarrass the other hiker?
Of course, you're very naive in the early days of your AT thru-hike and believe this is one of the funniest things you'll see on your entire thru-hike.
You're wrong Chester -- it gets better.
The next day, you're hiking down hill and that guy with the ice hockey equipment is ahead of you. He's holstered his hockey stick into his backpack but the hockey stick is protruding out the top of his backpack by four feet. He's moving along downhill at a quick pace and the next thing you know, the hockey stick gets caught in the overhead branches and he's horizontal before slamming into the ground on his back. You're starting to bust out laughing again and then that hiker lets loose with a deluxe expletive that echos off the mountainsides.
That day was one of the few times on my AT thru-hike where I purposely walked back up a hill. This so the other hiker didn't see me laughing so hard. I must have belly-laughed for ten minutes.
You can't get that kind of humor back home -- you have to come to the woods and be in the mud. It's a law of the Universe.
It seemed humorous events happened all the time -- pretty much every day or more often -- the further north I went on my AT thru-hike.
Please bring your sense of humor with you on your AT thru-hike -- it will help you deal with the incessent rain.
Datto
PS: Me on my northbound AT thru-hike, arriving at Lehigh Gap in Pennsylvania, looking ahead for where the Trail went after the gap, pointing ahead with my hiking pole saying out loud, "Well the AT can't go up there. It's too steep."
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 29 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
29) If you are lookng for an immersive experienece on and from your AT thru-hike, the very best thing you can do is reduce or cut-off completely all two-way communications back home. Back to your friends, back to your siblings, back to your family, back to your previous co-workers, back to your drinkin' buddies.
Many people here on Whiteblaze will never in their entire lifetime have any idea what I'm referring to in that line above or why something that drastic is necessary. Some of you who are a 2017 thru-hiker in-planning may not know what I'm referring to until maybe Day 60 of your AT thru-hike.
In this day of being in moment-by-moment multi-tasking mode for all of Society, you are given this extremely valuable gift where you can get past all of that weight, that baggage, and immerse yourself into life on the Trail during your AT thru-hike.
Don't screw it up.
People back home are going to want to bring you up-to-date with all the things they're involved with that YOU -- as an AT thru-hiker -- should of course want to know about. Plane crashes, Kimye having problems again, some waste-of-time event in politics that you should be SO interested in because it makes a difference when you're trying to make miles on the AT in the rain.
If you are taking telehone calls all the time during your AT thru-hike there's a good chance you're going to receive calls like, "The heat pump whizinator has done gone bad again -- can you stop that silly thing you're doing in the weeds and come back here and fix it? We're all freezing." Or a friend of yours calls you to say, "I knocked up my girlfriend Delilah and I need you to drive back here and be in the wedding party." You try to beg off since, well, you're not being followed by your car on your AT thru-hike. Then your friend says, "You mean you can't come back here for a week and help me out here Bud? What is it you're doing again that's so important?"
Sure, you can try to set expectations ahead of time for people back home who don't have any understanding what or why you're doing what you're doing. At the first opportunity they're going to forget what you had explained to them previously and think you're perfectly capable of doing for them what you've always done back home. After all you're just, like, car camping, right? What's the problem? Then, they're also going to certainly want to tell you all the usual useless things going on in the world that have no bearing on you while you're thru-hiking the AT.
That'll mess you up. That'll mess with your head.
If you're an AT thru-hiker in-planning you probably don't realize how susceptable you're going to be to thinking about stuff going on back home or events occuring in the world. As soon as you let that Trojan Horse into your AT thru-hike on a daily basis there's an increased chance you're not going to finish and you'll be going home early. Because the whizinator went out and you're the only one who knows how to apply the proper amount of the pertuki to the whizinator.
Events happening back home is one of the common reasons AT thru-hikers stop their hike.
The best way to keep all this interference from messing with your head (it will mess with your head on your thru-hike -- you have all day long to think about stuff) is to simply not be available for calls or immediate response on anything. Eventually, even the most clueless people back home will figure out how they can live without your usual assistance and involvement without you having to hear about ISIL getting a nuke or the latest mass shooting in Dinkster, Iowa or all those wildfires causing mass destruction at Lake Tahoe -- you are near Tahoe, right?
When you have to make or return a telephone call to someone not directly related to your AT thru-hike activities, or handle emails from back home, do so in-town where and when you're can get yourself prepared ahead of time for the impact and onslaught.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 29 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
29) If you are lookng for an immersive experienece on and from your AT thru-hike, the very best thing you can do is reduce or cut-off completely all two-way communications back home. Back to your friends, back to your siblings, back to your family, back to your previous co-workers, back to your drinkin' buddies.
Many people here on Whiteblaze will never in their entire lifetime have any idea what I'm referring to in that line above or why something that drastic is necessary. Some of you who are a 2017 thru-hiker in-planning may not know what I'm referring to until maybe Day 60 of your AT thru-hike.
In this day of being in moment-by-moment multi-tasking mode for all of Society, you are given this extremely valuable gift where you can get past all of that weight, that baggage, and immerse yourself into life on the Trail during your AT thru-hike.
Don't screw it up.
People back home are going to want to bring you up-to-date with all the things they're involved with that YOU -- as an AT thru-hiker -- should of course want to know about. Plane crashes, Kimye having problems again, some waste-of-time event in politics that you should be SO interested in because it makes a difference when you're trying to make miles on the AT in the rain.
If you are taking telehone calls all the time during your AT thru-hike there's a good chance you're going to receive calls like, "The heat pump whizinator has done gone bad again -- can you stop that silly thing you're doing in the weeds and come back here and fix it? We're all freezing." Or a friend of yours calls you to say, "I knocked up my girlfriend Delilah and I need you to drive back here and be in the wedding party." You try to beg off since, well, you're not being followed by your car on your AT thru-hike. Then your friend says, "You mean you can't come back here for a week and help me out here Bud? What is it you're doing again that's so important?"
Sure, you can try to set expectations ahead of time for people back home who don't have any understanding what or why you're doing what you're doing. At the first opportunity they're going to forget what you had explained to them previously and think you're perfectly capable of doing for them what you've always done back home. After all you're just, like, car camping, right? What's the problem? Then, they're also going to certainly want to tell you all the usual useless things going on in the world that have no bearing on you while you're thru-hiking the AT.
That'll mess you up. That'll mess with your head.
If you're an AT thru-hiker in-planning you probably don't realize how susceptable you're going to be to thinking about stuff going on back home or events occuring in the world. As soon as you let that Trojan Horse into your AT thru-hike on a daily basis there's an increased chance you're not going to finish and you'll be going home early. Because the whizinator went out and you're the only one who knows how to apply the proper amount of the pertuki to the whizinator.
Events happening back home is one of the common reasons AT thru-hikers stop their hike.
The best way to keep all this interference from messing with your head (it will mess with your head on your thru-hike -- you have all day long to think about stuff) is to simply not be available for calls or immediate response on anything. Eventually, even the most clueless people back home will figure out how they can live without your usual assistance and involvement without you having to hear about ISIL getting a nuke or the latest mass shooting in Dinkster, Iowa or all those wildfires causing mass destruction at Lake Tahoe -- you are near Tahoe, right?
When you have to make or return a telephone call to someone not directly related to your AT thru-hike activities, or handle emails from back home, do so in-town where and when you're can get yourself prepared ahead of time for the impact and onslaught.
Datto
Do you have children, or parents? I would never put a beloved family member through such worries. Nor myself. Ted K. (the Unbomber) I ain't. And I love my family too much to be out of contact with them for months or even weeks at a time. Green martyrdom (peregrination) isn't for me. My own hike. It will be hard enough for me to go a month between visits with them.
So cold, Datto, so cold.
Do you have children, or parents?
Yes -- did on my AT thru-hike.
I called them and my friends back home sparingly while on my AT thru-hike and had preped them ahead of time as best I could that I'm not going to be immediately available for anything. That any contact would be intermittent and sporadic at best but that I would have an on-line journal where they could follow along with me on my AT thru-hike. I did let many people know my intended schedule (that schedule went out the window rather quickly on my AT thru-hike as expected) and told them my maildrop locations and how to address boxes sent to me. That was always lots of fun to receive care packages and I received many maildrops from friends, relatives and from quite a few people I'd never met in person. Some of the funniest things were in the maildrops -- the people at the Blueberry Patch told me I had set the record for the most packages ever received by an AT thru-hiker at the Blueberry Patch (including one chocolate brassiere which was quite the hit with my trail friends).
On my AT thru-hike, a bear ate a day-hiker near Smoky Mountain National Park at about the time I had told people before my hike that I would be passing thorugh that area. The people at work were convinced the bear had eaten me and the story all over the Nightly News broadcasts was about me.
When I got to some town (might have been Mountain Momma's on the north side of the Smokys -- can't remember for sure) I called the super secret toll-free 800 number at work via pay phone just to chat with my friends from work. "We were so worried about you -- it's been all over the news about a hiker getting eaten alive and we thought it was you!"
I explained to my friends over the telephone (you would have to know the fear my friends at that workplace lived with just getting out of bed every morning -- not different than most people in Society I suppose). I told them a lady on a day-hike near the location I was at had decided it'd be a good idea to hand-feed a bear the pieces of salmon she'd brought along on her day-hike. So the bear ate the salmon, then ate her.
Then my friends proceeded to tell me about all the financial straights the company had gotten into snce I'd left the company and all the layoffs in-process (leveraged buyout, execs made millions, everyone else in the company went by the wayside). I never called the people at my company again during my AT thru-hike although I talked with all of them in person after completing my AT thru-hike and returning back home. Each one said, "How'd you get so skinny? Is that what that hike did to you?"
I'd call my mom every once in a while from the Trail (maybe every two months or so). She'd say the same funny things every time I called her from the AT -- "Are you still doing this? Can't you find something safer to do? Don't you have a life?" Later on after my AT thru-hike I'd changed my career life around to allow me to include extended adventuring on a regular basis. The irregular calls to my mom while I was adventurng would be humorous as she'd answer the telehone, realize it was me and start the conversation saying the exact same things. "Are you still doing this? What's wrong with you?" and she and I would laugh because by then, she had gotten used to it. When I wasn't adventuring I'd call my mom once a week (I've lived many different places) but when it was time to get on with another adventure, I'd let her know so she wasn't expecting a regularly scheduled telephone call.
There is no doubt AT thru-hikers will take advantage of every crutch possible during the early stages of their AT thru-hike (I sure did). After not too long, trail life and fellow AT thru-hikers become very important to an AT thru-hiker. That becomes your life while you're on your AT thru-hike. The life back home -- that becomes very distant in retrospect. By the time an AT thru-hiker reaches Katahdin, they're a completely independent individual, have the highest of confidence and are enveloped in happiness and peace. That is one of the reasons some thru-hikers will not summit Katahdin right away and may wait in Millinocket, ME for days or even weeks -- it would mean, for them, the fantastic experience of their AT thru-hike is over and a return to Society is forthcoming.
Datto
One other thing -- on my AT thru-hike journal, by default, comments were allowed which, at the time when I'd started my thru-hke, sounded like a good idea.
Before I'd reached much into Virginia I had to shut off all comments to my on-line AT thru-hike journal because some of my frends were inserting all kinds of BS into my journal comment pages -- just for kicks. I guess they thought those would be funny. Oh Geez.
I've never allowed much in the way of comments on any of my subsequent on-line hiking journals (PCT and CDT journals) except when comments got mistakenly engaged by accident one time.
The very start of my AT thru-hike on-line journal is here -- the comments didn't get transferred when I'd moved my AT journal to Trailjournals (which is probably a good thing):
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?trailname=5030
Datto
A journal is not the same as face to face communication.
But, by all means, throw your children or parents out of your mental nest. There are many loving parents willing to take them in while one seeks Nirvana on the trail.
They will worry about you, just as I hope you will worry about them.
So is it that you're worried that if you start an AT thru-hike you will miss your family too much?
Datto
Whiskey_Richard
04-17-2016, 03:32
HYOH maybe even parent your own kids(PYOK)?
Traveler
04-17-2016, 06:32
Datto's comment was, "If you are lookng for an immersive experienece on and from your AT thru-hike, the very best thing you can do is reduce or cut-off completely all two-way communications back home. Back to your friends, back to your siblings, back to your family, back to your previous co-workers, back to your drinkin' buddies." His comment(s) are from the perspective of the hiker, not from the hikers family or sundry relationships and are suggestions in how to avoid common problems on the trail.
Cutting communications off completely would not be practical for close family members, which is why Datto said reduce or cut off communication completely. Reducing contact with home makes sense due to the emotional impact being away from home a long time can present. Couple that with the various minor problems at home that most conversations will gravitate to, they can grow in the hikers mind and can eventually take them off the trail. If someone needs to call home several times a day to manage problems or assuage a worried spouse, a through hike may not work well for them. Reducing that to once a day or once every other day or two can be a benefit to everyone or be the limiting factor.
The "cutting off of all communications" part of Datto's suggestion was followed by a litany of characters one can probably completely shut down. Frankly, I agree with not visiting the Facebook pages of coworkers, hear of the latest local watering hole antics or see what the T-Ball coach needs for this months donation is not beneficial at all and probably can be eliminated until the hike is over.
So is it that you're worried that if you start an AT thru-hike you will miss your family too much?
Datto
I see no reason to become one of those medieval-era monks who leaves all to live in desert when there are loved ones who need him, and vice-versa, whether for corporal reasons or for the heart. And of course we would miss each other, hence zero days with each other, a la AWOL's book.
Datto's comment was, "If you are lookng for an immersive experienece on and from your AT thru-hike, the very best thing you can do is reduce or cut-off completely all two-way communications back home. Back to your friends, back to your siblings, back to your family, back to your previous co-workers, back to your drinkin' buddies." His comment(s) are from the perspective of the hiker, not from the hikers family or sundry relationships and are suggestions in how to avoid common problems on the trail.
Cutting communications off completely would not be practical for close family members, which is why Datto said reduce or cut off communication completely. Reducing contact with home makes sense due to the emotional impact being away from home a long time can present. Couple that with the various minor problems at home that most conversations will gravitate to, they can grow in the hikers mind and can eventually take them off the trail. If someone needs to call home several times a day to manage problems or assuage a worried spouse, a through hike may not work well for them. Reducing that to once a day or once every other day or two can be a benefit to everyone or be the limiting factor.
The "cutting off of all communications" part of Datto's suggestion was followed by a litany of characters one can probably completely shut down. Frankly, I agree with not visiting the Facebook pages of coworkers, hear of the latest local watering hole antics or see what the T-Ball coach needs for this months donation is not beneficial at all and probably can be eliminated until the hike is over.
I'm talking about staying in touch with your children or parents.
bamboo bob
04-17-2016, 07:48
People often take their dog simply because they have no one to leave it with at home.
Traillium
04-17-2016, 07:52
“There is no 'away'.” Or the John Muir idea of everything being tied to everything else …
Yep, I'll miss my wife and beloved partner of nearly 48 years. I'll know that she's missing me — and that will be the harder part … I will certainly send my sleeping location to her every evening to confirm that I'm settled. I'll text her at least once a day, including a photo so we at least share a part of that moment. I'll more sporadically maintain a blog. I'll really relax and enjoy four or five days of slack-packing from home as I pass around our town. Of course, I'll continue to be connected with her.
I'll also be passing through two major cities early on the Bruce Trail, albeit in quite green corridors. I'll be close to various small towns as I continue — and I'll be staying out of them! I'll never be farther than perhaps 10km from where someone lives. I don't expect I'll get beyond moderate urban light pollution until the second half of my hike.
So will I be 'away'?
As a botanist and a naturalist, I will certainly be more deeply 'with' and 'in' the environments I'm hiking through.
I look at this thru-hike of mine as connecting with different elements of my life in differing degrees, more deeply with the natural components, more lightly with my fellow humans.
Those connections and their richness are what makes life worth living for me.
Bruce Traillium
squeezebox
04-17-2016, 11:06
Back when I was actively married, and had a small child, I probably would have called often. But that's not my life right now. An ex-wife and a grown son. They do not need me every day. I need the time for myself to clean up my head, and run the rest of my life better than I have in the past.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 30 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
30) Prior to starting my northbound AT thru-hike, past thru-hikers told me there was a good chance I would see people I'd first met at Springer Mountain when I summitted Katahdin.
When I was rolling that around in my head prior to starting my AT thru-hike, it just didn't seem possible. All the combination of different hiking speeds, the likely percentage of people who would not finish their thru-hike, the difference in the number and duration of town stops -- the idea and likelyhood just didn't seem to be possible.
When I summitted Katahdin, I unexpectedly met up with three AT thru-hikers who I'd first met at Springer Mountain, GA. That amazed me because I was so late getting to Katahdin (my AT thru-hike lasted 195 calendar days end-to-end which is significantly longer than normal -- you should not take that many days for a thru-hike as the norm).
I don't have much of an explanation for it. To this day it's still hard for me to fathom. It's something beyond coincidence.
Datto
There are many loving parents willing to take them in while one seeks Nirvana on the trail.
Smells Like Hiker Spirit.
For the initiated, that's called Deet.
Like Nirvana. That's a statement as well as an intimation.
Datto
30) Prior to starting my northbound AT thru-hike, past thru-hikers told me there was a good chance I would see people I'd first met at Springer Mountain when I summitted Katahdin.
Why surprising? Laws of averages and all that. Even in the early '90s there were ten or fifteen hikers starting every day in peak season.
I hiked nobo with the herd for two months. Quit in VA in early June. Went to Baxter, climbed Katahdin, started walking south, on 9/11. I met Ward (again) and Lagunatic (again) while still at Baxter. Wingfoot (again) a couple days later. Between there and Monson, I met at least a half dozen hikers I'd started with or hiked with in the spring.
I planned the sobo trip to hit "peak finishing season" and I guess I got it right.
But, by all means, throw your children or parents out of your mental nest...
They will worry about you, just as I hope you will worry about them.
I posed your situation to another long-distance hiker today. A woman. I mentioned you're very close to your family, probably live in Massachusetts, looking to do an AT thru-hike. thinks can't be without face-to-face visits with the family. Is looking for/hoping for a family get-together in-person on the Trail once every 30 days or so during an AT thru-hike.
The initial response back to me was, "There's a thru-hiker who likes being around their family?"
Well yes, long-distance hikers do have an unusual perspective and sense of humor compared to the rest of the world. It's one of the many things that makes being around long-distance hikers so much fun.
After a long pause and considerable thought, the other long-distance hiker said to me, "Those family visits to the Trail -- that'll never happen."
As far as family, right now, as I write this, there's a guy in the backyard of my cabin here on this mountaintop. He had a stroke several months back along with a few mini-strokes since then -- after-shocks I guess you could call them. The healthcare professionals huddled up and eventually gave him the okey-dokey to start leading life again. He knows if you have to do recuperation from a stroke there are few other places on the planet as quiet and as scenic as my cabin. So he's here visiting and continuing his recuperation period. He refuses to use a cane or a walker to get around (this is sometimes just the way people are and sure isn't the first time I've run into this). Activities you and I take for granted come at a very slow pace. Forty-five minutes ago he was shown how to use hiking poles for the very first time. One of the best things invented by man -- he's going to want Harbor Freight to be carrying them in-stock soon. A while ago I looked out the back window -- using the hiking poles he was shuffling at a rate of, I'm guessing, somewhere around two feet per 30 seconds (which, in perspective, is blazing Indy 500 hiking speed). The daily gathering of eggs from the girls in the chicken bastion out back is taking place and he didn't want to miss the event.
More later.
Datto
Sorry about that -- back now. Doug Flutie was on Dancing With The Stars tonight. Every man in America was saying, "Give me some instruction and that beautiful woman, I could do that."
As far as my family goes, my dad died young. I was there.
On my AT thru-hike I came into a particular town and got setup at the hostel. At that hostel another thru-hiker had said to me, "There's a dance club in town", then showed me a map on how to get there. It was 1.75 miles away from the hostel -- on the AT I wouldn't go 0.4 off-trail for water. For a dance club on a thru-hike I could go 1.75. No problem.
At the dance club the dance floor was sunken -- a half-level below the street entrance level, surrounded by a pipe railing. I bellied up to the pipe railing to see what was going on down below -- two town women were on the dance floor cutting a rug with two thru-hikers. Even on a screen pass I couldn't do those kind of moves.
I'd walked over to the bar (under-bar top was brightly lighted -- I notice those kinds of things) and pulled up a chair two seats down from another hiker and ordered a Bud. The other hiker down the bar from me was drinking Jameson's and was toasted.
Pretty soon the two town woman from the dance floor arrived upstairs and (Huh!) a gathering of AT thru-hikers followed the two women over to near where I was sitting. The women said aloud, "We like it when you hikers come into town -- the local boys don't like to dance."
In my head I was speaking for the entire AT thru-hiking community in the bar -- "We like it when you women come over wearing those short skirts." Of course I didn't say that out loud. Heck no. The circle of AT thru-hikers surrounding the two women silently shouted the same. No need.
My dad was revered. One day I was walking down the sidewalk of the small Indiana town where I grew up and independently two guys who I'd know from high school came over to shoot the breeze with me. After catching up on what was new each one had asked me if I could help them get a job with my dad. These two guys were hours apart.
At the time I'd thought to myself why would anyone want to work for that bastard?
People loved my dad and he got along with everyone in the world -- except for one person. That was me. I don't know what his problem was.
The guy, the thru-hiker, sitting a couple of chairs down from me at the dance club -- at the time I didn't know how it would change my hike. My hike of the Appalachian Trail. To be honest, I was too busy gawking at the town women.
I really hadn't known much what my dad did for a living. All I knew was he got up every single day at 5:00am. At the time, I'd considered that the dumbest thing someone could possible agree to do -- getting up so ridiculously early just to, well, meet the world. Who would voluntarily choose to do that? Seemed insane. Crazy. That's when you came home from the bar using your fake ID. That's when the day ended, not when the day started.
I had been hitting the bars in my hometown one evening and ran into a girl I had previously dated for a while. After we had stopped dating she'd gone to work at the mill for my dad. She was always lots of fun and we got to drinking in that bar (can't remember the name of that place right now -- maybe it will come to me while I'm writing this). When we were sitting at the bar she'd asked if I'd ever remembered my dad being gone for two weeks. I'd told her my mom might have mentioned it sometime to me but I really hadn't cared much what my parents were doing at the time -- they were old and nobody cared.
That girl had filled me in, much in a jovial manner, what had happened during that particular two weeks. Seems a wildcat strike had occurred at the mill (that's a labor strike occuring on the spot without much/any notice). My dad had been in the plant at the time and had gotten wind of it -- maybe 30 minutes notice. He'd called the people who reported to him to let them know -- most had gone home for the day and he'd called them at home. This "mill" where my dad worked -- heh, when it was being built it was the second largest construction project in the world. My dad worked for a Fortune 100 company and this was easily the newest and most productive and profitable plant in the company. Bad things happen when people disappear from a plant this size -- many millions of dollars lost and even more money to get things up and running afterward if all the usual stopped. My dad knew that -- so did the people who had worked for my dad..
So all those people -- including the girl who I'd dated at one time -- stopped everything and had driven like banshees back to the mill. All the mill entrances were closed by strikers (who were holding rifles and got to pointing at anyone trying to enter the plant). The people who worked for my dad drove out to the boonies, somehow got over the concertina fence (if you've never seen concertina -- it's 100 people cutting you with switchblades), then jumped an interior barbed wire fence and hiked two miles back to the center of the plant.
All remained inside the plant for two weeks. They had to break into the vending machines to get food for a while. They'd go sixteen hour shifts, kept stuff working, kept things from having to go through all the process of restarting giant pieces of aparatus which would have required governmental intervention and approval.
The effort had saved the company eight figures. That was back when eight figures was quite a bit of money. Today it's a Wall Street bonus.
My dad had made sure the people who had jumped the concertina were properly appreciated by the company. In very secret meetings (labor would have trashed their cars and houses) the company and my dad presented each of those employees with an on-the-spot check for, in today's dollars, $50,000. Each.
I'd had no idea. Maybe he wasn't such a bastard after all.
Here at Datto's Cabin, Pearson is the only legit, certified dance contest winner. I can bring in stage-level equipment enough to have Tipi Walter from Whiteblaze hear the beat a few mountains over in Tellico Plains, Tennessee. You get Pearson a goin' and well, the down beat of the Universe changes.
More later.
Datto
DuneElliot
04-19-2016, 08:52
On my AT thru-hike, a bear ate a day-hiker near Smoky Mountain National Park at about the time I had told people before my hike that I would be passing thorugh that area. The people at work were convinced the bear had eaten me and the story all over the Nightly News broadcasts was about me.
I'm curious about this as I was under the impression that there had been no bear-related fatalities on the AT in almost 50 years. I can't find any info either, and it's not listed under the List of Fatal Bear Attacks in America. Did she die of other causes and was then consumed by the bear?
Did she die of other causes and was then consumed by the bear?
Naw, the bear ate her. The bear eating situation wasn't on the AT -- it was near/inside the border of SMNP. Here's a link to one of the articles I just found -- don't know for sure if the account is accurate since the article says the woman was an "experienced hiker" which is not likely correct.
http://www.tennesseehistory.com/archive/GSMNPbear.html
Datto
since the article says the woman was an "experienced hiker" which is not likely correct.
By the way, the world's definition of an experienced hiker is one who can identify the difference between macadam and gravel.
Datto
On my AT thru-hike there was a guy (don't think he was a thru-hiker) up ahead of me (somewhere around Mohican Outdoor Center near the PA/New Jersey line) who had decided he would wrestle a rattlesnake in order to impress a girl. The rattlesnake went along with it for about 45 minutes before the rattlesnake finally bit the guy. Turned out the guy had one of those really bad reactions to the venom -- the healthcare professionals were able to save him.
My description of the incident, after hearing about it word of mouth and then reading the newstory about it, is below -- the reference to high heels in that entry is due to me seeing earlier on my AT thru-hike a sign next to another trail stating, "Important Notice - High heels can result in accidents." First it was pole points damaging the Trail, now this.
Einstein the snake charmer entry:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=176606
The high heels entry is here:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=173714
Datto
DuneElliot
04-19-2016, 13:52
Naw, the bear ate her. The bear eating situation wasn't on the AT -- it was near/inside the border of SMNP. Here's a link to one of the articles I just found -- don't know for sure if the account is accurate since the article says the woman was an "experienced hiker" which is not likely correct.
http://www.tennesseehistory.com/archive/GSMNPbear.html
Datto
Thanks. Somehow I missed her on the list of Fatal Bear Attacks...found it now I could narrow down the year.
Sarcasm the elf
04-19-2016, 14:22
By the way, the world's definition of an experienced hiker is one who can identify the difference between macadam and gravel.
Datto
Hey look at that, I learned a new word!
mac·ad·am
məˈkadəm/
noun
broken stone of even size used in successively compacted layers for surfacing roads and paths, and typically bound with tar or bitumen.
Always thought macadam was the British word for asphalt.
http://www.macadamco.com/asphalt-and-macadam-or-is-it-mcadam/
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 31 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
31) "I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail to bring attention to all the disadvantaged midgets who work at ice cream shops. When reaching for the very bottom of the ice cream containers, sometimes midgets fall into the surrounding ice. Those containers should be made shorter to protect the safety of midget workers. I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail so everyone knows of the problem."
Do not take-on or bring along some cause associated with your upcoming AT thru-hike. Are you serious? Isn't the normal everyday savagery of an AT thru-hike not enough for you that you have to carry along extra baggage?
This hairbrained idea is no different than bringing a brick along with you on your AT thru-hike so you have a place to rest your coffee mug in the morning.
If just the normal everyday 15% chance of completing your AT thru-hike is not low enough for you already, bringing along all the extra work, mind-games and baggage from a having a cause is going to greatly diminish even your already slim chance for completion. If you're somehow taking on this cause to help gather money to fund your AT thru-hike (which is ridiculous) see Tip #1 above.
Datto
Also, if you walk up to a shelter full of AT thru-hikers and start spouting off about your midget cause, many of the AT thru-hikers are going to think it's a skit you have thunked up while you were hiking that day. They're going to expect comedy and thoughtful antics to go along with the skit.
When those thru-hikers find out you're serious about your midget cause and there's no forthcoming comedy, there's a good chance none of them will ever talk to you much again because they'll think you're a lunatic.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 32 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
32) You must carry a personal shelter of some sort in your backpack while you are hiking on the Appalachian Trail (tent/tarp/bivy/hammock). If somehow you have gotten it into your thick head that you can save weight and save money by not carrying a shelter in your backpack, you are in for a BIG surprise when that fact is exposed to your fellow thru-hikers. It wll be discovered and you will be shunned faster than an Amish woman with a tattoo.
Some people, still slays me this happens, think they can make people carve out real estate in the shelter just because they're not carrying a shelter and so everyone else should just cooperate.
Here are the some of the possible outcomes if you don't have a shelter in your backpack during your AT thru-hike (just so you know ahead of time and don't ever make this foolish and irresponsible decision):
1) No one will make room for you at a shelter and you'll be sleeping in the rain wearing your raincoat, sitting in that good mud along the outside wall of the shelter. In case you didn't know already, it rains every six days out of four on the Appalachian Trail.
2) If you persist, one day you'll arrive at a shelter, head down to get water and when you come back up the hill you'll find your backpack and poles are gone. That is how despised you'll be if you don't carry a tent/tarp/bivy or hammock in your backpack on the Appalachian Trail.
Datto
rainydaykid
04-19-2016, 20:13
1) An AT thru-hike where you walk past every blaze, enjoy town stops, take about six-months to complete will cost you $5,000 door to door, not including gear replenishment along the Trail. If you plan to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail with less, you're wildly fooling yourself.
Datto
I did it for $2300 in 2010, took 5 months. I had $4500 total budgeted, though. I start my 2016 thru this Friday. I'll be more extravagant this time, but doubt I'll spend over 4k. Thru hikes can be done cheaply if you are disciplined with money. I didn't feel like I was being too cheap to enjoy it though.
Thanks. I've not been able to get a pair of hiking shoes of any type to last much more than 450 miles when on a long-distance hike (although I have stretched a pair further than that to my detriment). I went through, as I remember, five pairs of hiking shoes (those were Saloman trail runners on my AT thru-hike, New Balance on every hike after that). I pull out the existing footpads inside the shoes that the shoes come delivered with and instead, substitue Spenco inserts in their place (model was HIker from Spenco if those are available now) which has made my feet oh so much more comfortable. Also, when I started my AT thru-hike I wore 10.5 sized street shoes. Previous AT thru-hikers had advised me my feet would grow 1.5 sizes or more (thanks everyone here) so I was prepared when my feet started flattenng out lengthwise and width-wise. Today I wear a 13.5 4W shoe.
Datto
Get Merrells. I had a pair last me 1800 miles, replaced them at Rockfish Gap, wore those to Katahdin, and 400 miles of hikes after I got home before I trashed them. I wore the same shoe size the whole way. Still wear a 10.5, same size I've worn for 20 years.
On my northbound AT thru-hike I traded stocks three times and made enough profit to cover all the costs for my AT thru-hike, all the costs for my AT gear, all the costs for travel to and from the AT and all the costs post-hike until money started rolling in again.
I wouldn't imply that was the norm nor would I ever suggest that approach as a valid funding method for funding an AT thru-hke. It would be crazy for an AT thru-hker to bank on that working for them.
Reason: It was an outlier.
Someone who is a prospective 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker who expects to pass every blaze carrying their backpack and is one who likely enjoys town stops (this will be almost everyone) you should have $5,000 in cash (in 2016 dollars) available to you when you leave your house to go to the Trail. If you don't, the risks begin increasing significantly that you will run out of money before Katahdin (a common reason why AT thru-hikers north of West Virginia leave the Trail).
Datto
Someone who is a prospective 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker who expects to pass every blaze carrying their backpack and is one who likely enjoys town stops (this will be almost everyone) you should have $5,000 in cash (in 2016 dollars) available to you when you leave your house to go to the Trail. If you don't, the risks begin increasing significantly that you will run out of money before Katahdin (a common reason why AT thru-hikers north of West Virginia leave the Trail).
Datto
This strikes me as being just about the right amount to budget. I've done several 6 week long sections, and they all came in at $800 per month, and I am not extravagant. For six months that would be close to $5000.
AlyontheAT2016
04-20-2016, 15:38
This strikes me as being just about the right amount to budget. I've done several 6 week long sections, and they all came in at $800 per month, and I am not extravagant. For six months that would be close to $5000.
I keep hearing about how a thru costs over $5000 or $800/month but I've never seen a breakdown of what that $800 is actually spent on. How many hotel stays versus hostel stays? How much per resupply? Does that $5000 include gear or not? How many beers does this include? And etc?
But, by all means, throw your children or parents out of your mental nest. They will worry about you, just as I hope you will worry about them.
My family. Heh. Let's just call them different. That's the only way I can think to spin it in a positive manner.
See John, he was a good kid. We started high school together. He joined the band in the horn section, had a good sense of humor, eventually graduated ahead of me in my class (which says a lot). John doesn't know this even today but he gave me at least four concussions. That I can remember anyway. A concussion is where your mind says, "Okay, back to the huddle." while your body says, "Nope. Sit back down." John, with Bob on the other side of the defensive line, were declared, by the powers to be, the best pair of defensive ends in Indiana. There was only one word missing from that description and that was the word "ever".
John went on to Notre Dame to play football and be mentioned in Sports Illustrated. Eventually the drive to become a doctor took over and John would go on to med school and become a physician.
John was my dad's doctor. When I met up with John as my dad was laying in a hospital bed dying, John let me know this would be the last time my dad would be coming to the hospital.
Of course my dad would have none of that kind of thinking. Cardiologists and other specialists showed up with data and medical opinion and a couple of plumber snakes -- all to no avail. My dad was convinced he had inhaled sawdust in the basement of the house. The sawdust would eventually clear and he would be fine. Of course the healthcare professionals knew better.
My mom, dad and I started getting along, finally, at about the time I turned twenty-five. We started seeing the benefits of the other's point of view (them more so than me in the beginning).
One day I had come home to visit with my folks and after the usual catching up I had asked my dad how things were going at work. He smiled and started to tell me, then stopped. He started over again, then stopped again. Eventually he said to me, "This job may not be worth it." It was a shocking statement coming from my dad since he had been a company man for decades.
I would go on to my own epiphany in that same light. Someone higher up in the company where I had worked once told me my biggest character flaw was that I was too empathetic. That is true. I am very empathetic -- that's the reason why I knew I'd never reach to any level higher than Director at a big company. I had no taste for ruining lives just because the company made one more miss-step.
There's a show on television these days called "The Boonies". One of the families in that show lives in an elevated cabin on stilts -- a tree house. Above the entrance doorway to their tree house sits a sign saying IHFHI. I guess they had had it too.
Another relative had shown up on-scene at the hospital where my dad was dying. After a day or two, that other relative became quite miffed my dad had not died yet -- seems they were chewing up all their benefit time at work. Why couldn't my dad just die so they had vacation time left for the year? That relative eventually booked on out of there. My dad still kicking.
Eventually my dad came to the final realization he was on his death bed. The disappointment showing in my dad's face and in his conversations. He'd had so many things he'd wanted to do, things he'd wanted to experience, things on his grand to-do list. How could this have possibly happened?
It's not as if it's just my immediate family who is screwed up. When my mom and dad moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana (because my dad had a great career opportunity), the other relatives in Pennsylvania refused to talk to my mom and dad for years. We became the designated black sheep of the family. My dad would sometimes call back to one of the relatives in Pennsylvania and as soon as the other relative would realize it was my dad, the other relative would hang up the phone. Click. Happened more than once.
That had bothered my dad quite a bit in the years following our move to Indiana. My mom would sometimes write letters to my dad's family back in Pennsylvania and bring them up to date with the goings on in Indiana. But those letters just seemed to enter into the black hole of Pennsylvania, never to be acknowledges again.
When my dad died, it was just my mom and I. Neither of us had any idea of what to do. Did we need an autopsy? No. Did we have a funeral director selected so they could come pick up the body? No.
We had very little idea where to start with funeral arrangements or even how to pay for it. The state the family finances of my mom and dad were unknown (my dad always took care of things) and neither my mom nor I knew where to find any of the necessary papers to start figuring it out. We were doing that at the same time as getting funeral arrangements made, getting people invited to the funeral, getting a gravesite selected (my dad had wanted to be buried in Arlington but my mom would have none of that) and getting a headstone selected (I had discovered my dad had already picked it out and my mom thought it was ugly so that was quite the conversation with my mom).
At that same time, I had just moved into a four bedroom two-and-a-half bath subdivision house in another city and thought there was a good chance my mom would be coming to live with me.
It was about that time I had discovered my mom didn't even know how to write a check.
I was at my mom's house for more than six weeks getting things figured out 18/7, sometimes 20/7. That and teaching my mom the wily ways of the modern world. You would not believe all the safety deposit boxes waiting to be discovered, all the insurance people I had to talk to, all the benefits people where my dad had worked, all the checking, savings and investment accounts I had to find. I'm sure are a few others here on Whiteblaze who have had to do the same for their parents or relatives.
Eventually I'd arrived at the conclusion my mom was going to be alright financially after my dad had died. But only if she watched her P's and Q's. There was just enough money to allow my mom to lead an independent life and live out the rest of her days and be okay. There was no need for me to be there on a day-in, day-out basis.
That other relative that was miffed about losing so much vacation time when my dad wouldn't, you know, just die off quickly? They started doing things and taking actions that made life more difficult for my mom. Wild unfounded actions, stuff that was going to involve even more attorneys, crazy stuff.
I didn't talk to that other relative for more than a decade afterward. There was no point -- they were off their rocker.
When my grandfather had died long ago (my dad's father) those same nutty things had happened to my dad when the relatives all started thinking they hadn't gotten what was their share, hadn't got some fancy dinner plate or whatever. I had been just a little tyke when my grandmother had died back in Pennsylvania. Arguments, screaming back and forth between the living relatives, threats, stuff being thrown around the kitchen of my grandmother's place.
Boy, the whole thing came around again and had landed in my lap this time. I had tried to shield my mom from much of it but not a lot could be hidden behind closed doors.
Years later my mom would get sick -- her doctor would also be Dr. John. I can tell you it was great having him as her physician because I could get to the cause and prognosis in 30 seconds. None of the usual banter physicians do these days so they're not caught in some legal entanglement. Both times my mom was sick in the hospital I got the skinny right away. Dr. John told me my mom would eventually recover but my mom needed to quit smoking or there would be serious future repercussions.
Not too log after that, the Great Recession hit.
My mom called me and in tears, telling me she was losing money hand over fist and would I investigate what was going on. I did and eventually had to tell my mom that she had to get out of some of the things she had gotten herself into because those things were probably going to zero. It was a mess. Somehow a different investment advisor had been appointed to her account -- one different than was originally setup -- and that investment advisor had taken my mom into areas only suitable for someone in their twenties. Fortunately it was early enough during the Great Recession and my mom got out soon enough to have financially survived. Sometimes I think Seniors need a mean chaperone holding a stick in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. It's the only thing Seniors seem to understand.
A year or two later, still during the Great Recession, I was sitting in a conference room at work with a dozen or so people . It wasn't the usual snooze-fest meeting. Important issues were being discussed so I was paying attention -- the outcome of the meeting had a direct effect on my team of people. All of a sudden the conference room door opened and a secretary for one of the big shots stared at me. "You have an emergency phone call."
Oh geez, what now. I left the meeting and headed back to my desk to take the telephone call. I hardly ever take telephone calls at work -- important things come in via email, not by voice phone. Anything coming in by telephone was almost certainly something I didn't care about.
I took the call and it was truly someone I needed to talk to but I didn't want the telephone call to be recorded by the company. I had to go out in the parking lot where there weren't many listening devices and I knew where most of those were located anyhow. I called the guy back with my cell phone
The call was from a security guy at a mutual fund company. He asked me a bunch of questions so he could be sure he was actually talking to me and not an impersonator. After I successfully answered all his identity questions he told me someone was trying to steal money out of one of my accounts.
Today, Pearson tried to get into the wrong truck at Lowe's again.
That is always so funny. When I moved here to North Carolina I had to get a pickup truck because around here, it's the law. The color and detail of the pickup truck Pearson was trying to get into just so hapenned to be very similar to my pickup truck. It's so funny when the other guy in the truck says to himself, "Why is a blonde getting into my truck?" Some people would consider it a self-answering question.
I honked the horn to let Pearson know that wasn't the correct pickup truck. Pearson hadn't even hopped up into the passenger seat yet. Dang, if I would have just waited this might have been even funnier than the last time.
At my cabin I'm teething a new baby. Just the cutest, most loveable baby you can imagine. Cuddles up with me on my lap sometimes when I'm typing on my laptop. The lacerations on my forearm have already started healing -- stitches not needed this time. Might have been too loveable a time or three.
Later this year, Gigi, Lacy, Miss Danielle, Buckeye and Jemima will be joining the existing flock out back at the chicken bastion. Egg production next year should clear 2,000 eggs and that might be enough for the neighbors on the adjacent hills.
And this new baby.
Datto
My condolences on the loss of your father.
Congrats on the new little one. I miss having a tiny one around. It would be a medical miracle for me to be blessed with that again.
My city doesn't allow us to raise chickens. It was a big fight and the overbearing city won. My neighbor moved to Vermont so he could have his chickens. It was my former boyfriend who passed the legislation allowing people to have pet ferrets. I don't have chickens or ferrets, but feel people should be allowed to keep them. Our city very graciously allows private residences to grow tomatoes in our bay windows.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/science/chickens-werent-always-dinner-for-humans.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-startling-intelligence-of-the-common-chicken/
I only purchase range-free eggs. Not just cage-free, but range-free.
Hey Datto!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2016/04/10/are-your-chickens-talking-about-you/xX5DPEGJxAOt5npMAa4FGO/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos3
gracebowen
04-21-2016, 13:37
How much of that 5000 was spent on meals that cost more than $8 and on alcohol?
I hardly ever drink and if I ever do I would only have maybe a wine cooler bought at a convenience store.
I also don't buy soda very often.
Another Kevin
04-21-2016, 17:12
My family. Heh. Let's just call them different. That's the only way I can think to spin it in a positive manner.
Your family sounds a lot like mine. Right down to... when Grandma died, Uncle got everything, but went off his rocker and to his dying day made wild and crazy accusations that my mother had made off with ... what, exactly? Not clear. He never accepted that what he got was all there was. He never spoke with my parents, my brother or me again. His widow sent me a wedding present when I got married.
My parents were determined that the same thing shouldn't happen between my brother and me, and so left an airtight will. When my father went, there was no argument, Mother got everything. She put most of it in Totten trust funds, to negate any arguments in probate.
Except that her sister had left her a bunch of money (in some questionable investments that an equally questionable broker. And she'd never settled those accounts, or told my brother and me about them. I know that there were other accounts in Auntie's name that she did tell us about, that she steadfastly insisted, "that's Auntie's money, we can't touch it because she might need it." (For Auntie to come back and claim it would have been a pretty good trick.)
I think that now, five years later, we've finally managed to track down all of Auntie's investments. It didn't help that Hurricane Sandy destroyed all the paperwork, so I've had to do some serious detective work.
My brother and I are still on good terms. He's living in Auntie's house now, because we've still not been able to rebuild from Sandy (and neither of us really wants to live in Mother's house any more, we're both settled where we are.)
This sort of stuff puts the 'fun' in 'dysfunction'.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 33 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Plannng
33) Pack weight -- this is important during the beginning of a northbound AT thru-hike because your body isn't going to be used to lugging a backpack up and down very steep mountains like those found on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. It's likely going to be your knees, feet and lungs that will be so glad you took the steps necessary to reduce pack weight before starting your AT thru-hike.
If you don't already own lots of ultralight hiking gear, your stretch goal before you start your AT thru-hike should be to get your total backpack weight, with all usual hiking contents inside including three days of food and at least one liter of water, under thirty pounds. Sure there are outliers who have completed an AT thru-hike with a backpack much heavier than thirty pounds at the start (mine was 37.5 lbs at Springer Mountain). With how backpacking technology has progressed swiftly in recent years it shouldn't be too hard for you to get your full backpack with food and water under thirty pounds.
Since you have almost a year to get ready for your AT thru-hike, you have plenty of time. Here's the key -- to make a considerable dent in the weight of your backpack, focus on the Big Three items. Those are; 1) the empty weight of your backpack, 2) the weight of your sleeping bag and 3) the weight of your carry-shelter (tent/tarp/bivy/hammock). You should aim as a stretch goal to get the combined weight of those three items to eight pounds.
My suggestion is to give a little more pack weight to your empty backpack and less so for the sleeping bag and shelter. The reason for this is you'll likely need some kind of decent suspension system in your backpack (in order to be comfortable carrying a load) and a suspension system is going to up the weight for a backpack. Well yeah, there are people who will sell you a backpack that weighs in at 12 ounces -- that backpack probably won't be comfortable and may not last considering the rigors of an AT thru-hike. Also, don't buy a backpack from some one-off, built-in-the-garage type of company. AT thru-hikers are very rough on equipment and you're going to need to be able to handle the results of being equipment-rough with a legit, real-live gear manufacturer while you're on your AT thru-hike. Note that most backpacks have multiple lengths (choose the right one for your torso length -- see torso measuring charts at vendor websites) and backpacks also may have different sized hip belts available (for men, the size of your hip belt may need to be smaller toward the latter half of your AT thru-hike because you've lost so much weight). The backpack I use today is not made anymore -- a Granite Gear Vapor Trail (looks like Granite Gear makes a similar pack to the Vapor Trail -- see their website). That particular backpack weighs a little more but is very comfortable for me, the pack holds up on a long-distance hike and the manufacturer is responsive. That doesn't necessarily mean you should run out and blindly buy a Granite Gear backpack -- I'm just telling you what I use. Your body, stamina, budget and other elements may be completely different than mine. Note some gear maufacturers outright lie and use deception to make their backpacks appear to the consumer to be much lighter than reality (stating the weight of their backpack in the Extra-Small size for instance). Also note you can shave a few ounces off the weight of your empty backpack just by trimming all the lengthy backpack straps to what the length of the strap needs to be when you are wearing the backpack. Be cautious to not trim the straps too short (that would be a sizeable screw-up)-- best to wait until you have worn the backpack and contents for a while before you start trimming straps. Use a bic lighter to lightly melt the ends of the straps where you've trimmed a strap so the frayed end of the strap doesn't unravel over time.
When buying a sleeping bag for a northbound AT thru-hike where the thru-hike starts in March or early/mid April, get a 20*F sleeping bag from a reputable manufacturer that weighs ~2.3 pounds or less -- a manufacturer who stands behind their product and focuses on making lightweight, decent equipment. It gets VERY cold on the AT and sleeping bags are outrageously expensive so don't squander your money on a sleeping bag from someone making sleeping bags in their garage (who is likely charging almost the the same money that a legit manufacturer charges). Get the correct length of your sleeping bag -- long enough so you're feet aren't cramped but short enough so you're not trying to heat excess cubage inside your bag. From my personal perspective, quilts should not be used on an Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Reason: I've seen way too many people who bought a quilt for a long-distance hike (because it was ultralight) who became very cold when temps dropped below 30*F. The next day they were a basket case from lack of sleep. Combine that with multiple days of not getting good sleep from being cold at night and an AT thru-hiker goes home. For heaven's sake, don't try to "invent" your own sleeping system with a fleece bag/silk liner/wearing-all-your-clothes idea. You will freeze! Instead, just buy a normal, everyday, ultralght, ~2.3 lbs or less 20*F sleeping bag with a hood that can be cinched around your face at night. If money is no object, get a 20*F sleeping bag from Western Mountaineering -- they make the best sleeping bags on the planet. I have also used a Marmot Helium on long-distance hikes and that also worked out well for me. You can carry a 20*F sleeping bag the length of your AT thru-hike and be fine. Some people with more money available for their hike swap to a different, higher-temp-rated/less-weight sleeping bag from Pearisburg, VA to Glencliff, NH but that's not really necessary. Reason: Your body will likely be in great trail-shape by the time you reach Pearisburg, VA on a northbound AT thru-hike and pack weight is not as much of a problem as it is when you first start your northbound AT thru-hike in Georia. Plus, by Pearisburg, VA a northbound AT thru-hiker who's still on the Trail will likely have eliminated all the ridiculous must-have things a thru-hiker thought to be essential when that thru-hiker started their thru-hike in Georgia. Note if you buy a sleepig bag with a 3/4 or full zipper you can open it wide-open during the warm months of your AT thru-hike and not cook inside on very hot nights (the cost to you is more weight to the sleeping bag from the longer zipper -- your choice).
For a shelter carried in your backpack (tent/tarp/bivy/hammock), most AT thru-hikers carry a tent. Some who have hiked other long-distance trails prior to coming to the AT to start a thru-hike may prefer a tarp over a tent (lighter weight, more flexible setups, more air flow to ward off condensation). The thing is, the AT has gobs of mosquitos and other flying insects much of the way and some of the worst bugs crawl across the ground. A tent with a bathtub floor will likely protect you from bugs at night and give you a respite from the absolutely constant annoyance of gnats driving you crazy. From my experience I've only ever seen just a small handful of long-distance hikers carrying a bivy or a hammock. My suggestion when buying a carry-shelter is to look at the ultralight one-person tents (that use your hiking poles as the structure for the tent) which fall into the ~2.3 lbs weight level. Some of those don't have a floor and utilize a swath of netting around the perimeter -- you may have to wear your headnet when you sleep in those because bugs may still get inside (probably less bugs than the standard setup of a tarp, but still not as few as using a tent with a bathtub floor). The tent I used on my northbound AT thru-hike was a one-person bathtub floor tent not made any more (a Wanderlust Gear Nomad -- probably the very best tent every made for an AT thru-hike -- I'm just tellng you what I used, not that you should run out and try to buy what I've used). What I use today is a tarp supported by my hiking poles -- I've gotten used to a tarp (it's a customized tarp sewn special for me) because of my hikes on other long-distance trails. As you get further north into your northbound AT thru-hike, you may find you prefer to tent/tarp at nght rather than staying in a shelter. Sometimes you may just want to hike until you get tired for the day and there might not be a nearby shelter to hop into for the night. At other times you may just prefer to tent/tarp even if a shelter is nearby. It's very peaceful to sleep in a tent/tarp at night and for several nights in a row. Suggestion: if you use a tent or tarp for your carry-shelter, tie reflective cord (such as TripTease or similar from other manufacturers) at the tie-out points of your tent/tarp so you don't trip over your stakes in the middle of the night when you get up to do your business.
You have almost a year to get your backpack weight reduced. Is it necessary? No. Is it preferrable? Heck yes. It's amazing the number of people who show up the AT to start an AT thru-hike who are carrying a five pound or heavier tent (I have seen people start a long-distance hike carrying the Taj Mahal -- a dome tent large enough to sleep four people). Sure, a handful of those people through the ages will complete an AT thru-hike carrying fifty pounds the entire way. But that's not necessary or wise. Now don't run out and buy the first thing you see on-sale. Instead, be cautious and frugal but get the best ultralight gear you can afford that will hold up to the rigors of a AT thru-hike.
Datto
How much of that 5000 was spent on meals that cost more than $8 and on alcohol?
I don't intend to sound gruff or mean with my answer but your question hangs in the wind if you're expecting any kind of detail or line-item accurancy from anyone who has carried their full backpack past every blaze during a single calendar year on a thru-hike of the Appalachain Trail.
Some of the reasons: Mental accuity is limited and the desire to project-manage a thru-hike goes end-over-end out the window during the first week of most thru-hikes. Also what a thru-hiker believed they would spend money on during their up-coming thru-hike becomes way different than what actually happens when the overwhelming roar of insatiable hunger arrives on-scene during an AT thru-hike. That's not to mention it rains six days out of four on the Appalachian Trail -- take a few days of hiking in cold rain and not only will an AT thru-hiker use a decent motel (a hiker who believed pre-hike they would always stay in their tent), that same thru-hiker may stay two days or three days in that decent motel just to recover from overwhelming soreness in their joints, injury or simply to gather the mental ability and wherewithall to remain on the Trail.
What some AT thru-hikers know, as far as any semblance of reliability in costs, is how much money was planned to be used on their AT thru-hike and the eventual total amount that was actually used on their AT thru-hike. Much of the detail was forgotten (or never remembered in the first place because the AT thru-hiker was in distress when a wad of money was pulled out and spent to address that distress -- mental, physical or emotional distress).
All the BS about someone getting by spending only a dribble of money on their AT thru-hike -- in almost every case that's total poppycock. Total dreamland. When you investigate and ask someone purporting to have only spent "Little X" on their AT thru-hike, the answers and details they either don't know or if they do remember, you find out their thru-hike cost them way more money than they included in the dribble of money they're stating to the public. So many things aren't included that they'd actually spent money on during their AT thru-hike (or wasted days of time on multiple occasions doing activities not related to hiking) that LIttle X cost number perported to have been spent is just a blue-sky number pulled out of the air.
Here's my bonafide speech while impersonating miracle worker Reverand Handiwipe::
Verily I say unto all heathens who wish to save their soles (everyone say Yeah-Yah) -- any 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker intending to walk past every blaze carrying their full backpack (with sleeping bag, carry-shelter, food, and the rest of the usual contents including double-entry bookkeeping materials) should have $5,000 in cash available to spend door-to-door on their AT thru-hike when they shut the front door to leave for their AT thru-hike. Otherwise, the chances increase significantly that northbound AT thru-hiker will run out of money and go home before finishing their AT thru-hike.
Running out of money is one of the most common reasons AT thru-hikers don't finish.
Datto
swisscross
04-22-2016, 14:30
How much of that 5000 was spent on meals that cost more than $8 and on alcohol?
I hardly ever drink and if I ever do I would only have maybe a wine cooler bought at a convenience store.
I also don't buy soda very often.
Not a full break down but pretty precise...good enough.
http://www.2180miles.com/financial-planning.html
Not a full break down but pretty precise...good enough.
http://www.2180miles.com/financial-planning.html
Hoo boy, what an outlier:
1) Thru-hike April 4th to July 26th -- every 2017 prospective northbound AT thru-hiker who believes they can carry their full backpack past every blaze for more than 2,000 miles on a northbound thru-hike the Appalachian Train in this timeframe, raise your hand. I have a S/L of swampland in New Jersey to which you may have interest.
2) $203 for lodging for an entire AT thru-hike -- for almost all of you who will carry your full backpack past every blaze, this will never, ever happen. It won't even be close. By factors. You're foolng yourself if you look at these numbers and think YOU sitting on your Lazy Boy at home, can do any of what is shown on this hiker's ledger. It's dreamland for you.
3) Post Office: $46 for an entire AT thru-hike This is because the speed of the Post Office, even with Express Mail, could not keep up with the winged speed of this hiker. Waste of time for the Post Office to even try.
If you are a 2017 AT thru-hiker in-planning and intend to pass every blaze carring your full backpack next year, you will need to have $5,000 cash available when you shut your front door to head to the Appalachian Trail. Anything less and you run significantly increased risks you will run out of money before you finish and will have to go home.
Datto
on a northbound thru-hike the Appalachian Train in this timeframe
People all over the world, join hands. Start a hike train. Hike train.
Datto
JumpMaster Blaster
04-22-2016, 17:47
Hoo boy, what an outlier:
1) Thru-hike April 4th to July 26th -- every 2017 prospective northbound AT thru-hiker who believes they can carry their full backpack past every blaze for more than 2,000 miles on a northbound thru-hike the Appalachian Train in this timeframe, raise your hand. I have a S/L of swampland in New Jersey to which you may have interest.
2) $203 for lodging for an entire AT thru-hike -- for almost all of you who will carry your full backpack past every blaze, this will never, ever happen. It won't even be close. By factors. You're foolng yourself if you look at these numbers and think YOU sitting on your Lazy Boy at home, can do any of what is shown on this hiker's ledger. It's dreamland for you.
3) Post Office: $46 for an entire AT thru-hike This is because the speed of the Post Office, even with Express Mail, could not keep up with the winged speed of this hiker. Waste of time for the Post Office to even try.
If you are a 2017 AT thru-hiker in-planning and intend to pass every blaze carring your full backpack next year, you will need to have $5,000 cash available when you shut your front door to head to the Appalachian Trail. Anything less and you run significantly increased risks you will run out of money before you finish and will have to go home.
Datto
I'm doing a semi-scientific (not really) thru hike simulation based on what I spent last year on food, beer, resupply, lodging & shuttles and I've already spent $900 by mile 390. That's not even factoring in the cost of a bounce box or maildrops, OR gear replacement. $6,000 is looking like a pretty safe number. I even factored in a nero/zero day and blew this guy's lodging expenses in two days.
Damn good thing I have a pension coming in starting in August! :banana
JumpMaster Blaster
04-22-2016, 17:50
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 29 for 2017 Thru-hikers In-Planning
29) If you are lookng for an immersive experienece on and from your AT thru-hike, the very best thing you can do is reduce or cut-off completely all two-way communications back home. Back to your friends, back to your siblings, back to your family, back to your previous co-workers, back to your drinkin' buddies.
Many people here on Whiteblaze will never in their entire lifetime have any idea what I'm referring to in that line above or why something that drastic is necessary. Some of you who are a 2017 thru-hiker in-planning may not know what I'm referring to until maybe Day 60 of your AT thru-hike.
In this day of being in moment-by-moment multi-tasking mode for all of Society, you are given this extremely valuable gift where you can get past all of that weight, that baggage, and immerse yourself into life on the Trail during your AT thru-hike.
Don't screw it up.
People back home are going to want to bring you up-to-date with all the things they're involved with that YOU -- as an AT thru-hiker -- should of course want to know about. Plane crashes, Kimye having problems again, some waste-of-time event in politics that you should be SO interested in because it makes a difference when you're trying to make miles on the AT in the rain.
If you are taking telehone calls all the time during your AT thru-hike there's a good chance you're going to receive calls like, "The heat pump whizinator has done gone bad again -- can you stop that silly thing you're doing in the weeds and come back here and fix it? We're all freezing." Or a friend of yours calls you to say, "I knocked up my girlfriend Delilah and I need you to drive back here and be in the wedding party." You try to beg off since, well, you're not being followed by your car on your AT thru-hike. Then your friend says, "You mean you can't come back here for a week and help me out here Bud? What is it you're doing again that's so important?"
Sure, you can try to set expectations ahead of time for people back home who don't have any understanding what or why you're doing what you're doing. At the first opportunity they're going to forget what you had explained to them previously and think you're perfectly capable of doing for them what you've always done back home. After all you're just, like, car camping, right? What's the problem? Then, they're also going to certainly want to tell you all the usual useless things going on in the world that have no bearing on you while you're thru-hiking the AT.
That'll mess you up. That'll mess with your head.
If you're an AT thru-hiker in-planning you probably don't realize how susceptable you're going to be to thinking about stuff going on back home or events occuring in the world. As soon as you let that Trojan Horse into your AT thru-hike on a daily basis there's an increased chance you're not going to finish and you'll be going home early. Because the whizinator went out and you're the only one who knows how to apply the proper amount of the pertuki to the whizinator.
Events happening back home is one of the common reasons AT thru-hikers stop their hike.
The best way to keep all this interference from messing with your head (it will mess with your head on your thru-hike -- you have all day long to think about stuff) is to simply not be available for calls or immediate response on anything. Eventually, even the most clueless people back home will figure out how they can live without your usual assistance and involvement without you having to hear about ISIL getting a nuke or the latest mass shooting in Dinkster, Iowa or all those wildfires causing mass destruction at Lake Tahoe -- you are near Tahoe, right?
When you have to make or return a telephone call to someone not directly related to your AT thru-hike activities, or handle emails from back home, do so in-town where and when you're can get yourself prepared ahead of time for the impact and onslaught.
Datto
I don't even like hearing about mundane crap now, here in civilization. I did a day hike in Grayson Highlands last weekend and "forgot" to turn my phone back on when I got home. Most peaceful 20 hours I had in months.
Datto - On your big three for backpack weight, why aren't you adding water? That's quite heavy.
Traveler
04-23-2016, 06:31
Datto - On your big three for backpack weight, why aren't you adding water? That's quite heavy.
Not to speak for Datto but water and food are consumables so the weight of both changes by the day and/or hour. Water and food are typically not included in base weight due to this.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 34 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
34) Some of your toenails may fall off.
It doesn't happen to everyone but it's frequent enough to mention and give you a heads-up. I lost seven toenals on my northbound AT thru-hike.
If this keeps happening to you during your pre-hike prep hikes or during your AT thru-hike, the main reasons for this occuring are threefold:
1. Your feet have been in the rain for days and are always soaking wet -- the skin and the toenails become softer and more malleable and more susceptable to damage. Not much you can do about this because you're on the Appalachian Trail and your feet are going to be wet most of the time. This is paricularly so during the first months of a northbound AT thru-hike with the constant, incessant rain (and sometimes snow, sleet and hail just to mix it up).
2. On steep downhills the front of your feet are constantly being slammed into the inside face of the front of your shoe. Steep downhills meaning, everywhere on the Appalachian Trail when you're not facing steep uphills.
3. The treadway of the Appalachian Trail is rough and uneven so you're consantly stubbing the front of your foot into rocks and roots, particularly when you're moving quickly and trying to make miles.
Being a person where this toenail-be-gone situation frequently occurs I believe there's not much that can be done. You can keep your toenails tightly clipped an you can try to tie your hiking shoes tighter for downhills but that will get old very quickly when you're trying to make miles for the day. On my feet, tightening my hiking shoes just moves the problem to the top of my foot and frequently clipping my toenails never makes a difference. My foot will still move within my hiking shoe on steep downhills so the foot damage from downhill slamming just moves to the path of least/most resistance. Also, my feet swell from day-to-day while carring that thing called a backpack so I have to allow that swellng to occur, thus my hiking shoes are slightly larger than what they might be if I was wearing them while going to work back in Society.
One of the significant gotchas to watch out for is when the toenail actually comes off, starts running loose and gets stuck inside your sock. That can become very bad news quickly since a loose toenail banging around inside your sock can easily cut your rain-soaked foot. In case you don't know already, a microbiological festival will be happening in and on your socks for your entire AT thru-hike (even if you carry along foot spray and the like). That festival smell becomes part of that bon vivant stank for which AT thru-hikers have become known. The key thing is to stop right away and fish the loose toenail out of your sock before the toenail has a chance to go haywire with cutting your foot. Normally I dab Neosporin onto the toe where the toenail came off so make sure you have a small tube of Neosporin in your AT thru-hiker first-aid kit. If you've never used Neosporin before, prior to the start of your AT thru-hike you should run a test with Neosporin on your body to make sure your body doesn't have an adverse reaction to Neosporin (a few people I know have a bad reactton to Neosporin).
On occasion during my AT thru-hike (and on other long-distance hikes) I had to manually pull the toenail off my toe (using back-and-forth action) because of the pain I was experiencing while hiking. Also, in Virginia the slamming of the front of my foot caused the toenail on my big toe to slide sideways a slight bit making for an infected toenail. In that case I had to use my Swiss Army Classic knife to slice the toenail on my big toe from top to bottom and peel back the right hand side to remove it. As you might imagine, I said "Sheboygan" aloud quite a few times with that operation.
Here's the AT journal entry where I sliced my toenail in half and peeled off the bad part:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=172482
Here are PCT journal entries where I had to do brain surgery on my toes again:
http://trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?ID=155011
http://trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?ID=62416
Datto
Another Kevin
04-23-2016, 15:53
For the perennially wet feet problem: use a waterproofing compound. Hydropel used to be what everyone used, but they went out of business. I use Gurney Goo, which worked all right for me on the Northville-Placid, which is basically all beaver swamp. I've heard good reports of Bonnie's Balms Climber Salve, and Burt's Bees Res-Q-Ointment, but I've not tried either one. Body Glide wasn't as good for the purpose.
But yeah, toenails take a beating. I carry a paper clip in my first aid kit, because if you start bleeding under a toenail, you need to relieve the pressure or it'll be excruciating to walk on it. I had to burn a hole in one big toe's nail about a year and a half ago, and was glad I had the paper clip to do it with. Heat it red hot over your stove, then just touch it near the base of the black area. Don't press hard. Reheat and reapply if it doesn't burn through on the first go. Pain relief is immediate and dramatic. Sometimes prompt drainage even saves the nail.
Neosporin is prudent for broken skin, but the microbial circus is more dominated by fungi and yeasts, so an antifungal is a better choice for controlling the foot crud.
Field surgery is ..... ewwwwww, gross!
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 35 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
35) During your AT thru-hike, don't let yourself be bothered by so many people claiming to be AT thru-hikers who are not. It will eat at you if you let it and you don't need the extra burden on your thru-hike (even if quite a number of claimants have skipped entire states because of the rain or the difficulties of the terrain).
This is not your problem during your AT thru-hike. If you make it your problem it will screw you up in the head. Just let it go and enjoy the scenery. Besides, if you're recently coming out of college this will prepare you for the Real World where you have to decide what is truly your problem and what is not -- and then prioritize actions, energy and resources accordingly.
On my northbound AT thru-hike I witnessed maybe six to eight nose-to-nose confrontations about the authentic thru-hiker issue -- quite a few more where the situation was a hike-away. A hike-away is when a hiker chooses to hike away from a situation -- for example, forty-five noisy Boy Scouts showing up at a shelter at 8:00pm and the hiker packs up and heads north to camp out in their tent for the night.
In one nose-to-nose example during the latter half of my northbound AT thru-hike I was sitting in a shelter with another thru-hiker, waiting out the rain. Two other hikers showed up a half hour later -- a guy and a girl -- and came into the shelter to also sit out of the rain. The guy hiker who had just arrived made a wiseacre comment about us being woosies to have already been in the shelter that early in the day. Hoo boy, that started a confrontation -- the thru-hiker I was hiking with who was sitting on the opposite side of the shelter from me became unglued yelling at the wiseacre guy to get out of the shelter, yelling and screaming about false claims of being an AT thru-hiker that guy had been making for over a thousand miles.
Watching from the corner of the shelter I'd thought at the time I would soon be breaking up a fistfight. To me, I didn't care about the wiseacre hiker who'd just arrived, nor his comments -- the music was good that day and the girl he'd arrived with was gorgeous. I was happy for the change in scenery. I took a quick photo of the scene in the shelter after the confrontation died down -- just to remember that day.
Years later I crossed paths with that wiseacre hiker again at a desert water source on another trail. I couldn't place where I'd encountered that guy before and had the 3x5 Rolodex mental file cards in my head spinning rapidly trying to place him. Both brain cells finally connected and I figured out he was the guy who'd arrived in the shelter that one rainy day back on the AT. The desert had humbled him considerably -- as it had for all of us on that trail. I said hello to him as he was running his own mental Rolodex about me. He said hello back and hiked out from the water source a few minutes later. Pearson had talked with him at the water source and he had a different trailname from what he'd used on the AT.
If you really must harangue someone about their false claim of being an AT thru-hiker, wait until 30 calendar days after you complete your AT thru-hike.
But keep this in mind -- many thousands of people in the world want to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Only a few ever show up and start.
Datto
TheRuralRefugee
04-24-2016, 09:20
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 30 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
(my AT thru-hike lasted 195 calendar days end-to-end which is significantly longer than normal -- you should not take that many days for a thru-hike as the norm).
Datto
I may be stating the obvious here, but if a person were to avoid spending the equivalent of about 30 calendar days napping while on the trail, they might finish in less than 195 days.....;)
TheRuralRefugee
04-24-2016, 09:23
Yeah, I read the whole thing, in 2000 in somewhat less than real time as it was posted on Trailplace. I've read it several times since, it ranks right up there with "Then the Hail Came" as one of my favorite journals of an AT hike.
Datto, Kevin and others re very brave to remove their broken toenails. I know it must be done to prevent infection and discomfort - still, brave! I'm gonna be a total wuss when my time comes for this. To paraphrase an old term on another matter altogether, "Look up and think of England.":D
I may be stating the obvious here, but if a person were to avoid spending the equivalent of about 30 calendar days napping while on the trail, they might finish in less than 195 days.....;)
I would indeed love to meet Rip vanWinkle on the AT. The headless horseman, too.:)
Not to speak for Datto but water and food are consumables so the weight of both changes by the day and/or hour. Water and food are typically not included in base weight due to this.
Thanks Traveler for explaining that. I didn't know.
Yeah, I read the whole thing, in 2000 in somewhat less than real time as it was posted on Trailplace. I've read it several times since, it ranks right up there with "Then the Hail Came" as one of my favorite journals of an AT hike.
Thanks for the kind words.
Yeah, those naps I had on the AT were so enjoyable.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 36 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
36) Some people choose to utilize a larger water carrier when obtaining water for the evening. The reason I did was because the water from filling 2x Gatorade bottles that I used for drinking purposes was not enough water for me at the evening stop, particularly in blazing hot Virginia. When you stop for the evening and head down sometimes very steep paths to the water source by the shelter, you'll want to get water to drink immediately (after treatment of course), treated water for dinner, and treated water to head out with the next morning. You're not going to want to make two trips down to the water source.
The carry container I began using on my northbound AT thru-hike is a 96oz wide-mouth Nalgene Cantene (empty weight is less than 2oz or so). I used the wide-mouth version because sometimes the water source had to be dipped with my cookpot and then from the cookpot poured into the carry container. The wide-mouth made pouring from a cookpot much easier. The Nalgene Cantene rolls up to a much smaller size to allow you to stuff it into your backpack.
Note if you decide to use a carry container you'll want to use a carry container that has a screw-top or closeable lid -- otherwise the water may jossle out of the container on the way back up a hill from the water source. Also, I put my water treatment (Potable Aqua tablets -- iodine) directly into the Nalgee Cantene -- if you use iodine for water treatment, the iodine will eventually turn the Nalgene Cantene brownish in color (I never noticed any damage -- just the color change).
I swapped out to a new Nalgene Cantene maybe two times (total number of 3x Nalgee Cantenes used) on my northbound AT thru-hike. I swapped out drinking containers (Gatorade bottles) almost every time I went into town. I did that just as a precautionary step to avoid crud/beasties/slime building up inside my Gatorade bottles and to reduce risk. I used Gatorade bottles for drinking purposes while hiking because they're readily available, almost indestructable and their width was such that I could use one hand to take the bottle in and out of the side pocket of my backpack while I was wearing my backpack.
Datto
I used the 32oz Gatorade bottles for drinking purposes, not the smaller 20oz bottles, Also, if the side pockets of your backpack are too tight to fit a Gatorade bottle, you might look at 32oz Powerade bottles to see if Powerade bottles will fit better into your side pocket(s) than Gatorade bottles (also, look at 32oz/1 liter Pesi/Coke bottles).
Or, during your pre-hike prep hikes you can just move the pockets back and forth on a regular basis to loosen up the snugness of your backpack pockets and allow a Gatorade bottle to fit.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 36 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
36) Some people choose to utilize a larger water carrier when obtaining water for the evening. The reason I did was because the water from filling 2x Gatorade bottles that I used for drinking purposes was not enough water for me at the evening stop, particularly in blazing hot Virginia. When you stop for the evening and head down sometimes very steep paths to the water source by the shelter, you'll want to get water to drink immediately (after treatment of course), treated water for dinner, and treated water to head out with the next morning. You're not going to want to make two trips down to the water source.
The carry container I began using on my northbound AT thru-hike is a 96oz wide-mouth Nalgene Cantene (empty weight is less than 2oz or so). I used the wide-mouth version because sometimes the water source had to be dipped with my cookpot and then from the cookpot poured into the carry container. The wide-mouth made pouring from a cookpot much easier. The Nalgene Cantene rolls up to a much smaller size to allow you to stuff it into your backpack.
Note if you decide to use a carry container you'll want to use a carry container that has a screw-top or closeable lid -- otherwise the water may jossle out of the container on the way back up a hill from the water source. Also, I put my water treatment (Potable Aqua tablets -- iodine) directly into the Nalgee Cantene -- if you use iodine for water treatment, the iodine will eventually turn the Nalgene Cantene brownish in color (I never noticed any damage -- just the color change).
I swapped out to a new Nalgene Cantene maybe two times (total number of 3x Nalgee Cantenes used) on my northbound AT thru-hike. I swapped out drinking containers (Gatorade bottles) almost every time I went into town. I did that just as a precautionary step to avoid crud/beasties/slime building up inside my Gatorade bottles and to reduce risk. I used Gatorade bottles for drinking purposes while hiking because they're readily available, almost indestructable and their width was such that I could use one hand to take the bottle in and out of the side pocket of my backpack while I was wearing my backpack.
Datto
My rule is that your dirty water capacity should exceed your clean water capacity. Prevents multiple trips to the source.
DuneElliot
04-25-2016, 13:48
My rule is that your dirty water capacity should exceed your clean water capacity. Prevents multiple trips to the source.
This was my thought too. You can always carry the dirty water and filter it later.
I carry a 3L Platy bag inside my pack. I don't carry any sort of "dirty water" stowage. The Platy bag holds only filtered water. When I get to camp, one of my first tasks is to fill the Platy bag. That's my water for the evening and possibly for the beginning of the next day. If it's a dry camp, I fill the Platy bag to near-full late in the day, when I get the opportunity. The bag is seven years old now... I keep expecting it to fail. It's seen a lot of use and abuse.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 37 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
37) Monkey Butt and Crotch Rot.
I won't go into graphic descriptive detail since those two afflictions should be self-explanitory. Besides, I'm still trying to please Miss Priscilla Goodbody and she is oh-so-tough on Mondays.
Both men and women can get each and each can be debilitating, particularly for someone who tends to move around a lot in wet weather (that would be an AT thru-hiker). Each is difficult to shake. If you get both concurrently, there's a good chance you're going to be laying face down naked on a motel room bed with your legs spread afar hanging over the sides of the bed. That thru-hiker you shared a motel room with last night in order to save money on town stops? She's going to say, "Dude, that looks bad. That looks really bad."
You will be sweating profusely on your AT thru-hike and your body will be wet a great deal of the time. A perfect environment for Monkey Butt and Crotch Rot.
If you will do three things on your AT thru-hike you will go a long way to preventing Monkey Butt and Crotch Rot (I'm not trying to explain the science to you, I'm just explaining what I know has worked much of the time for some past thru-hikers who were using readily available solutions):
1. Every single day without fail, take out a fresh Wet Wipe (or similar) that you're carrying in your backpack and first, wipe your face around your mouth, then do an excellent job wiping your privates (in that order -- when you're terribly fatigued, don't forget!). Plus, you may find that valuable paper clip plastered to the inside of your leg that you'd thought you had misplaced. If you're sporting whiskers on your face, tiny pieces of the Wet Wipes may be pulled out and hang off your whiskers after wiping your face so be sure to get those off too so your trailname doesn't become Fuzzy Wuzzie. And for the men...
Wet Wipe type items should be relatively widely available on the Trail (groceries, drug stores, convenience stores). They're somewhat heavy for their size and the package leaks. Keep the Wet Wipes in the original package but keep that package inside a small ZipLoc bag and seal it tight. Make sure you get the unscented Wet Wipes -- if you buy the scented ones, not only will you smell like a disgusting flower (your goal in life realized) but the contents of your backpack, including your food, may end up smelling and tasting like Wet Wipe flowers.
2. When you get into town, take a shower at least once a week (on average) and be fastidious when cleaning your privates in the shower with soap and water. To me, it's amazing the number of hikers who will not take a shower in a town where they've stopped. Too much trouble I guess -- plus, the "I don't smell anything wrong" syndrome where an AT thru-hiker doesn't smell odors the same way everyone else back in Society smells odors.
3. Don't eat a lot of outrageously spicy foods. If you're sitting next to a guy at the front of a shelter who's just put black beans onto a soft taco shell while pouring DoubleKick Hot Sauce onto the arrangement, there's a good chance he's going to be welding manhole covers in less than four hours. That could easily lead to the start of Monkey Butt. On my northbound AT thru-hike I used Jalapeno powder regularly (tasted great to me) and the powder didn't have near the same effect as eating fresh Jalapenos or using hot sauce on food. When you're next in a grocery store, check to see what food toppings might be available in powder form (usually in the spice aisle) and experiment with several types of spices on your pre-hike overnight prep hikes.
Note that some AT thru-hikers will cut out the liner of their shorts/swim trunks in order to try to prevent, particularly, Crotch Rot. For a man, that'll mean you'll be going Bojangles when you're bounding down the trail and when you get to town. You know what? Shorts and swim trunks on an AT thru-hike can get ripped. On my AT thru-hike in Waynesboro, VA one of the librarians in the Waynesboro library gave me a very stern look and told me, "Your friend can't come in here anymore." I'd quickly looked down at my crotch, you know, just to be sure what she was talking about. It was at that time I realized she was talking about another AT thru-hiker. I went outside and sure enough, his shorts had ripped up the side all the way to the waist belt. And, he was Bojangling it. A few safety pins later along with a clean shirt, they let him back into the library. Best to retain some sense of decorum when in town. Out on the Trail -- not many care about your appearance. Unless there's comedy involved.
Some AT thru-hikers will wear a skirt (men as well as women) rather than shorts/swimwear in order to help prevent Crotch Rot and Monkey Butt or to get more airflow up to their privates where the Crotch Rot or Monkey Butt has started.
Don't stand at the front of the shelter and pour Gold Bond powder into the top of your shorts and let the excess flow out the bottom and onto the ground. I saw that happen once on the Trail in New Jersey -- wow there was a quick stampede of in-your-face confrontation from the AT thru-hikers present who were upset about another hiker making a mess at the shelter.
Datto
28) Comedy is rampant on the Appalachian Trail. Hilarity abounds.
Comedy follows long-distance hiking. It's a proven law of the Universe. One day the Nobel Committee will realize this fact and adjust accordingly.
I was out hitchhiking into town from a trail on a very hot day. Cars flying past, no one making eye contact. After 45 minutes a luxury car flew past at over a hundred miles an hour. The gravel and dust hit me in the chest and knocked me backwards.
At that point, I realized my hitchhike was uselees so I went back to where that trail intersected with the highway. A girl was sitting at that spot in the shade. We greeted as only long-distance hikers can do and I asked her if she'd seen that car fly past me at 100 mph. She said to me,. "What kind of car was it?" I told her I thought it was a BMW 740.
She said back to me, "I never drive my 740 that fast."
She and I both busted out laughing.
You 2017 prospective AT thru-hikers -- you're in for such a grand experience.
Datto
Another Kevin
04-25-2016, 16:53
37) Monkey Butt and Crotch Rot.
And, when precautions fail: In a word, Desitin. (Or other zinc oxide ointment.)
There's another thread here on Whiteblaze talking about a hiker going from the AT into a Deli in New York. It reminded me of my time in New York on my Appalachian Trail thru-hike.
I'd come up to a busy road crossing in New York with the weather raining cats and dogs on top of me.
Across the highway I could just make out a cardboard sign nailed to a tree that said this:
<--Deli 0.5
It was just at the beginning of my feeling that I had been falling behind on my AT thru-hike.
I must have stared at that sign across the highway for three or four minutes.
Eventually, logic and reason kicked in and I turned left and hiked down the edge of that busy highway toward the Deli.
It was filled with people -- the Deli. I quickly spotted five other thru-hikers who'd come into the deli to escape the rain and get a sandwich. I walked over and landed my backpack next to them before walking up to where the ordering took place.
Eight or nine groups of people were in-line ahead of me spreading down the picnic tables. So I got in line and tried to see what was available to eat, described on the back wall behind the counter up ahead.
Must have been close to a hundred combinations of sandwiches. Then there were the sides...
I could see the guy behnd the counter, the guy with a big mustache -- the owner of the Deli I'd presumed. He was quite impatient with the tourists ahead of me in line. The tourists couldn't make up their mind when they'd waited in line and had gotten to the front register where the ordering took place. I'm figuring he'd had a long week and this was starting to get over the top for him.
My turn to order eventually had arrived at the counter. The guy behind the counter -- the guy with the big mustache -- his entire demeaner had changed in a blink, He'd softened from his sharp edges when he saw me.
I'd ordered my sandwich and took the number on a stick back with me to where the other AT thru-hikers sat. All of us AT thru-hikers started talking about trail events and what was up ahead and the weather -- just like thru-hikers would do anywhere along the AT. All while we're chowing down on whatever had been put in front of us that we could enjoy as food that wasn't Liptons or Ramen.
My order came delivered soon afterward (delivered by the guy behind the counter with the mustache).
Man that was so good. My mouth waters even today just thinking about it.
Pretty soon, all the tourists left and it was just us AT thru-hikers sitting at picnic tables inside the Deli. None of us were motivated to head out into the rain and continue northbound. The rain outside was pounding into the windows of the Deli.
Just then, the guy with the mustache came over to the table where I was sitting with the other five AT thru-hikers. He had what looked to be an artist's board of roast beef, ham and turkey he was carrying on his shoulder. He said to all of us, "I don't think you people got the proper amount of meat with your sandwiches", then laid that huge giant wood board down between all of us and walked away.
Every single ravonous AT thru-hiker thanked him and devoured all the sliced meet on that wood board within ten minutes.
Being from Indiana I had imagined, in my head, the people of New York state would be some of the meanest people I would encounter on my AT thru-hike.
Turned out they were the nicest.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 38 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
38) Your AT thru-hike is not an entitlement.
It's a gift.
A most valuable gift.
At the very exacting moment when you consider your AT thru-hike to be an entitlement, your thru-hike is over.
You just don't know it yet.
Datto
StuartCairnie
04-25-2016, 21:26
Thank you Datto for all these words of wisdom , I think you're last statement re "It's a gift. A most valuable gift" sums it up best. We are so looking forward to the journey.
Cheers
Stuart
Is there a disposable, environment-friendly equivalent to Wet Wipes? This woman doesn't like disposable anything, but she cites anti Wipes reasons:
http://www.treehugger.com/health/why-you-should-avoid-buying-wet-wipes.html
Even when disposed off in trash cans and not toilets, they can make their way to the water by way of litter created by Dumpster pickups, etc.
Yet, I don't want hikers to suffer chafing and rashes. I chafe like crazy.
Sandy of PA
04-26-2016, 09:23
I carry a car wash rag that drys fast and use soap and water. You will know me by the rag pinned to the back of my pack. No wet wipes ever, our ancestors didn't have them. Save the planet, go green like Grandma was!
Traveler
04-26-2016, 09:48
Is there a disposable, environment-friendly equivalent to Wet Wipes? This woman doesn't like disposable anything, but she cites anti Wipes reasons:
http://www.treehugger.com/health/why-you-should-avoid-buying-wet-wipes.html
Even when disposed off in trash cans and not toilets, they can make their way to the water by way of litter created by Dumpster pickups, etc.
Yet, I don't want hikers to suffer chafing and rashes. I chafe like crazy.
Wet-wipes are a "non-woven" fabric, which is a large industry. How long it will take for this material to break down in is not able to be measured in a human life span, perhaps several. It has a tremendous resistance to water and will not break down even in agitated water tests that have been conducted for many years on a single wipe. Since makers opted to claim it was safe to flush, they are reluctant to recant and/or engage in consumer education programs to stop people from doing what makers initially said to do, several states are now looking at legislation to ban their sale given the costs of damage in public sewerage systems and resulting sewer spills they cause.
The only equivalent would be TP consumable items that can biodegrade, or perhaps very soft cotton that can be washed periodically.
Body Glide can work as a chafing inhibitor, as can changing clothing type/fabric/lengths or with the use of technical fabric under layers.
Sarcasm the elf
04-26-2016, 09:54
I have not tried this myself, but I recall reading a while ago that someone suggested this alternative to wet-wipes: Take paper towels, cut them into quarters, dunk them in a solution of water mixed with a tiny amount of Dr. Brommer's soap and let them dry. Then pack these dry wipes and re-wet them when needed to use them on trail.
JumpMaster Blaster
04-26-2016, 12:16
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 34 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
...One of the significant gotchas to watch out for is when the toenail actually comes off, starts running loose and gets stuck inside your sock. That can become very bad news quickly since a loose toenail banging around inside your sock can easily cut your rain-soaked foot. In case you don't know already, a microbiological festival will be happening in and on your socks for your entire AT thru-hike (even if you carry along foot spray and the like). That festival smell becomes part of that bon vivant stank for which AT thru-hikers have become known. The key thing is to stop right away and fish the loose toenail out of your sock before the toenail has a chance to go haywire with cutting your foot. Normally I dab Neosporin onto the toe where the toenail came off so make sure you have a small tube of Neosporin in your AT thru-hiker first-aid kit. If you've never used Neosporin before, prior to the start of your AT thru-hike you should run a test with Neosporin on your body to make sure your body doesn't have an adverse reaction to Neosporin (a few people I know have a bad reactton to Neosporin).
On occasion during my AT thru-hike (and on other long-distance hikes) I had to manually pull the toenail off my toe (using back-and-forth action) because of the pain I was experiencing while hiking. Also, in Virginia the slamming of the front of my foot caused the toenail on my big toe to slide sideways a slight bit making for an infected toenail. In that case I had to use my Swiss Army Classic knife to slice the toenail on my big toe from top to bottom and peel back the right hand side to remove it. As you might imagine, I said "Sheboygan" aloud quite a few times with that operation...
Datto
You are absolutely hilarious!
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 39 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
39) Hiking poles are not required -- many people have completed their AT thru-hike who have never used hiking poles.
Here's the thing -- your face will thank you if you use hiking poles on your AT thru-hike.
The treadway of the AT is very irregular (more than you can imagine) and the mountain descents are very steep (more than you can imagine). Some people are prone to stumbling, even on a neighborhood sidewalk. Combine those features together and you may find yourself heading on a full-speed cartwheel down a 45* downslope. Right up until your face stops your forward progress on a rock -- and that can leave a mark.
It's not funny to you of course, but to anyone behind you it's hilarious, their day complete.
So you're question is, "Why don't thru-hikers just slow down?"
You as an AT thru-hiker are going to want to make miles. You're in somewhat of a hurry when you're hiking during the day, particularly after you get your trail legs. Using hiking poles gives you a great deal more stability while hiking at speed (four points to stabilize your body when you lose your footing/balance versus only two without hiking poles). If you've never seen the way many AT thru-hikers go down a mountainside, it's looks like a controlled crash. The poles are out front steading the thru-hiker who's almost running down the hillside. At any moment you're expecting the AT thru-hiker to go tumbling down the mountain. Most times they don't.
Then there's that thing called a backpack -- it sways side to side a bit while you're hiking which moves your center of gravity all over the place. Sometimes when you stop suddenly, your backpack never gets the memo and keeps going forward. Occasionally it's as if The Three Stooges are thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail -- except it's just you by yourself.
Then there are stream crossings where you're trying to keep your feet from getting wet -- probably a waste of time trying to rock-hop a stream (using poles to steady yourself) but it doesn't keep thru-hikers like me from trying.
When hikers get their first set of hiking poles, they're likely to grip the handles tightly. That will just wear you out more quickly and will make the hiking poles uncomfortable. Instead, slip your hands up from underneath and then through the loop straps located at the handles. Let the sides of your hands hang/rest on the straps while lightly steadying the poles with your fingertips. When you're hiking with hiking poles you're just using a light touch on the pole handles to keep the poles moving forward appropriately while steadying yourself. When you trip and stumble, your hands will automatically grip the pole handles tightly and plant the poles into the ground to keep you from face-planting.
Many hiking poles have adjustable lengths -- in theory, the poles are made longer on downslopes and shorter on upslopes. An AT thru-hiker may occasionally adjust their pole lengths during the day but for the most part the poles may stay the same relative length for long periods of time. It's too much trouble to keep adjustng poles and the day is filled to the brim with ups and downs for an AT thru-hiker. On certain long climbs ahead (such as the climb northbound out of Damascus, VA) the hiker may start the day with a slightly shorter hiking pole length and just keep going until the ridge is reached a day or two later. Also, some hikers (including me) dig the poles into the ground on climbs which may get the hiker moving faster using arm muscles as well as leg muscles on the climbs. This is particularly so after you get your trail legs.
Many hiking poles allow the hiking pole points (the sharp end) to be replaced. The points are very tough but they do get broken on occasion. I am very hard on hiking poles so I changed out my hiking pole points two or three times on my northbound AT thru-hike. Sometimes poles will last for an entire long-distance hike -- you never know. Replacement pole points are sometimes available at hiker-related outfitter stores along the AT. If you're usng a bounce box or have a maildrop support person back home, you might think about buying a spare set of pole points that you'll have readily available when needed at an upcoming pickup of your maildrop/bounce box.
The hiking poles I used on my northbound AT thru-hike (and ever since) are Leki brand -- model is Super Makalu Cor-Tec (Leki is pronounced "Leckie" not "Leekie"). I use the Leki Cor-Tec handles (the material looks like cork) because years ago, I saw a someone using a cheaper brand of poles and Deet had started deterorating the plastic handles on their poles. That might not be the case today for the cheaper poles but how can you tell? The Cor-Tec handles are resistant to Deet so I just go with poles that have those type of handles. Note the Super Makalu Cor-Tec hiking poles are pretty much a Cadillac and not budget-friendly (although sometimes they're for sale on Sierra Trading Post or at other similar stores at a discount). I've only every owned two sets of hiking poles in my life -- it would have been only one set but I fell on the CDT and broke both of my original hiking poles and decided it was time to get a new set. Leki (the company) had repaired my original set of poles many times for me.
By the way, back in Society I can always tell when it's time to switch jobs or go on a long-distance hike. I find myself starting to grip the poles at work too tightly.
Datto
rocketsocks
04-26-2016, 14:25
So Data, curious...which ones are the top ten? :D
Traveler
04-26-2016, 14:29
I have not tried this myself, but I recall reading a while ago that someone suggested this alternative to wet-wipes: Take paper towels, cut them into quarters, dunk them in a solution of water mixed with a tiny amount of Dr. Brommer's soap and let them dry. Then pack these dry wipes and re-wet them when needed to use them on trail.
That sounds like something to try!
I recall reading a while ago that someone suggested this alternative to wet-wipes: Take paper towels, cut them into quarters, dunk them in a solution of water mixed with a tiny amount of Dr. Brommer's soap and let them dry.
On my northbound AT thru-hike I did a similar thing with Hot Chocolate. Divide it into fourths, smother it in Dr. Bacardi, wait for the effect.
Some of the AT thru-hikers around me (as I remember, Godfather, Cypress Knee, Mouse Daddy and Captain Janeaway) affectionately called to order a meeting of the Royal Order Of The AT Spoons on Cypress Knee's 21st birthday.
That's how I got part of my lengthy trailname.
Datto The Clean, His Royal Badness.
Datto
On my AT thru-hike, most thru-hikers had this as a daily to-do list:
1. Have Fun
2. Make Miles
3.
4.
5.
If anything 3 or above got done, that was a good day. If nothing 3 or above got done, that was a good day.
Datto
I carry a car wash rag that drys fast and use soap and water. You will know me by the rag pinned to the back of my pack. No wet wipes ever, our ancestors didn't have them. Save the planet, go green like Grandma was!
Thanks! A+
I have not tried this myself, but I recall reading a while ago that someone suggested this alternative to wet-wipes: Take paper towels, cut them into quarters, dunk them in a solution of water mixed with a tiny amount of Dr. Brommer's soap and let them dry. Then pack these dry wipes and re-wet them when needed to use them on trail.
Thanks! A+
Wet-wipes are a "non-woven" fabric, which is a large industry. How long it will take for this material to break down in is not able to be measured in a human life span, perhaps several. It has a tremendous resistance to water and will not break down even in agitated water tests that have been conducted for many years on a single wipe. Since makers opted to claim it was safe to flush, they are reluctant to recant and/or engage in consumer education programs to stop people from doing what makers initially said to do, several states are now looking at legislation to ban their sale given the costs of damage in public sewerage systems and resulting sewer spills they cause.
The only equivalent would be TP consumable items that can biodegrade, or perhaps very soft cotton that can be washed periodically.
Body Glide can work as a chafing inhibitor, as can changing clothing type/fabric/lengths or with the use of technical fabric under layers.
I haven't purchased them since forever, but hear Wet Wipes now come with a teensy-weensy warning. Many folks don't read the fine print. Was it Vermont that first banned microbeads before federal policy followed?
Yes, good to contact our solons about this. Petitions sometimes work, sometimes don't, but the White House won't even look at a petition without 100,000 signatures. If there's one circulating on these wipes (and others like it), I'd sign it, as would all members of my family who are of age.
Unhealthy for the AT, unhealthy for the coast since so much waste eventually makes it way to the sea. I'll avoid Wet Wipes, facial wipes, etc. Thanks to you and others on this site for the mentions about Body Glide.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 40 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
40) You don't need to have a reason why you have the desire to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
Prior to my AT thru-hike, a woman had asked me why I wanted to do "this hike thing".
I told her, "Why did they climb Everest?"
Her response back to me was swift; "That was almost as crazy."
It still cracks me up today.
A few AT thru-hikers who I'd hiked with during my AT thru-hike knew why they were there.
Most didn't. At least to the point they could describe it out loud to someone else.
Here on Whiteblaze and elsewhere I've heard a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail described as "a vacation".
I bust out laughng when I hear that.
From a man's viewpoint, this is a vacation:
You're sitting along the edge of a pool. The sky is clear and bright, the sea is calm and blue. Two women in bikinis walk past and one drops her sunglasses slightly and your eyes meet. You smile and gently wave. The women continue on but a guy in a tuxedo shows up. He saw you waving and inquires if you would like a complementary pineapple drink. You hold up two fingers and he puts two tropical drinks down on the small table next to your lounge chair. He says to you, "a beautiful day today, isn't it?" and you agree. It's a wonderful day. Later on that same day you're out petting bottlenose porpoises with those two bikini clad women, being suave and debonaire talking to them. Later on, you return to the ship and a giant feast has been prepared for your personal benefit. You've never had caviar on genuine Dunklehoot crackers before. Why yes, I think I will try those.
That's a vacation.
Nowhere in the vast vacation literature, nowhere on the vacation website where you booked the vacation, nowhere on the daily description of activities you receive under your stateroom door is there ever the mention of the word mud.
Probably just an oversight I'm assuming...
See, a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail is more of a quest. It's not easily describable to your spouse or your parents or your co-workers or your friends. They're thinking only reason and rational has meaning in the Universe so what's the reason? What's the why of all of this?
There doesn't have to be a reason why you have the desire to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
Datto
DuneElliot
04-27-2016, 09:08
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 40 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
40) You don't need to have a reason why you have the desire to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
I have to disagree to a point on this one...if you don't have a reason that you can constantly point to, then on those really crappy days there is nothing to hold on to, no reason for you to keep going. It's all part of the mental side of the hike. I've heard that having a strong reason, whatever it is but as long as you have one, actually gives people a better chance of finishing and sticking it out through the tough times. A reason gives people motivation and light in the dark.
I have to disagree to a point on this one...if you don't have a reason that you can constantly point to, then on those really crappy days there is nothing to hold on to, no reason for you to keep going. It's all part of the mental side of the hike. I've heard that having a strong reason, whatever it is but as long as you have one, actually gives people a better chance of finishing and sticking it out through the tough times. A reason gives people motivation and light in the dark.
Agree completely. The reasons amount to a list of expected benefits to the hiker. Be it entertainment, views, enlightenment, better health, fitness, adventure, camaraderie, solitude, goofing off, or whatever. Any or all of these, or something else entirely. It all comes at a cost -- at the very least, five or six months of your life. So it better be worth your while, whatever you expect to get out of it.
bigcranky
04-27-2016, 13:26
From a man's viewpoint, this is a vacation:
You're sitting along the edge of a pool. The sky is clear and bright, the sea is calm and blue. Two women in bikinis walk past and one drops her sunglasses slightly and your eyes meet. You smile and gently wave. The women continue on but a guy in a tuxedo shows up. He saw you waving and inquires if you would like a complementary pineapple drink. You hold up two fingers and he puts two tropical drinks down on the small table next to your lounge chair. He says to you, "a beautiful day today, isn't it?" and you agree. It's a wonderful day. Later on that same day you're out petting bottlenose porpoises with those two bikini clad women, being suave and debonaire talking to them. Later on, you return to the ship and a giant feast has been prepared for your personal benefit. You've never had caviar on genuine Dunklehoot crackers before. Why yes, I think I will try those.
That's a vacation.
I would shoot myself in the head on the second day of that. Maybe late on the first day.
Wandering around the Southeastern coast with a tent and a kayak, that's a vacation. Four or five weeks (or months) on a trail somewhere, that's a vacation. Wandering the old cities of Europe, the really cheap ones (loved L'viv and highly recommend it, for example), drinking good coffee and beer and meeting interesting people, that's a vacation.
DuneElliot
04-27-2016, 14:18
I would shoot myself in the head on the second day of that. Maybe late on the first day.
Wandering around the Southeastern coast with a tent and a kayak, that's a vacation. Four or five weeks (or months) on a trail somewhere, that's a vacation. Wandering the old cities of Europe, the really cheap ones (loved L'viv and highly recommend it, for example), drinking good coffee and beer and meeting interesting people, that's a vacation.
Couldn't agree more.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 41 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
41) The Pennsylvania Rocks -- this is a section of the Appalachian Trail beginning in Pennsylvania (for a northbounder) where rocks abound on the treadway of the AT (as if that doesn't described pretty much every section of the AT a northbounder has traversed already).
This rock section in PA isn't quite as bad as hikers make it out to be. We hikers do claim the people of Pennsylvania travel out to the AT each spring and sharpen their assigned rocks. This in order to make hikers better remember their time in Pennsylvania.
The "memorable" rock section of PA generally begins, for a northbounder, at Duncannon, PA and starts to taper off (not disappear) fifty miles north of the place where northbound AT thru-hikers enter New Jersey near Delaware Water Gap. That tapering off point is among the debatable opinions in the AT hiking community -- some are convinced the residents of New Jersey collude with the people from Pennsylvania to make hikers think the rocks are going to stop sooner.
Here's the thing -- You as a northbound AT thru-hiker have enjoyed making tremendous northbound progress and speed from Waynesboro, VA all the way to Duncannon, PA. You're now used to that kind of somewhat minimalist effort to make your miles for the day. All of a sudden, the Pennsylvania Rocks start when you hike north from Duncannon, PA. You find that you no longer have the luxury of making easier miles every day because the treadway of the AT is now chocked full of all these closely spaced basketball sized rocks and larger. You no longer can zone-out, look at the passing scenery and just listen to music all day long while you're making your daily miles. Instead, you have to start watching where you're stepping for each and every step of your hike during the day. Even if you're careful, you're still going to be stumbling while hiking because you haven't reduced your hiking speed to accommodate the ridiculously uneven treadway.
You still make your miles for the day, it's just now with the Pennsylvania Rocks you have to exert much more mental power.
So the Pennsylvania Rocks get way more negative press than deserved. If truth be known, each of the Pennsylvania Rocks are cuddly, soft creatures just wanting to find a good home.
On my northbound AT thru-hike while I was in the middle of the Pennsylvania Rock section, one day I counted how many times I tripped and stumbled that day.
It was over fifty times. Even for me, that was quite a bit of stumbling. As my dad would say to me while I was growng up, "Pick up your feet!"
Luck was with me -- I didn't face-plant in Pennsylvania until fifteen miles south of Wind Gap, PA which is a small town in Pennsylvania near the New Jersey border. On that day I face-planted/fell twice in the rain within five minutes time.
See, I was just trying to get my required number of statewide face-plants out of the way before entering New Jersey. No use trying to save up and bank face-plants -- you never know how much bad that might bring forth.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 42 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
42) If you're a meat eater (or in-training to become one), check out Scrapple while dining in breakfast-serving restaurants on you're AT thru-hike in Pennsylvania. Scrapple is somewhat of a local dish in Pennsylvania that's believed to have originated in Pennsylvania Dutch communities.
When I was a tyke and the family lived in Pennsylvania my dad would cook up Scrapple as a breakfast item every Sunday morning (slathered with maple syrup). Eventually my mom put an end to Scrapple for the sake of us kids.
All this, of course, assumes the FDA hasn't banned Scrapple nationwide.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 43 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
43) Tipping at restaurants along the AT.
For those of you who won't or don't leave a proper amount of tip when the service is fine at restaurants along the AT...
I will leave the tip for you. I'll be right behind you.
I have literally left hundreds of dollars in tips for long-distance hikers who have walked out of restaurants without leaving a tip. Sometimes AT thru-hikers will, unbelievably, walk out of restaurants without even paying their bill much less leaving a tip. Those AT thru-hikers who had walked out without paying actually had the notion and thought they'd gotten away with something, thought they'd gotten one-up on someone. You didn't see me, but I heard all the laughing and joking about it.
I will cover those costs too. No problem.
Heh, you know what? It may come as a really big shock to some hikers but you can't complete your AT thru-hike all by yourself.
If you don't leave a proper tip in restaurants, it will follow you up the Trail. You won't even know. You'll be blind to it.
I will be there right behind you, leaving tips for you, taking all that Good Karma you are giving away. For the paltry amount of covering someone's tip in a restaurant, I will take all the Good Karma I can gather.
And wow has it been good -- I'm one of the luckiest people you will have ever read text from on the Internet. Pretty much every day, good happens. I don't ever get accustomed to it.
Thanks. I appreciate it.
So, when all that pent-up Bad Karma arrives on-scene for you, catches up -- you can't imagine, sitting in your easy chair at home right now, how ugly that can get on a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I'm not talking about just the normal everyday ugly you've gotten used to right now. I mean the stupendous, what-the-heck-just-happened-to-me Fuggly Bad arriving at your doorstep.
So please, let me have all your Good Karma. I will have all your good weather days, I'll have all your good water, I'll have all your opportunity, I'll have all the humor originally allocated to you, I'll experience all the beauty destined for you.
Or, you could do yourself a favor on your AT thru-hike -- leave proper tips in restaurants along the AT and keep your own Good Karma. You may be surprised how unexpected good things start to happen without explanation. All of a sudden...
Good happens.
Datto
PA rocks are overrated. And PA is hardly the only rocky state. You get that same sort of endless rock hopping up on the Presidential range as well. Or various bits of Maryland, New Jersey, or Virginia. Maybe the rocks are a big deal there because PA is so unmemorable in other respects.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 44 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
44) Don't bring a noisy cook stove to the Appalachian Trail (such as the MSR Dragonfly and similar balls-out crazy-loud stoves).
I'm putting this into the list of Tips here just to be complete.
Hikers come to the Appalachian Trail for peace and quiet -- they don't want to hear your personal 747 start up every night at the front of the shelter.
The very first time you start up your Dragonfly 747 stove at the front of the shelter in the evening, you may not even hear the groan from other AT thru-hikers over the roar of the GE engines powering your cook stove.
That will be your first hall pass. You probably won't know it.
Now there is always going to be someone who says, "Prumpppt, I have every right to bring whatever cook stove I please out here to the woods. It's just as much my woods as it is everyone else's woods."
AT thru-hikers are relatively patient people. You may even get a hall pass for stating your "right" out loud at the shelter.
See some people in Society, even with training and smacks from a riding crop, do not have any idea what it means to be considerate of others. They've already spent their $150.00 on a personal 747 without thinking. Of course, consideration of others never crossed their mind. Even after cranking up their personal 747 at home, it still never crosses their mind about the intrusion they're going to make into everyone's peace when that Dragonfly gets clearance for take-off.
Clearance CLarence. Oveur Unger.
Things are quiet on the AT. Much more quiet than you can imagine while sitting in your living room at home.
Even after the second time you start up your personal 747 the next evening, an even louder groan may occur from AT thru-hikers before the shelter empties.
That'll be your second hall pass.
Anything after that, you're on your own.
It's amazng the number of warranty claims made on Dragonfly stoves. Seems they stop working frequently -- not too long after first use on the AT. Probably a manufacturing defect.
Be kind and considerate of others on your AT thru-hike. It doesn't take much effort to do so.
Datto
I would shoot myself in the head on the second day of that. Maybe late on the first day.
For me, bikinis beat ticks hands off.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 45 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
45) A month or two before you start your AT thru-hike, check your resting pulse rate in beats per minute. Do it three times and write down the average beats per minute. Keep that number in a safe place.
Then start your AT thru-hike.
Heart beats silly like a big bass drum
Losing all equalibrium
A few months before I started my AT thru-hike, someone had mentioned to me, just like I am to you, that I should write down my resting pulse rate -- that I'd find it interesting later on.
So I did -- during the December just prior to the start of my northbound AT thru-hike the average of my resting pulse rate was 82 beats per minute. For what I was doing as a job just prior to my AT thru-hike, that number would probably have been somewhat normal considering all the coffee I was drinking at that time and the constant 24 hour stress of the job I'd had back then.
On day 72 at milepoint 789 of my northbound AT thru-hike, I took my resting pulse rate again -- as usual, I took my resting pulse rate three times and then averaged the three.
The average was 59 beats per minute.
A couple of months after completing my AT thru-hike I traveled to a job interview at a Fortune 500 company located in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. The hiring manager wanted to extend an offer to me at the end of the interview but said the company policy was that everyone had to have a company-paid physical before any offer could be extended. He asked me when I could take the physical and I said, "How about right now?"
Arrangements were made and I drove the short distance down the highway to the medical clinic responsible for performing all the physicals for the company.
Lots of tests were performed, hearing, vision, blood pressure, heart listening, a bunch of other tests, Then, more heart listening and more forms filled out by the registered nurse who was performing the physical.
After an hour or more of testing, the nurse escorted me to a conference room and told me wait there and someone would be in to see me.
I hung out on the sofa in the conference room for a while, then the door opened. A physician-looking guy and another guy came in, shook my hand and each took a seat opposite me,
The physician started the conversation saying, "We've looked over the results of your physical and there's a problem. There's a problem with your heart."
I said, "Oh?"
The guy said, "Your heart is not beating as fast as it should."
The two guys said they were going to make arrangements for me to undergo further evaluation at some other specialty clinic.
Of course I milked it for as long as I could since the two guys looked pretty serious.
I finally had to tell them, "I've recently completed a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. That's why my heart is beating so slowly."
The two guys looked at me, then looked at each other, then back at me again. One said, "How long is the Appalachian Trail?"
I told them and then they asked me how many miles I had hiked and I told them that I'd hiked all of them. The two guys paused for a while, then started into the usual thru-hiker twenty questions and of course, I answered all of their questions.
Then the one guy said to me, "We've not seen anyone in the clinic before with your heart rate who wasn't in the process of passing out. Are you light-headed or nauseous?"
I told them no, I felt great.
Then they told me something to the effect that my body was highly unusual. I took that as a complement.
Interesting, they sent me back to the nurse who had performed the physical. She said to me, "So you've hike the AT?" I said yes. She went on to tell me her and two of her girlfriends had hiked for a week on the AT during Spring Break back when the three of them were in college. They'd had such a good time that they'd all planned on hiking the entire AT after graduation. She said, "We ended up having families and kids and you know, we never got around to it." She said to me, "It's one of the biggest regrets of my life."
I ended up taking a job at a different company rather than the job that was offered to me in Cincinnati.
Datto
On day 72 at milepoint 789 of my northbound AT thru-hike, I took my resting pulse rate again -- as usual, I took my resting pulse rate three times and then averaged the three.
The average was 59 beats per minute.
Interestng -- The reason I'd taken my resting pulse rate that evening in Virginia was due to a woman named Anna. She'd ended her AT thru-hike there in Virginia and was giving rides to hikers who wanted to go to a store that day. I had run out of something and had decided to take her up on her offer. On the ride to the pharmacy Anna had mentioned she'd recently had a physical after ending her AT thru-hike and the doctor was quite surprised at her heart rate and her breathing rate. That had reminded me, "Oh yeah, I should take my pulse rate tonight and see what it ends up being."
One other interesting thing I'd noticed after completing my AT thru-hike and returning back to Indiana -- I couldn't keep sleeping after the sun started coming up in the morning and the birds started chirping.
Datto
My resting heart-rate is in the low 50's. It used to be in the low 40's when I was younger. It must be genetic. My brother, who doesn't hike, has flat feet and hates to walk farther than the dog wants to, has the same low resting heart rate. My father, whose lungs deteriorated from something he picked up in Thailand during the Vietnam war, had a strong heart until the day he died. I'm not sure if it's because we grew up hiking, hunting, or fishing the mountains in Maine, or what?
Resting heart rate is suppose to be a good indicator of heart health. Unless, of course, it's so low it stops beating altogether
Datto- i clicked on your journal entry about the dog and now I'm hooked on your journal. Started from the beginning. I agree with the comment you made about the people on the trail. I have made a couple of close friends who only happen to live a couple of hours away and I was inspired by many interesting people. Also agree with the adjustment coming home. I had a hard time- and 6 months later am only now starting to understand how I need to shift my life to make room for this experience and not lose the many gifts of a long distance hike.
I didn't really mind dogs on the trail, but I did meet a couple of dogs who seemed very miserable and I felt sorry for them.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 46 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
46) Is this doable?
A few months prior to starting my northbound AT thru-hike, a new hiking club was being formed in the town where I was living at that time. Group hikes were scheduled in the fall and everyone in the hiking club showed up to each of those hikes. We had a terrific time during those outings. On one wintertime weekend day hike, rain had started the night previous to when the hike was scheduled to start. Of course I went to that planned outing -- on the drive there, I had expected no one to show up because of the continuing rain.
When I arrived at the assembly point only one other person had come out to hike in the rain. It was a guy I'd met six years previously when I was in the middle of a consulting gig at the company where he worked. He and I greeted each other at the assembly point and we chatted while waiting to see if anyone else was going to show up. No one did so he and I started hiking that twelve-mile loop trail.
We talked about a number of things while hiking and somewhere along about the eighth mile of that loop trail hike we stopped to take a standing break. He'd already known I was intending to start my AT thru-hike soon so he asked me, "What do you think your chances are for finishing?"
I didn't hesitate -- I told him 100%.
He laughed and after a few moments pause, he asked me again, "No, really -- what do you think your chances are for finishing?"
From the conversations that day and from previous mentions I'd sensed he was coming to a point in his life where he was recognizing the need for a change. Just like someone who has recently started thinking an AT thru-hike might be something to consider, certain questions come up and this was one of them.
I told him again, 100%.
My answer had surprised him. Almost on cue, he started asking why I was so confident. I'm sure in his mind, I was way overconfident since I could tell he'd already done a cursory review of what an AT thru-hike entailed.
But I wasn't overconfident. I considered my answer to be true.
He said to me, "Is that why you always wear your backpack on these day hikes?"
So, here you are.
You've probably looked at the AT strip map from the ATC or you've looked on-line at the length of the AT from start to finish. You can see which and how many states the AT passes through. You probably even know an AT thru-hike involves carrying your backpack for more than 2,000 miles.
You've probably gotten in your head the challenge of an AT thru-hike is immense, just on distance alone.
Well yes, an AT thru-hike is a sizeable challenge.
My AT thru-hike is not currently on my list of the top five challenges I've ever taken on in my life (it's sixth). However, thru-hiking the AT easily made the list of the top five best things I've ever done.
Some people can just show up to life and wing-it day-to-day and things work out. I've met a few of those people. They are truly amazing to me. A few of those people can show up to the AT (with a backpack they'd just bought on the trip to Springer Mountain) and start hiking north and make it all the way to Katahdin.
I'm not that way -- I'm a planner-type through and through. I recognize I'm not good on my feet (literally as well as figuratively). When I'm in the process of accessing whether to take on a big challenges (or not) I want answers before I ever begin. I want to know if what I'm taking on is even possible -- or is it just pushing on a rope for me? If I can't be convinced success is possible from me taking on a particular big challenge, I walk away -- before I waste much time or energy. That attitude has upset a few employers as well as a few girlfriends.
Most people in Society don't do this -- they don't try to anticipate whether success is possible. Instead, they wake up every morning, go to work, they're told "do this" so they do it. In their head they're thinking someone else has already determined this will work so I'll just show up and do what they tell me. As long as they keep paying me, I'll keep showing up and do what they say. I don't need to see the big picture as long as they keep paying me.
Then something like the Great Recession hits and they're screwed.
So, if you're a planner type, you should right now be asking yourself this question before you get too far into telling everyone you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 2017:
"If I'm looking at carrying a backpack more than 2,000 miles over hill and dale, through rain and snow and blazing heat and only fifteen percent of the people who show up to start their AT thru-hike actually end up finishing, what can I do now to put me into that fifteen percent?"
Once you get the answer to that question, your next question should be:
"Do I really want to do this?"
Datto
I'm one of those people who can wing it. If I have a plan, it's not written in stone and open to changes. When I finally have time to through-hike, I'll finish because I'm prone to procrastination, so I'll just put off quitting until I'm on top of Katahdin, again. Or Springer, for the first time. Flip-flopping is looking more and more the best option
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 47 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
47) If you're a planner-type, I'm convinced properly addressing these three things put you into the top 30% of chances for finishing.
Showing up to start your northbound AT thru-hike and wanting to identify specific individuals who will finish an AT thru-hike -- that is almost impossible. It's a complete crap shoot. You can only identify you.
Identifying who are the people who have a good chance at finishing their AT thru-hike when you're north of Damascus, VA -- say at milepoint 500 -- that's an entirely different question.
For someone who's a planner type (not everyone is) who wants to start their AT thru-hike well ahead of the curve...
You have almost a year -- there's plenty of time to get prepared if that is your desire. The question should be, "where can I best focus effort during the next year in order to become better prepared?"
Here's the short list -- three items from the tips previously discussed (in detail or in passing). Focus effort on these between now and the start of your AT thru-hike and I believe there's a good chance you'll be in the top 30% of people who have a chance to finish their northbound AT thru-hike:
a) If you're wanting to be better prepared and want to focus effort during the next year before starting your northbound AT thru-hike in 2017, you have to get yourself to the point where hiking in the rain with your full backpack on difficult terrain for extended periods of time is not unpleasant. If you can get yourself to the level of actually enjoying a multi-day hike in the rain carrying your full backpack on strenuous terrain -- where you're making at least eight miles per day, day-after-day -- then you could very well be ahead of the curve. Of course, doing so would spoil the surprise for the many people who will leave the Trail before North Carolina shows up.
b) If you want to become more prepared during the next 12 months before you start your AT thru-hike, you should focus effort on getting your finances in-order. You should have $5,000 in cash available for your use on your AT thru-hike prior to shutting your front door to leave for the start of your AT thru-hike.
c) If you want to become more prepared during the next twelve months before starting your AT thru-hike, get your personal life in order so you're not haunted by things going on back home while you're on your AT thru-hike.
Datto
show me the monkey
04-29-2016, 16:52
c) If you want to become more prepared during the next twelve months before starting your AT thru-hike, get your personal life in order so you're not haunted by things going on back home while you're on your AT thru-hike.
That's a big one. Separation anxiety/homesickness is one of those things that rarely gets mentioned, but has to be considered one of the top 3 reason's people get off the trail
Here on Whiteblaze and elsewhere I've heard a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail described as "a vacation".
I bust out laughng when I hear that.
That word "vacation". I used that word as a tipoff.
Prior to my AT thru-hike, I'd taken the time to get my career going well. Not the jobs, the career. I had taken some really nasty jobs (one's where multiple people told me I was a fool to go work there) because I believed the work at those companies would accelerate my career into areas that would become high-demand. That's pretty much how it worked out even though I may have lost 1.5 years of life for every 1.0 year I worked at those companies. Probably even still have an involuntary twitch or two on occasion, heh.
After my AT thru-hike I headed back to the workforce and was doing interviews for positions. If the word "vacation" came up in conversation about my AT thru-hike, I knew immediately I'd never work for that type of old-school company lost in the 1950's. The word vacation, on the few occasions it was used about my AT thru-hike during an interview, would invariably come from some Human Resource person. I'd wait for a pause in the conversation and then just say something like this; "Listen, I've thought this over and it looks like you have a great opportunity. But it's not a good fit for me." I would be cordial because my parents had taught me manners but really, I just wanted to save time, end the discussion as soon as possible and hit the Next button. If you've chosen wisely for a career choice and have done the work necessary to get your career going, you can do those kinds of things and get a best-match type of job from the opportunities offered to you.
Use of the word "vacation" in that context is sometimes why you find large companies with a Human Resources Department and a whole 'nother department called Talent Acquisition. That occasionally will come about because the hiring managers at large companies get together and decide they don't want anyone in the Human Resouces Department messing up their attempts to acquire talent from a limited talent pool. If you've gotten your career going well, that would mean you. If you see a department called "Talent Retention", that may be the time to run. Even the hiring managers have given up and are hitting the exits.
Right after my AT thru-hike, one of the interviews I had was with a Fortune 500 company in a larger city. I had successfully navigated the Human Resource portion of the interview process at that company and both the company and I were impressed enough to have continued to the next level of the interview process. I had seen their corporate headquarters from the highway during my travels but had never even been up close to their campus. I traveled to the on-site interview and wow, their corporate headquarters was a full-blown palace. Never had I seen that much gorgeous travertine in one place -- it was everywhere, not just the public places. I did the interview with the hiring manager, then moved on to Mr. Big and did the interview with him. As usual with large companies, they want to do the final due-dilligence on you before making an offer so I traveled back home. What happened next was hilarious -- I do believe someone is watching out for me. One of the women I knew from the AT -- she was also an AT thru-hiker during my year, she had cut my hair in Damascus for me at Trail Days -- she tended bar at a place where the human resources guy and the hiring manager hung out. Somehow they'd discovered she had recently thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail so they asked her about me. Next thing you know I have this really nice job offer arriving on my doorstep wanting me to come work at their palace.
The job offer I eventually accepted after finishing my AT thru-hike was with a different company -- a consulting company that had fit the bill for me on the non-job related elements (physical location, pay, benefits, those kinds of things). Being the new guy at that company I did a whole bunch of really waste of time activities for five months or so -- enough that I was actually taking calls from headhunters (in layman's terms those are called recruiters), occasionally flying to interviews on Friday nights and doing interviews over weekends. Then the consulting company where I was workng had the great opportunity to be interviewed for a large consulting contract with a Fortune 500 company. The size of that contract was more than twice the size of the next largest contract the company had ever landed.
One day I came into the office and a bigshot in the consulting company where I worked wanted to see me -- during the meeting, the bigshot explained about the potential for the new contract, how important that contract was and how the company was currently more than 20% over the contract costs presented by the other two consulting companies being interviewed for the contract. He told me I should watch what I said during the interview and take two specific other guys with me. He gave me the date and time -- good enough, I'll go over and see what's up. At that time, I hadn't known the Fortune 500 company had already inquired who would be handling the contract from the consulting company and the bigshot had told the Fortune 500 company they could have anyone they wanted be the contract manager. The bigshot gave the Fortune 500 company a resume from everyone in the company -- the Fortune 500 company had chosen me, which was why I was heading over to do the interview.
When I got to the interview it was a conference room of four or five guys from the Fortune 500 company, all of them wearing ties. I did introductions of the two guys who were with me, summarized our credentials and started into the usual song and dance of doing a contract interview. After a couple of minutes, I turned it over to the guys from the Fortune 500 company to get them involved. The biggest of their bigshots (I could tell because he was the one who the other guys deferred to) started talking. He said, "Yeah, we reviewed your resume and we know what your company can do. What we really want to know about is your hike of the Appalachian Trail." I smiled and that's when the guys from the Fortune 500 company started laughing. Those guys started into the usual thru-hiker twenty questions and of course, I had them laughing pretty quickly. The interview was supposed to only have lasted thirty minutes (which had expired long ago) when some of the guys had to get to another meeting so the biggest of the bigshots said, "I suppose we should talk a little about the contract" which had everyone in the conference room busting out laughing again including me. One of the other consulting companies being interviewed had been pacing out in the reception area and must have heard all the laughing. Looks of inquiry came over their faces when we exited the interview room and came back into the reception area. I drove back to the office and the bigshot in the consulting company where I worked came over and asked me how it went. I said, "Oh, it went pretty well." He asked, "Did you tell them about this or that or some other thing" and I said, yeah, we'd talked about those (I didn't say we'd only talked about those things for seconds).
So, of course, the company where I worked secured the contract and I was the guy handling that contract. I got the pick of anyone in the company to be on my team. We impressed the heck out of that Fortune 500 company so much another even larger contract was givin to the consulting company where I had worked. But by then, I'd already fulfilled the contract obligations and had taken off to travel the South Pacific on my next adventure.
The subject of my AT thru-hike and my other adventures would come up several other times during future job interviews. Things always seemed to work out -- just like on the AT.
Datto
Datto- i clicked on your journal entry about the dog and now I'm hooked on your journal.
Thanks BonBon. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed wrting it.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 47 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
47) If you're a planner-type, I'm convinced properly addressing these three things put you into the top 30% of chances for finishing.
Showing up to start your northbound AT thru-hike and wanting to identify specific individuals who will finish an AT thru-hike -- that is almost impossible. It's a complete crap shoot. You can only identify you.
Identifying who are the people who have a good chance at finishing their AT thru-hike when you're north of Damascus, VA -- say at milepoint 500 -- that's an entirely different question.
Datto
My rule of thumb for identifying those who will from those who won't - 1) a key phrase to listen for is "I am wanting to thru hike but I'm only going to do it as long as I'm having fun". That is a code phrase for "I've got about 200 to 700 miles out here before I go home" and 2) when a person, after leaving town X begins talking about town Y on the hike out of town X, they are not gonna make it. A corollary of this is, if a person keeps making excuses about why they need to be in town Z for "just one more night", they ain't gonna make it. If being in town is more enjoyable than being in the woods to a person, they will not make it from one end to the other. Or, if they are travelling in a 'pack" and trying to "keep up", not a good sign.
I have thru hiked and then section hiked each year thereafter, usually in the southern "bubble" of "thruhikers". I agree with you , no way to stand at Springer and identify the thru hikers from those who will get off in Gatlinburg or Pearisburg or DWG, Pa. But after a few years of this, I can listen to the conversations in the shelters in Hot Springs or Erwin or Damascus and feel pretty good about identifying those who will end up getting off the trail. (Excluding leaving for injury or unforeseen circumstances).
Thank you Datto for all these words of wisdom , I think you're last statement re "It's a gift. A most valuable gift" sums it up best. We are so looking forward to the journey.
Best of adventures to you on your upcoming journey.
Datto
Another Kevin
04-30-2016, 15:27
Datto, really nice wrap-up, and it really clarifies where you and I part company, and why I've respectfully disagreed with you on a lot of what you have to say (while agreeing that it's right for you.)
I'm a planner, too. If I can't see the big picture, I really have a hard time getting motivated. If I can, it's Katie bar the door... and I have similar stories of landing contracts in eccentric ways. If the two of us, and a couple of brews, are ever in the same room together, I bet we'd enjoy swapping tales. :)
a) Can I enjoy a multiday hike on difficult terrain in rain and sleet? Yes, I've done it, and enjoyed it. Can I get used to carrying a heavy backpack all the time? I walk 2-3 miles every goddamned day with a heavy day pack (heavier than what I'd bring for a weekend backpack), so as to keep my body used to that.
b) Could I swing it financially? I'm getting to be an old man, and I've led a conservative life. I'm not terribly afraid of outliving my money, and once in a while, I might as well spend some.
c) Would I be haunted by things back home? Most likely. I have ties to family, and church, and community, and people who depend on me. I don't think I'll ever be able to cast off the moorings and just walk away. And that's perfectly fine with me, because keeping my commitments is satisfying in my own way. Hence:
Do I really want to do such a thing? No, I don't think so. Not really.
But I enjoy my long weekends, and the occasional section hike. And town stops are frequent enough on the Trail that I tend to look at a thru-hike as, "this would be just like a bunch of sections, back to back, except that I might actually start getting my trail legs."
And despite not being a Real Hiker, I do hold forth, sometimes, on equipment or technique. Because I like to think I've learnt something in nigh on half a century of clueless weekending, in more varied conditions than the AT has to offer. It just might have been different lessons from yours. That's fine, too. We're different blind men groping to understand the same elephant.
Datto, really nice wrap-up, and it really clarifies where you and I part company, and why I've respectfully disagreed with you on a lot of what you have to say (while agreeing that it's right for you.)
I'm a planner, too. If I can't see the big picture, I really have a hard time getting motivated. If I can, it's Katie bar the door... and I have similar stories of landing contracts in eccentric ways. If the two of us, and a couple of brews, are ever in the same room together, I bet we'd enjoy swapping tales. :)
a) Can I enjoy a multiday hike on difficult terrain in rain and sleet? Yes, I've done it, and enjoyed it. Can I get used to carrying a heavy backpack all the time? I walk 2-3 miles every goddamned day with a heavy day pack (heavier than what I'd bring for a weekend backpack), so as to keep my body used to that.
b) Could I swing it financially? I'm getting to be an old man, and I've led a conservative life. I'm not terribly afraid of outliving my money, and once in a while, I might as well spend some.
c) Would I be haunted by things back home? Most likely. I have ties to family, and church, and community, and people who depend on me. I don't think I'll ever be able to cast off the moorings and just walk away. And that's perfectly fine with me, because keeping my commitments is satisfying in my own way. Hence:
Do I really want to do such a thing? No, I don't think so. Not really.
But I enjoy my long weekends, and the occasional section hike. And town stops are frequent enough on the Trail that I tend to look at a thru-hike as, "this would be just like a bunch of sections, back to back, except that I might actually start getting my trail legs."
And despite not being a Real Hiker, I do hold forth, sometimes, on equipment or technique. Because I like to think I've learnt something in nigh on half a century of clueless weekending, in more varied conditions than the AT has to offer. It just might have been different lessons from yours. That's fine, too. We're different blind men groping to understand the same elephant.
You CANT do a thru hike....... If you do then you won't be that lovable clueless weekender!!!!!
Ohio Chris
04-30-2016, 21:54
Wow.......profound and simple I like it!
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 48 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
48) On-Trail Health
If you will do the following three things below you will make great strides toward remaining healthy on your upcoming AT thru-hike:
a) Never ever put water from any on-Trail water source into your mouth without first properly treating that water. While you're sitting in your living room reading this text you may be saying to yourself, "Well that is obvious. Who in their right mind would drink water from a stream, pond or a pipe along the Trail without treating it?" You will be truly amazed. I don't know what comes over supposedly smart people. I guess AT thru-hikers become fatigued and their sense of judgment goes out the window when fatigue sets in. Some hikers will become so frustrated with their chosen form of water treatment they'll abandon it completely just to try and simplify the process of getting water several times per day. Others will get it into their thick head that they think they can smell good water so they know what is good water and what is bad water. Some are looking at what they can do to save weight and money and that whole water treatment thing just looks to be too heavy and expensive. You don't have to see it but once to watch a hiker continuously groaning while curled up in a ball in the corner of a shelter to know how foolish it is to drink untreated water. I saw that groaning-and-curled-up-into-a-ball hiker situation happen a few times on my northbound AT thru-hike --- each time the hiker had decided not to treat their water. Don't ever listen to someone say "that's good water" and think the decision about water quality is already made for you. Always treat your water -- 100% of the time, not 99% of the time. But some hikers will drink untreated water from a stream anyhow. Just crazy.
b) Brush your teeth every day. If you're sitting at home or in your cubicle right now reading this text, you may be thinking to yourself, "Why wouldn't a hiker brush their teeth every day on a thru-hike?" It's amazing the number of AT thru-hikers who only brush their teeth every few days or for some, only when they're in town. Reason: Brushing teeth becomes a chore when you're fatigued and you just want to get hiking started for the day and don't want to take time out for activities like brushing teeth. So some hikers will forego their ritual of brushing teeth that back home, would have normally been done everyday or twice per day.
c) Carry a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer in your pants pocket/shorts pocket while you're hiking. You'll want to read the shelter registers (notebooks left in the shelters where hikers leave comments and thoughts for communicate with hikers behind them). Shelter registers and shelter pens are, from my viewpoint, a great opportunity to transfer germs from one hiker to another. It won't make you stop reading trail registers but don't eat while reading/writing in a trail register and after you're done reading and writing in the trail register, simply slather hand sanitizer all over your hands and rub it in good. Also, you may shake hands will other AT thru-hikers along the way, particularly in the beginning of an AT thru-hike. Slather hand sanitizer over your hands and rub it in good after shaking hands -- but don't do it right in front of the other hiker you're shaking hands with or you may get the trailname "Howard".
Datto
Sarcasm the elf
05-01-2016, 12:28
Alcohol based hand sanitizers are NOT effective at killing noro virus, an illness that is becoming one of the most common outbreaks on the trail. Use honest to goodness soap and water, don't shake people's hands and keep keep your hands out of bags food (pour the food that you want out of the foodbag instead).
I am also convinced that the majority of illnesses that are blamed on "bad water" are actually caused by failure to excercise basic hygiene on the trail. So absolutely do treat your water, but more importantly: wash yer dang hands!
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 49 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
49) What are the greatest benefits from thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail?
None of these top benefits listed below are useful at all for convincing a dweeb in Human Resources why you should be given a leave-of-absence at work. None will likely be beneficial even for convincing a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend why it's best for you to start an AT thru-hike.
Instead, each is only a (powerful) individualistic benefit from an AT thru-hike. Those benefits may (or not) trickle down to others but mainly it's a direct benefit only to you.
a) Your legs will be ripped when you complete your AT thru-hike. If you're using hiking poles on your AT thru-hike, your forearms will also likelyy be ripped. If you're a man who started an AT thru-hike overweight, you will likelyy be pleasantly trim and fit when you complete your AT thru-hike. Others back home may have a few seconds of contemplation before recognizing you when greeting friends and relatives after your AT thru-hike. Women won't likely lose near the weight that a man will lose on an AT thru-hike but women will also likely be completely fit. Now, remaining trim and fit after completing an AT thru-hike, heh, that's an entirely different story. This is paricularly so when you take into account the gargantuan appetite you've acquired along the way when you return back home after completing an AT thru-hike. Also, when you're returing back home, you're going to want to go hiking and be outdoors as a means to stay in shape rather than going to a gym -- a gym may seem so Societal to you right after completion of your AT thru-hike.
b) For a northbounder, when you enter Maine and are heading toward Katahdin on the horizon you will likely have acquired an outrageous level of self-confidence. Not the "I am cool" type of confidence -- rather the kind of quiet self-confidence giving you the long-term viewpoint that after this, you can do anything with your life, you can surmount any obstacle from this point forward.
c) You will discover, first hand, that people who are given a choice will choose good. If you've come to the AT from a hostile environment (corporate, military, family, marital environment for instance), your faith in humanity will be renewed and refreshed. You'll discover we're not all going to Hell in a handbasket tomorrow like that portrayed for the masses on CNN .
d) You will know, first hand, the great benefits of Incrementalism. This is a most valuable concept where you realize great goals in life can be achieved with small, incremental, everyday effort. You start out reaching for a sizeable goal and the next thing you know, you're entering Maine.
Datto
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 50 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
50) This is the guarantee.
In 2017, if you will carry your full backpack past every blaze on your AT thru-hike I guarantee if you live to be 70, you will still think your AT thru-hike is one of the best things you've ever done in your entire life.
Datto
Last year, there was an illness outbreak along the AT in NH and ME and it was blamed on the water. My GF and I hiked the AT in Maine and NH and we didn't get sick, so its not the water.
When I was in the preparing phase for my northbound AT thru-hike I was looking for information as fast as I could get it.
So I'd joined an Appalachian Trail mailing list. A very busy mailing list -- almost completely unmoderated -- with three or four posts coming in per minute.
Great. I was used to taking on firehose-level information in my career so this was great for learning about an AT thru-hike.
Give me all you can give me and I'll decipher it in my head as it comes in.
What was great for me was many of the past AT thru-hikers were active on the mailing list.
Excellent! Just what I'd needed. People who had done this before, get their advice and opinion and I'd be ready to go.
About twenty percent of the people who were on this Appalachian Trail mailing list were certified comedians. You couldn't miss your fix with the mailing list when you were wasting your life away with working some pissant job. That mailing list was the highlight of your day. It had allowed me to put up with all the things that had happened in my existance in corporate life. No matter how bad things got in your work life, you always had the Appalachian Trail mailing list to show you the Real World and get you laughing out loud every day.
After my AT thru-hike I'd still stayed active on that mailing list.
One day a thread was started on the mailing list with the subject of not being able to sleep at night during a long-distance hike.
Many posts happened explaining about the benefits of Excedrin PM and similar things, including meditation and filling your stomach with the evening meal to get you sleepy. Lots of suggestions on how to handle the problem of not being sleepy when getting into your sleeping bag at night.
Then a woman responded saying when she couldn't sleep at night she would masturbate in her tent to help her relax. That would help her get to the point where she could relax and sleep at night on a long-distance hike.
Her response had stopped that unmoderated mailing list in its tracks for fourty-five minutes. No kidding.
I, as well as I'm sure hundreds of others, had hit the Reply button, starring into the quoted blank screen, not being able to think of anything that could be said that would have topped that response.
Finally, one of the certified commedians responded saying, "I guess that would work."
I'd busted out laughing in my cubicle.
Datto
47) If you're a planner-type, I'm convinced properly addressing these three things put you into the top 30% of chances for finishing.
b) If you want to become more prepared during the next 12 months before you start your AT thru-hike, you should focus effort on getting your finances in-order.
An interesting article about the cost of chasing the American Dream -- the short version is here (which includes a link to the full article):
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-going-broke-chasing-the-american-dream-2016-04-27
Datto
muskymastr
05-03-2016, 01:22
Datto, your AT journal is one of my all time favorites, & I read a lot of them.
You are absolutely hilarious!
Thanks.
By the way, that bon vivant stank from thru-hikers -- on the Trail that's called Chanel No. 2.
Datto
Seperating a northbound AT thru-hike into smaller milestones for manageability
AT Northbounder Psycological Milestones:
* Springer Mountain, GA to Damascus, VA
* Damascus, VA to Harpers Ferry, WV
* Harpers Ferry, WV to Hanover, NH
* Hanover, NH to Katahdin, ME
AT Northbouder Cost Milestones
* Springer Mountain, GA to Southern Connecticut State Line
* Southern Connecticut State Line to Katahdin, ME (the expensive portion - you may need half your money for this part)
AT Northbounder Terrain/Treadway Milestones
* Springer Mountain, GA to Waynesboro, VA
* Waynesboro, VA to Duncannon, PA (you should cruise this section)
* Duncannon, PA to Hanover, NH
* Hanover, NH to Katahdin, ME
AT Northbounder Even Smaller Chunks (front-end milestone smaller chunks for northbound AT thru-hikers):
The Beginning Chunk
* Springer Mountain, GA to North Carolina Border (your first state completed at/near the gnarly NC border tree)
* North Carolina Border to Fontana Dam (Fontana Dam = entrance to the Smoky Mountains National Park)
* Fontana Dam to Hot Springs, NC (Hot Springs is such a nice town I took 2 zeros here)
* Hot Springs, NC to Damascus, VA (if you've timed your start, you hike in for Trail Days weekend)
Virginia Chunk (~1/4 of AT)
* Damascus, VA to Wayneboro, VA (Waynesboro = the start of Shenandoah Nat'l Park)
* Waynesboro, VA to Harpers Ferry, WV (Harpers Ferry = the ~1,000 point -- you should cruise this part)
The Easiest Chunk
* Harpers Ferry, WV, to Duncannon, PA (you should radically cruise this part)
The Middle North Chun
* Duncannon, PA to Hanover, NH (Hanover, NH is the start of the White Mountains)
The White Mountains and Maine Chunk (the toughest part of the AT)
* Hanover, NH to Katahdin, ME
Datto
Flip-flopping for Northbounders:
If you've left Sprnger Mountain, GA heading north prior to April 15, then you'll need to be leaving Harpers Ferry, WV heading northbound on or before July 1st or you risk not being able to continue north and reach Katahdin before weather gets too bad. Some northbounders have, in the past, waited at Millinocket, ME for weeks into November in order to find a good enough weather day to summit Katahdin but I wouldn't count on that happening for you. Instead, you should seriously consider flipping up to Katahdin and hike south back to Harpers Ferry, WV to complete your hike. Reason: with a flip-flop hike, you have to be able to get to
Katahdin and then back south through the White Mountains (and even more south than that) before the bad weao ther hits or you'll be screwed.
I would only use a flip-flop hike as a fall-back approach to thru-hiking the AT -- Reasons:
a) you'll have discontinuity in your hike if you flip and you won't want that -- so flipping is only a fall-back plan if you're too slow to make it north out of Harpers Ferry by July 1st
b) you'll have more expense in doing a flip-flop hike (more transport costs)
c) if you're too late in the Springtime to start north from Springer Mountain, GA then it would be better for you to be a southbounder and start at Katahdin in order to have a continuous hike rather than racing north (what a waste that would be to race yourself on the AT -- an AT thru-hike is something to savor, not to race through as an item on a to-do list).
Datto
If you are in any way uncomfortable being around people not fashioned from your same mold, you are in luck.
A thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail is the most effective diversity training you'll ever experience.
Datto
Backpack cover for traditional backpacks
If you're using a traditional backpack (has built-in struts or built-in back panel support, side pockets, made of something other than silnylon) you're probably going to need a backpack cover for your AT thru-hike.
The purpose of the backpack cover is to keep most water from penetrating your backpack and soaking all the contents (a small amount of moisture will get into your backpack regardless of how careful you are). Otherwise, without a backpack cover a traditional backpack will get waterlogged and weigh like an anvil. You'll be hiking in the rain much of the time on your AT thru-hike, particularly in the beginning of a northbound AT thru-hike.
You'll want to get a silnylon backpack cover (weighs less than 2 ounces) rather than any of the heavy duty backpack covers made by your backpack manufacturer (those may be too heavy). You'll want to seam seal the sewn seams on your backpack cover. If you're handy with a sewing machine (or know someone who is) you can make your own.
Don't bother with using a trash bag for a backpack cover -- even the industrial strength trash bags will get ripped and gashed by the shubbery adjacent to the Trail (although that look would certainly add to the panache you're trying to achieve). Plus, you won't have to deal with resupply of industrial strength trash bags.
Datto
One item to consider putting into your backpack, particularly if you are starting northbound on your AT thru-hike during March, is a mylar sleeping bag. I use the ones from Amercan Science (they've held up the best for me).
The Appalachain Trail can get very cold particularly in early Spring and during September/October. A mylar sleeping bag can help you stay on the Trail for a night or two of very cold weather while still making northbound progress during the daytime. This versus having to head to town and stay in a motel until the very cold weather goes away. The weight cost is about 4oz for the mylar sleeping bag.
Here's how you use your mylar sleeping bag -- you put the mylar sleeping bag inside your regular sleeping bag and then heat up some boiling water. The boiling water goes into your drinking bottles (Gatorade bottles for instance) and those bottles then go into your mylar sleeping bag with your body. The heat from the hot water bottles gets you very warm while the mylar sleeping bag protects your regular sleeping bag from getting soaked from the ensuing condensation. This allows you to get good sleep at night even during very cold weather while sleeping in an AT shelter (or sleeping inside your tent for that matter). The downside is your body is covered with moisture in the morning from the condensation (it'll dry off rather quickly once you get hiking and that body of yours starts throwing off excess heat from carrying that backpack).
Make sure you don't put your regular sleeping back inside the mylar sleeping bag -- that would be a bad thing since your sleeping bag will get soaked from the condensation.
For me, this is called my "Hot Pocket" setup and I've used this setup about 30-40 times in my hiking travels (including when I got marooned for days in a Maine blizzard during my northbound AT thru-hike).
Datto
One of the things you can do when on your pre-hike prep hikes is to get your backpack organized and items known where they're consistently located in your backpack. This is one of the reasons why it's important to always carry your full backpack (with all the contents you'd carry at the start of your AT thru-hike) when you're doing your pre-hike prep hikes.
There may be quite a bit of frustration in finding things inside a backpack for a newly starting AT thru-hiker. That can cause lots of pack explosions in the beginning of your AT thru-hike -- and in the rain/snow. A pack explosion is when you remove all the items in your backpack onto the dirt or onto the shelter floor because you're looking for something and you can't find it. A better approach is to just memorize where things are always going to consistently be located within your backpack so you don't have to go looking for stuff. That takes away some of the frustration.
For instance, I always know my Deet, bug headnet and my tarp are located at the bottom of my right-hand bottle pocket of my pack while my tent stakes, Potable Aqua water treatment and backpack cover are always at the bottom of my left-hand bottle pocket of my backpack. My water bottles (Gatorade bottles) are also in each pocket to allow me to retrieve the bottles from the side pockets of my backpack without having to take off my backpack. I can set up the tarp at night (many times after dark) and get my stakes in place without having to open and sort through my backpack to get that done. Lots of relief when you're tired to know where stuff is located in your backpack after dark, particularly when it's raining/snowing in the evening or after dark.
Since I use a standard backpack (not a silnylon featherweight backpack but a store-bought Granite Gear Vapor Trail backpack) I put my sleeping bag into the stuff sack it came delivered with and then put that into a trash bag. The trash bag then goes into the main compartment of my backpack first, pushed down to the very bottom of the backpack (I'm only planning to use my sleeping bag at night so it doesn't need to be readily available and goes into the bottom of my backpack). This helps me get out of bed in the morning since my sleeping back has to go into the backpack first and helps to stabilize the backpack upright so I can cram the rest of my stuff into the backpack. If I'm carrying a Neoair type sleeping pad that goes in upright on one side of the pack compartment. If I'm only using a RidgeRest then the RidgeRest is rolled up and attached on the outside of the backpack at the very end of the stuff process (center back of the outside of the backpack). This so I can use the RidgeRest as a sit/sleep pad during the daytime without having to dig through my pack to take a nap. I wouldn't use a Neoair as a sitpad -- too fragile and very expensive for that type of use. You'll need something to use as a sitpad since it'll be muddy where you'll want to sit down next to the Trail to take a break.
I use a belt pouch on the front of my backpack for the location of my readily-available electronics (camera, music, phone if I'm carrying one, data book paper info if I'm carrying paper info). Also, I use ZipLoc bags for most everything that goes into my backpack.
Another thing I do is before I get out of my sleeping bag to pack up and head out in the morning is to grab what I'm going to eat for breakfast (while hiking) -- that breakfast goes in a ZipLoc (with my headlamp and my Ibuprofen for the day and my Crystal Light drink mix for the day) and that ZipLoc goes into the front belt pouch. What I'm going to eat for lunch goes into a separate ZipLoc at the top of the main compartment of my backpack (since I'll be stopping for lunch and taking off my backpack) along separately with my rain gear at the top of my backpack if rain is expected and I'm not already wearing my raingear when I leave the shelter/tarp/tent.
Since I should already have my maps/data book paper pages in my Front Belt Pouch, I put the unused paper/map pages into a ZipLoc and that goes in just above the sleeping bag along with my insulating coat (insulating coat goes into a ZipLoc since many times it will be soaked) also locate that insulating coat ZipLoc just above my sleeping bag.
It's important for getting the best weight distribution in your backpack to have the heavy items (such as food) right up against your back at the shoulder blade level. If you put all your food at the very top of your backpack, that'll cause your backpack to sway back and forth too much. If you put your food out away from the surface of your back your backpack will likely pull away from your shoulders. Instead, keep your food ZipLocs/silnylon food bag right up against the surface of your back, preferably right at the shoulder blade level. Your backpack will likely ride much better.
I keep a separate ZipLoc for technology items (spare batteries and the like) and a separate ZipLoc for first-aid/health items (toothbrush, blister treatment and the like). If I need to sit down and treat a new blister, I know I can find my first-aid bag in the middle of my backpack just above my sleeping bag. I can reach in, grab the first-aid bag blind, treat the blister and put the bag back in where it was before. I don't have to do an entire pack explosion just to find where my first-aid bag is located.
This may all seem a mystery to you right now while you're sitting in your cozy living room. The value will start making sense to you as you do your pre-hike prep hikes and discover you can't find what you're looking for in your backpack.
Once you're on your actual AT thru-hike and have carried your backpack for 1,000 miles, you'll already know all of this -- the value is in the beginning of your AT thru-hike when it's raining cats and dogs and you need to retrieve a particular something from your backpack. If you already have memorized where the contents of your backpack are supposed to be located, you'll avoid much of the frustration of finding items in your backpack in the rain/snow.
In case you didn't know it already, Deet and standard mosquito repellant will corrode and trash all of your electronics and things that are metal. Even Deet vapor will trash electronics so you never want electronics anywhere close to your Deet. Even Deet on your hands will start to corrode electronics so you'll want to make sure you clean your hands of that Deet you just applied before you touch the knob on your earbud cord that changes the music volume.
There's a good chance many of you will want to use insect repellant that is 100% Deet once you get a load of the size and the density of flying insects you'll encounter on your AT thru-hike. I don't even bother with anything that only has a portion of Deet in it -- if it's not 100% Deet, to me it's a waste of time and money (I know, I'll eventually glow in the dark). Note that many flying insects hone in on carbon dioxide which is what your nose and mouth will be making tons of while you're carrying that backpack up a mountainside. Use of 100% Deet disorients some of the flying insects (like mosquitoes) -- sometimes the bugs will still dive-bomb into your eyes, nose and teeth because they're so rabid for your blood. I did not encounter many biting flies on my northbound AT thru-hike (I have elsewhere and they are the nastiest biting insects) but southbounders may run into them in Maine.
Datto
Don't ever put your sleeping bag into a compression sack in order to save cubage inside your backpack. A compression sack will eventually destroy the loft and thermal properties of even the best sleeping bags. Just use the stuff sack that came with your sleeping bag and accommodate the cubage of your sleeping bag accordingly.
Datto
Don't get yourself involved in any GoFundMe effort in order to fund your AT thru-hike or anything else for that matter. It wll show up in even the most superficial of background checks when you try to get a job.
Datto
JumpMaster Blaster
05-12-2016, 10:38
You know what Datto? This has probably been the most insightful series of posts from one member I've seen in, um, ever. Seriously. I'm going to copy and paste all of this into one yuuuge document, print off, and probably take as reading material when I go out. This is seriously good stuff. Keep it comin'.
Don't get yourself involved in any GoFundMe effort in order to fund your AT thru-hike or anything else for that matter. It wll show up in even the most superficial of background checks when you try to get a job.
Datto
If you do it as a fundraiser for a non-profit, it could help your job hunt. Yes, it will show up, but you explain (BRIEFLY) in your cover letter. IOW, you fund your own hike, but ask others to contrible - cf. walkathons. I know a woman who did this, not AT but kayaking the rivers and coastal areas of England to raise money for Sea Shepherd. She paid or her own tour, but asked or $ via nautical miles, to be directly paid to SS.
Fundraising doesn't have to always be regarded as a negative. I also plan to do an AT thru-hike as a fundraiser, but will first save up the $6,000 - $7,000 to take care of myself. Not one penny of my fundraising efforts will go to me and I will be providing a full accounting on GFM (or whatever site exists then) to each person who donated and to the general public along the way.
Just curious - why do you have a poem about death as your sig line? (or JumpMaster Blaster)
I consider the Appalachian Trail to be beautiful.
You will too.
Well yes, in the traditional sense, Yes.
There are The Cliffs as you enter northbound from Georgia into North Carolina, and McAfee Knob in Virginia, Lake of the Clouds in New Hampshire. Yes.
Beautiful.
It's the individualistic experiences that make the AT also beautiful.
It is music. It is gorgeous. Rapturous.
You can't just look at the Green Tunnel. Or the mud and the bugs.
Those step aside.
It is the rounding of a corner on the Trail and seeing an acre of yellow flowers. In the Smokys.
That is truly beautiful.
But It is beyond that. Beyond your imagination.
Then you round a corner and see love .
A 22 year old woman. She's picked up the water bottle that had jumped out, on its own, from my side pocket. Handing it over to me as a prize to explain your self-incompetence. Her eye on the 18 year old guy hanging off the North Carolina boundary tree from 20 feet above the Trail.
You think to yourself "She's got the hots for that guy."
He would go 0.5 down the steepest hillside you can imagine to get her water. I would witness her in tears from the steepness of the Trail. No matter. They, together, would continue northward.
Yes, he would go down the steep hillside to get her water. No penalty assumed.
I would do a full-blown Charleston dance into Hot Springs, NC as she sat in a bench resting across the other side of the road. That would get her a goin', laughing at my antics.
She and I would do an elaborate song and dance at the front of a shelter filled with AT thru-hikers in Shenandoah National Park. To the tune of Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head that I would sing out loud. Making the AT thru-hikers get to singing along with the antics.
He would get oh so sick.
She would comfort him like you would wish a loving woman would do for you.
God, if you could find a loving woman like that.
Well of course, they would get married after the Trail. They were made for each other.
What did you expect?
Datto
AfterParty
05-12-2016, 22:39
I just read this whole thing. Blue gold bond burns pretty bad but it will stop you from burning down yonder. Learned that in the army. And the pokey rock part note to self get new shoes before it. I am doing this after my dog party dies. The pack I want weighs 7 lbs but I think I can be in under 40 total. I'd rather have a too big emptish pack then a too full light pack personally. I agree I have 0 dought I'll make it but it won't be easy. And for me it will be a vacation from life. I can think of nothing that sounds better. A painful exhausted greattime. I already live on ramen and oatmeal. And walk miles every day carrying a weed eater or disk golf bag. I'll hike some Rockies to prepare a little when I get closer to going. 17 maybe by 19 for sure.
Datto's AT Thru-hiking Tip 49 for 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Planning
49) What are the greatest benefits from thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail?
c) You will discover, first hand, that people who are given a choice will choose good. If you've come to the AT from a hostile environment (corporate, military, family, marital environment for instance), your faith in humanity will be renewed and refreshed. You'll discover we're not all going to Hell in a handbasket tomorrow like that portrayed for the masses on CNN .
A guy walking from California to Boston -- runs into someone walking from Florida to Seattle:
“People ask me how many crazy people I’ve met,” he says. “The answer is zero — there have been no times where someone was negative to me. The only people who are negative are Internet commenters.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/im-traveling-across-america-on-just-40-per-day-2016-05-13
Datto
A guy walking from California to Boston -- runs into someone walking from Florida to Seattle:
“People ask me how many crazy people I’ve met,” he says. “The answer is zero — there have been no times where someone was negative to me. The only people who are negative are Internet commenters.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/im-traveling-across-america-on-just-40-per-day-2016-05-13
Datto
For anyone interested, that guy did a recent AMA on reddit.
A guy walking from California to Boston -- runs into someone walking from Florida to Seattle:
“People ask me how many crazy people I’ve met,” he says. “The answer is zero — there have been no times where someone was negative to me. The only people who are negative are Internet commenters.”
Datto
this is a great quote. I enjoy WB and have been here awhile but the vibe here is most frequently quite different from what one actually experiences whilst on the AT or any other trail for that matter. I often wonder if prospective hikers get discouraged or dissuaded before ever setting foot on a trail. Hopefully that has never happened.
Gaining your trail legs somewhere up the Trail from Springer (for northbounders) provides to you a wealth of new, incremental energy. Even though I started my northbound AT thru-hike in pretty good shape, I didn't notice I was gettng my trail legs until about mile 700. The symptoms are when you notice you can go up hills at about the same speed as you can descend, all without having to stop to catch your breath.
I don't think there is any specific known milepoint where trail legs come about -- it's just a matter of the human physiology that varies from one person to another that makes it random for where the location for gaining trail legs starts to be noticed.
One of the great benefits of getting your trail legs is the weight of your backpack doesn't seem to be that much of a bother.
At this point, you should start using that extra available carrying capacity to begin carrying/consuming good tasting, healthy food.
So you think you'll be doing that from the start?
That'll be in your head right up until the time you climb your first series of mountains in Georgia and North Carolina. Then you may be shedding every single ounce you can think of while considering/weighing possible economies in your head during the daily hiking experience. You might decide to load up with high calorie per weight foods such as Snickers Bars, Peanut Butter crackers and the like (you may become a math wizard at calorie per weight-ounce memorization of what you're choices will be at your next resupply stop). Your main meal of the day may be in the evening where you've chosen Lipton Sides (a Lipton Shuttle tile dinner) or a brick of Ramen and the like.
Once you get your trail legs and the weight of your backpack isn't as much of a concern, you should start becoming much more selective about what foods you'll carry and eat. You'll want to start incorporating fruit and vegetables into your diet on a daily basis as well as eating more protein in your diet (carrying a Subway or two out of town for instance). That improvement in nutrition will become important to you as you head north of Harpers Ferry and you start being capable of making much more mileage every day.
If you have a maildrop support person back home handling your maildrops for you, that can be the easiest way to get your diet to start incorporating better food intake (particularly if they want to dehydrate and pre-package decent daily meals for you). If you're doing only grocery shopping by yourself as a means to resupply, you will need to gain your wits and deliberately choose better food in the grocery store. If you don't think about this before heading into the grocery store that raging appetite of yours may quickly gravitate toward the first tasty things you see as you walk into the grocery store (cinnamon rolls, apple pie, the usual get-you-before-you-think types of items grocery stores put out on tables just inside the entranceway).
Also, if you're not having a problem with money and you're a meat eater, you can choose to eat a steak/roast beef/prime rib type dinner when you're in town. I started doing that north of Harpers Ferry -- finding whatever the best restaurant was in town and go eat that (Italian or Steakhouse type of dinner usually). Make sure you eat from the salad bar in the restaurant also (or table served salad) in order to get some greens and fruit chucked into your system.
The location where I saw the most deterioration in attitude from hikers (north of Harpers Ferry) was in Connecticut/Massachusetts where I tried to talk a couple of hikers out (seperately) of leaving the Trail. When it all boiled down to why they would have travelled that far on the AT and were thinking of leaving -- the reason really came down to a lack of enjoyment in their hike. They seriously didn't like their food but they really didn't have any extra money to buy good food. Each one told me they just felt too exhausted to continue and they hated their food. This is one of the reasons why you want to start using that extra carrying capacity from gaining your trail legs to boost morale and nutrition by eating better food on a daily basis.
By the way, when I entered the 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine at Monson, ME, my backpack weighed close to 45 pounds -- much of that was food weight. It's amazing to me how that much weight didn't bother me all that much in the 100 Mile Wilderness.
On the PCT after about 1,000 miles of continuous hiking Pearson and I began to carry pop-top cans of food, cream cheese, Laughing Cow cheese (we really carried that all the time), packages of meat, canned peaches/pears, cans of corn, deviled ham, bread and the like. If winter wouldn't have arrived in September we would have finished the PCT without sitting through a blizzard (should be my middle name). As it worked out (it always works out on the trail) I ended up with a nice job in northern Oregon with one of America's best companies where I finished the remaining PCT miles on weekends and vacations.
Datto
Starting out overweight on your AT thru-hike --
A past AT thru-hiker (who'd thru-hiked the AT in a year previous to me) had seen me with my shirt off. She advised me that I'd lose all that baby fat on my upcoming thru-hike.
Wha What? Huh? I was in pretty good shape -- not as ripped as I had been when I'd played football but still...
So I started the AT with a guy who had confided in me in the beginning days of our thru-hikes that he'd planned to lose 70 pounds when he came out of the Smokys.
I don't think he quite done it by then -- lose the 70 pounds. But he'd lost a ton of weght by southern Virginia.
I called it the Atkins, Virginia Diet.
I would meet up with him again at Katahdin more than six months after Springer.
He was ridiculously skinny. I guess that whole Atkins thing really works. Well, I mean if you have the determination to go to "The Gym" for twelve hours per day, day after day for six months carrying that backpack on "The Stepper".
As for me I would lose 42 pounds of "baby fat" as that previous AT thru-hiker had termed it. I was in such disbelief at the Wal-Mart back in Indana after completing my AT thru-hike that I had to unbox a second scale onto the floor of Wal-Mart to get a second opinion. That second scale had told me the same number for my weight loss followed by telling me I was ugly too.
She had been right. That previous AT thru-hiker. Seventeen of that pound lossage came in the state of Maine alone.
You have a year to prepare for your upcoming AT thru-hike. Use that time to get your excess weight poundage under control so you're not dragging tail so much during the first 60 days.
The Atkins, Virginia Diet is oh so painful.
Datto
Small chart comparison of AT thru-hiker actual mileage for four northbound AT thru-hikers including my planned vs actual mileage per day on my AT thru-hike -- you can see where I was having trouble making the miles I'd expected to make in New Hampshire and Maine -- that had caused me to extend to 195 calendar days for my AT thru-hike duration:
34812
Datto
Naysayers.
Whenever you take on a sizeable challenge there's always the likelyhood of running into Naysayers. People who take great pleasure in telling you that you'll not be able to do something -- even before you've started. Many times this is due to a control-freak issue -- the other person will lose something if you take on a big challenge because they see it as you redirecting resources and efforts toward something that doesn't directly benefit them.
In the spousal world these are called Dreamkillers.
This is why it is so important to get yourself prepared for the big challenge. To figure out what is necessary to succeed, what needs to be done ahead of time and how those activities are going to be accomplished. This so when you get going on the big challenge, you're prepared to succeed.
It gives you the power to get past the Naysayers, to overcome the efforts of Dreamkillers. You already know what is necessary to succeed and you can see a way to move forward toward a goal.
Here's an article on one guy taking on a big challenge and having to overcome a Naysayer:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2016/05/15/russell-wilson-takes-jab-at-nc-state-great-lesson-learned/84421232/
Datto
This is me at the geographic halfway point on my northbound AT thru-hike -- I would lose an additional 25 pounds of body weight north from here.
That should tell you a little about the terrain difficulty of the northern half of the AT:
34824
Datto
I just saw a question previously posed by another hiker about sleeping bag comparisons (a "which one" type of question).
If you're a 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker starting before April 15th and are looking at buying a down-filled sleeping bag for your AT thru-hike, get one with 800 fill down or higher. I wouldn't even bother with 600, 650, 700 fill down for a sleeping bag, even if you're a warm sleeper. The value is not there and to me, it screams cheap.
Also, as I've said before, make sure you get the correct length of sleeping bag for your height so you're not unnecessarily heating up too much air space inside the bag. You should get a sleeping bag with a cinch hood also since that will help keep the heat inside your sleeping bag (rather than an open top sleeping bag where heat will massively escape as you toss and turn at night).
I still believe the best sleeping bags are made by #1) Western Mountaineering and #2) Marmot.
Datto
During your pre-hike prep hikes, some of you may get pains at the sides of your hips at the location where you leg bones intersect (at the widest point of your hips). That pain can interfere with your sleep at night and cause you to have to rotate around on your sleep pad all the time in order to try to get comfortable while you're sleeping. This is particularly so for side-sleepers like me.
One thing I came up with to combat pain in that particular hip location is to cut up an old piece of foam into a boomerang shape (maybe 14 inches end to end length-wise and 4 inches or so width wise) and put one of those curved pieces of foam into each of my pants pockets when going to sleep at night on my RidgeRest sleep pad (the boomerang shape may be different for you -- more of a V shape for instance -- since your hips may fit differently than mine in relation to where my pants pockets are located). The pants pockets generally stay in the same location for me while I'm asleep so that somewhat stablizes the boomerangs under the pain location.
What that accomplished for me was to reduce the amount of toss and turn in the middle of the night in order to keep the hip pain from waking me up so much and the extra carry weight was negligible.
Of course, a Neoair sleeping pad (expensive, somewhat fragile) does the same thing for me on a shorter hike where pack weight isn't that much of a concern. On a long-distance hike (one of 500 miles or longer) I'll usually want to carry only a Ridgerest sleeping pad so I usually take the boomerang pieces with me just in case I get the hip pain.
Datto
Speaking of Ridgerest sleeping pads, some long-distance hikers will round/trim down the corners of their 3/4 length Ridgerest in order to save weight. This works pretty well for people who are stomach sleepers and don't roll from one side to another. Some will even trim the length of a 3/4 length Ridgerest to save weight before rounding the corners.
A long-distance hiker might even use a 3/8" thick (or even 1/4" thick) blue-colored closed cell foam pad instead of a Ridgerest to save more weight. I have difficulty sleeping at night with that setup but for some it's fine and it's probably less expense than the Ridgerest name. There are also some 1/8" very dense lightweight pads available if you know you're a sound sleeper who can sleep through anything, These are things you'll be able to figure out on your pre-hike prep hikes and eventually settle on something that works for you. Remember, you'll probably need a sit-pad also if you go with a blow-up air mattress for your sleeping pad so you'll need to figure that into your pack weight. Some can use a piece of Tyvek for a sit pad but that wasn't enough cushion for me -- that's why I just went with a Ridgerest and use it for both a sleeping pad as well as a sit-pad since the Ridgerest was rolled into a tube shape and attached vertically in the middle outside of my backpack (made for easy retrieval and re-attachment).
Datto
If you end up using a Ridgerest for a sleep pad and if money is no object to you for your AT thru-hike, you may want to swap in a new Ridgerest at Harpers Ferry. You could end up using your Ridgerest so much that you've crushed/flattened it by Harpers Ferry, WV (I bought my Ridgerest in Erwin, TN on my northbound AT thru-hike and bought a replacement somewhere in New England as I remember).
The cushion from a new Ridgerest (versus your flattened Ridgerest) may be noticable and improve your sleep.
Datto
New Balance trail runner type shoes for an AT thru-hike.
For many people, ths is the way to go. It's a question of, over the 5.000,000 steps of an AT thru-hike, how much weight are you willing to lift up and put down during an AT thru-hike.
A few comments:
a) New Balance shoes, after being worn down on the tread, become very slippery in the rain, particularly when the treadway is covered with large rocks (which is most everywhere on the AT). Don't look so much at the tops of the trail runners to decide whether you should replace your shoes. Instead, look at the remaning tread so you don't experience unnecessary face/chest-plants from trail runner slippage.
b) As mentioned previously, an increaase in comfort level may be had from inserting different 3rd party insoles into the New Balance trail runners (pull the existing ones out, put in the new inserts as a replacement, not on top of the existing inserts). I use Spenco brand inserts (the model is Hiker). You use your Swiss Army Knife Classic knife to trim the 3rd party insoles to fit.
c) New Balance trail runners have a cup at the heel side of the shoe that will cut your foot if that cup gets exposed because the inside padding has worn off. It's the "achilles heel" of New Balance trail runners. You can try to protect your feet with duct tape on that cup at the heel but eventually that plastic cup will cut through even the duct tape.
d) New Balance trail runners have had, in the past, a problem where a rubber-type tongue comes up at the very front of the trail runners (on the exterior of the shoe). That tongue has become unattached from the very front of the shoe -- Barge Cement has helped make the trail runner tongue last longer until the cup mentioned above starts to become a problem as the cause for replacing the New Balance.
e) In the heavy rain, the side padding inside the show swells with the water intake of a rainy trail. That has rubbed the sides of my foot quickly to the raw level. Sometimes I wlll put protection of the skin on the sides of my heel in order to get ahead of that rubbing from the swelled padding inside the sides of the New Balance shoes.
Even with all the little idiosyncroses of New Balance trail runners, I still use them. Reason: A size 13 WWWW shoe has been, for me, the same size regardless of model of shoe. My feet have stopped growing on a long-distance hike so I know can buy a New Balance shoe and it will most likely be the size I'm expecting.
Datto
e) In the heavy rain, the side padding inside the show
A really good shoe tonight with the fine boys from Liverpool. Oh come on now! Let's give 'em a big hand...
Datto
Assuming you're starting before April 15th, there's a good chance you'll start your northound AT thru-hike with too many clothes. I did and pretty much everyone around me on my AT thru-hike sent clothes home while still in Georgia.
The reason for this is while you're sitting in your comfy living room, you don't yet realize how much surface heat your body will be generating while you're carrying that backpack up and down the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and southern Virginia. Because of fear of being cold, you may be bringing way too many clothes to start your AT thru-hike.
On my northbound AT thru-hike (starting at Springer Mountain, GA on April 10th) I was regularly hiking in only a T-shirt and shorts while the weather was in the forties. I was perfectly comfortable right up until I stopped hiking -- then cold would come on fast because my body stopped generating so much heat from humping a backpack up a mountain.
Look at it this way -- if for some reason a really bad cold front shows up with temps approaching zero, you'll probably be in your sleeping bag in an AT shelter/tent or will have gone into town to camp out in a motel until the cold front passes.
So, here's a list of clothes to consider starting with in order to be economical with pack weight (you may even be able to trim down from this list):
Carry These All The Time
* 1x silkweight short-sleeved T-shirt (wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking shorts (with liner -- wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking pants (with somewhere having zipable pocket(s))
* 2x socks (wear one of these all the time)
* 1x hooded rain jacket (with zipable pockets)
* 1x sports bra (for women, heh, wear this all the time, don't go Bojangles with your boobs)
* 1x baseball/boonie/sun hat (wear this all the time)
Carry These Also South of Pearisburg, VA and North of Hanover, NH
* 1x Insulated Jacket (with zipable pockets -- not fleece)
* 1x Balaclava
* 1x insulating gloves (you may be able to forego this)
Even the above list may be overkill if you have a warm Springtime and get to Katahdin in early September.
You probably only need long-johns (with pants) if you're starting your northbound AT thru-hike in March. Otherwise long-johns aren't necessary because you're already carrying hiking pants and long-johns would be overkill. If you're late getting to Maine you'll need them again in the North.
On my AT thru-hike I did carry lightweight gaitors but I wouldn't carry them again. I would just live with the mud caking on my pants or legs in order to save pack weight and carry less stuff.
If money is no object for you, I would get a silkweight Capilene T-shirt from Patagonia (these are expensive T-shirts). For me, these have held up pretty well, they're lightweight and dry as quickly as anything else does when it's raining all day long.
For insulating jacket, don't use a fleece jacket -- what you need is a real, honest-to-God insulating jacket that has real insulation in it that also has zippered pockets. Even with an early April start, it will likely be too cold for anything fleece to keep you warm. Also, you'll be jostled quite a bit while hiking and items in your pocket may eject out of your pockets and into the mud on the ground without you even knowing it happened. Also, you'll need pockets in your insulating jacket that are deep enough to put your hands into in order to keep your hands warm (some manufacturers skimp on pocket depth to save weight and expense -- don't go with those models). I regularly wore my insulating jacket underneath my rain jacket in order to say warm and in Maine (where I was late getting to Maine) I actually hiked all day long with my insulating jacket under my rain jacket in order to stay warm. Some hikers have used a down insulating jacket and have been fine -- for me, I would probably use my Patagona Puffball that has man-made insulation because I know that insulating jacket keeps me very warm even when it is soaking wet from me perspiring profusely while wearing it underneath my rain jacket.
For rain jacket, you'll need a hooded rain jacket and you'll also need pockets in your rain jacket that zip and are deep enough to get your hands into in order to keep your hands warm. Note that the brush and shrubbery along the AT treadway may rip DriDucks/Frogg Toggs and similar type jackets rather easily so you'll need to be much more careful with your raingear if you use these models. For me, I would go with hooded DriDucks (jacket only, no rainpants needed) that have zippered pockets and buy a 2nd jacket of the same type that I'd swap in when I reached Harpers Ferry, WV.
Your raingear, dirty clothes, spare socks that you're not wearing, your gloves and possibly your insulating jacket are used as your pillow when you're sleeping at night (assuming you're still carrying those). Put those clothing items into a silnylon bag or a 2 gallon ZipLoc. If that doesn't elevate your head enough, use your cookpot underneath (with the cookpot in a ZipLoc so the cookpot doesn't stain other items).
For me, I had a very bad experience with OR fleece gloves during my AT thru-hike and I'd never use fleece gloves again. The water that was retained in the fleece gloves froze and that caused me to go into town unexpectedly to get a different pair of gloves just to avoid frostbite in Maine.
Datto
Assuming you're starting before April 15th, there's a good chance you'll start your northound AT thru-hike with too many clothes. I did and pretty much everyone around me on my AT thru-hike sent clothes home while still in Georgia.
The reason for this is while you're sitting in your comfy living room, you don't yet realize how much surface heat your body will be generating while you're carrying that backpack up and down the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and southern Virginia. Because of fear of being cold, you may be bringing way too many clothes to start your AT thru-hike.
On my northbound AT thru-hike (starting at Springer Mountain, GA on April 10th) I was regularly hiking in only a T-shirt and shorts while the weather was in the forties. I was perfectly comfortable right up until I stopped hiking -- then cold would come on fast because my body stopped generating so much heat from humping a backpack up a mountain.
Look at it this way -- if for some reason a really bad cold front shows up with temps approaching zero, you'll probably be in your sleeping bag in an AT shelter/tent or will have gone into town to camp out in a motel until the cold front passes.
So, here's a list of clothes to start with in order to be economical with pack weight (you may even be able to trim down from this list):
Carry These All The Time
* 1x silkweight short-sleeved T-shirt (wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking shorts (with liner -- wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking pants (with somewhere having zipable pocket(s))
* 2x socks (wear one of these all the time)
* 1x rain jacket (with zipable pockets)
* 1x sports bra (for women, wear this all the time, don't go Bojangles with your boobs)
* 1x baseball/boonie/sun hat (wear this all the time)
Carry These Also South of Pearisburg, VA and North of Hanover, NH
* 1x Insulated Jacket (with zipable pockets -- not fleece)
* 1x Balaclava
* 1x insulating gloves (you may be able to forego this)
Even the above list may be overkill if you have a warm Springtime and get to Katahdin in early September.
You probably only need long-johns (with pants) if you're starting your northbound AT thru-hike in March. Otherwise long-johns aren't necessary because you're already carrying hiking pants and long-johns would be overkill. If you're late getting to Maine you'll need them again in the North.
On my AT thru-hike I did carry lightweight gaitors but I wouldn't carry them again. I would just live with the mud caking on my pants in order to save pack weight and carry less stuff.
If money is no object for you, I would get a silkweight Capilene T-shirt from Patagonia (these are expensive T-shirts). For me, these have held up pretty well, they're lightweight and dry as quickly as anything else does when it's raining all day long.
For insulating jacket, don't use a fleece jacket -- what you need is a real, honest-to-God insulating jacket that has real insulation in it that also has zippered pockets. Even with an early April start, it will likely be too cold for anything fleece to keep you warm. Also, you'll be jostled quite a bit while hiking and items in your pocket may eject out of your pockets and into the mud on the ground without you even knowing it happened. Also, you'll need pockets in your insulating jacket that are deep enough to put your hands into in order to keep warm (some manufacturers skimp on pocket depth to save weight and expense -- don't go with those models). I regularly wore my insulating jacket underneath my rain jacket in order to say warm and in Maine (where I was late getting to Maine) I actually hiked with my insulating jacket under my rain jacket in order to stay warm. Some hikers have used a down insulating jacket and have been fine -- for me, I would probably use my Patagona Puffball that has man-made insulation because I know that insulating jacket keeps me very warm even when it is soaking wet from me perspiring profusely while wearing it underneath my rain jacket.
For rain jacket, you'll need a hooded rain jacket and you'll also need pockets in your rain jacket that zip and are deep enough to get your hands into in order to keep your hands warm. Note that the brush and shrubbery along the AT treadway may rip DriDucks/Frogg Toggs and similar type jackets rather easily so you'll need to be much more careful with your raingear if you use these models. For me, I would go with hooded DriDucks (jacket only) that have zippered pockets and buy a 2nd jacket that I'd swap in when I reached Harpers Ferry, WV.
Your raingear, dirty clothes, spare socks that you're not wearing, your gloves and possibly your insulating jacket are used as your pillow when you're sleeping at night (assuming you're still carrying those). Put those clothing items into a silnylon bag or a ZipLoc. If that doesn't elevate your head enough, use your cookpot underneath (with the cookpot in a ZipLoc so the cookpot doesn't stain other items).
For me, I had a very bad experience with OR fleece gloves during my AT thru-hike and I'd never use fleece gloves again. The water that was retained in the fleece gloves froze and that caused me to go into town unexpectedly to get a different pair of gloves just to avoid frostbite in Maine.
Datto
Assuming you're starting before April 15th, there's a good chance you'll start your northound AT thru-hike with too many clothes. I did and pretty much everyone around me on my AT thru-hike sent clothes home while still in Georgia.
The reason for this is while you're sitting in your comfy living room, you don't yet realize how much surface heat your body will be generating while you're carrying that backpack up and down the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and southern Virginia. Because of fear of being cold, you may be bringing way too many clothes to start your AT thru-hike.
On my northbound AT thru-hike (starting at Springer Mountain, GA on April 10th) I was regularly hiking in only a T-shirt and shorts while the weather was in the forties. I was perfectly comfortable right up until I stopped hiking -- then cold would come on fast because my body stopped generating so much heat from humping a backpack up a mountain.
Look at it this way -- if for some reason a really bad cold front shows up with temps approaching zero, you'll probably be in your sleeping bag in an AT shelter/tent or will have gone into town to camp out in a motel until the cold front passes.
So, here's a list of clothes to start with in order to be economical with pack weight (you may even be able to trim down from this list):
Carry These All The Time
* 1x silkweight short-sleeved T-shirt (wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking shorts (with liner -- wear it all the time)
* 1x hiking pants (with somewhere having zipable pocket(s))
* 2x socks (wear one of these all the time)
* 1x rain jacket (with zipable pockets)
* 1x sports bra (for women, wear this all the time, don't go Bojangles with your boobs)
* 1x baseball/boonie/sun hat (wear this all the time)
Carry These Also South of Pearisburg, VA and North of Hanover, NH
* 1x Insulated Jacket (with zipable pockets -- not fleece)
* 1x Balaclava
* 1x insulating gloves (you may be able to forego this)
Even the above list may be overkill if you have a warm Springtime and get to Katahdin in early September.
You probably only need long-johns (with pants) if you're starting your northbound AT thru-hike in March. Otherwise long-johns aren't necessary because you're already carrying hiking pants and long-johns would be overkill. If you're late getting to Maine you'll need them again in the North.
On my AT thru-hike I did carry lightweight gaitors but I wouldn't carry them again. I would just live with the mud caking on my pants in order to save pack weight and carry less stuff.
If money is no object for you, I would get a silkweight Capilene T-shirt from Patagonia (these are expensive T-shirts). For me, these have held up pretty well, they're lightweight and dry as quickly as anything else does when it's raining all day long.
For insulating jacket, don't use a fleece jacket -- what you need is a real, honest-to-God insulating jacket that has real insulation in it that also has zippered pockets. Even with an early April start, it will likely be too cold for anything fleece to keep you warm. Also, you'll be jostled quite a bit while hiking and items in your pocket may eject out of your pockets and into the mud on the ground without you even knowing it happened. Also, you'll need pockets in your insulating jacket that are deep enough to put your hands into in order to keep warm (some manufacturers skimp on pocket depth to save weight and expense -- don't go with those models). I regularly wore my insulating jacket underneath my rain jacket in order to say warm and in Maine (where I was late getting to Maine) I actually hiked with my insulating jacket under my rain jacket in order to stay warm. Some hikers have used a down insulating jacket and have been fine -- for me, I would probably use my Patagona Puffball that has man-made insulation because I know that insulating jacket keeps me very warm even when it is soaking wet from me perspiring profusely while wearing it underneath my rain jacket.
For rain jacket, you'll need a hooded rain jacket and you'll also need pockets in your rain jacket that zip and are deep enough to get your hands into in order to keep your hands warm. Note that the brush and shrubbery along the AT treadway may rip DriDucks/Frogg Toggs and similar type jackets rather easily so you'll need to be much more careful with your raingear if you use these models. For me, I would go with hooded DriDucks (jacket only) that have zippered pockets and buy a 2nd jacket that I'd swap in when I reached Harpers Ferry, WV.
Your raingear, dirty clothes, spare socks that you're not wearing, your gloves and possibly your insulating jacket are used as your pillow when you're sleeping at night (assuming you're still carrying those). Put those clothing items into a silnylon bag or a ZipLoc. If that doesn't elevate your head enough, use your cookpot underneath (with the cookpot in a ZipLoc so the cookpot doesn't stain other items).
For me, I had a very bad experience with OR fleece gloves during my AT thru-hike and I'd never use fleece gloves again. The water that was retained in the fleece gloves froze and that caused me to go into town unexpectedly to get a different pair of gloves just to avoid frostbite in Maine.
Datto
What if you have to wait and thru-hike the AT in a different year than 2017?
If you already have the strong ambition and motivation n place it's a very difficult thing to postpone.
It's a question of risk assessment.
What do you gain if you wait?
For whatever is holding you up (money, personal life challenges, other opportunities, job contract length/expiration, college end timing is off) -- it is a question of weighing the benefits of losing a year and waiting until 2018 instead of starting an AT thru-hike in 2017. Or running headlong into the situation even if you're not prepared in 2017. That is probably one of the things that makes completing an AT thru-hike have an 85% chance of not happening once you start. If you join the thousands of people who never even show up to the AT much less start, that's a different story. That must be more than a 95% chance of it not happening although I'm sure The Anals will arrive on-scene and question my math with standard deviation metrics.
Changing plans and timetables is a very difficult thing for me to accept. It's not that I don't recognize the need to be flexible --that is a given in life. The thing different for me is that I think things through before committing -- because of that I really don't want to have to change major directions after committing. I'll do intermediate course-corrections but I'm not likely to change goals and timetables.
Most people don't really think things through. It's a roll of the dice for most. "Let's see what happens" is the operative phrase. If that doesn't work out, go do this. If that doesn't work out, go do this other thing. Life is a pinball game for most people -- a shotgun approach rather than rifled and focused.
I am not that way. Once I have thought things through and I am committed, then it's a matter of anticipating hurdles, getting those out of the way and making forward progress. Someone once called that the "driver-driver" in me.
I'm not much of a spontaneous type of person -- for major moves, I get ducks lined up before I'm moving. The reason for this is that I really hate emergencies and I really dislike poor planning. Every single success I have had in life has been planned -- every failure has been one that has been poorly planned (if planning was even entertained at all).
Some people thrive on spontaneity. it's their lifeblood. New challenges every day, not knowing what's ahead and adapting as needed. They think that's fun.
I'm not that way at all. It's not that I haven't been in a position to spontaneously react on a regular basis (a head of lettuce heaved at me by angry people when I was on television comes to mind and makes me laugh today about that incident). It's more that I am not good at spontaneity. It's is not something where I excel.
So when I had to postpone my AT thru-hike for one year, that came as a very hard decision for me to make. But it had been necessary -- my personal life had been screwed up for years (a decade?) and heading to the AT really was going to become a mess unless I'd chosen to postpone for a year and get my personal life straightened out first.
Probably one of the best decisions I've made in my short life. To wait and get things straightened out first -- then go to the AT the following year.
I gave myself one year to get things straightened out -- not two years or three -- it was a definitive timeframe of a single year with what would amount to an immense amount of focus, difficult decisions and anxiety on my part.
So I waited one year.
As it turned out, that was a very wise decision. It's not that things back home didn't go sideways anyhow (as expected) -- it's just that I'd already been ahead of it and was prepared to handle things while I was on my AT thru-hike.
Somewhere in southern Virginia on my northbound AT thru-hike I'd had something back home that was really bugging me. Couldn't shake it. Two friends of mine were trying to screw up my hike by posting obnoxious things in my AT journal comments section. They'd thought it was just me who would see what they had written. Heh, it was thousands of people who were reading their antics in almost realtime.
I wasn't carrying a cell phone and so had hiked almost a mile off the AT (a complete bushwhack) to a house I saw in the distance on the adjacent mountainside. I knocked on the front door of that house and fortunately, it was a woman who was familiar with the AT and knew what a thru-hiker was -- she let me use her telephone. I waited until she'd headed back out to her garden and then I called my friends back home and explained to them what they had written had been sent to thousands of people. Of course, they were clueless about that and didn't know what to say. I then proceeded to tell them off. That made me feel oh-so-much better. It also solved the problem and no more weird stuff was posted by those two.
I never spoke to those two people again although I did, coincidentally, see both of them together on my travels elsewhere in the country. I never talked to them then either.
Making a change in AT thru-hike plans to postpone is even more difficult if you already know right now there is a point of inflection coming in your life in Spring 2017. Finishing college, intending to change jobs (due to contract expiration or the "IHFHI with this job" reason), leaving the military, retirement, divorce and the individualistic reasons you just want a change and 2017 is as long as you're willing to wait.
So, possibly the timing of 2017 makes it the apparent right time to go to the AT.
You have almost a year -- if that ideal point of inflection is coming and you already recognize that it's coming, then get going with what is necessary to make your AT thru-hike a success.
Datto
Can you imagine going through your entire life and never encountering anything monumental?
That is the way most people lead their lives.
Oh sure, they will inflate whatever useless thing they're doing at the time to become, in their head, something useful, something imaginatively monumental. Philosophically speaking of course.
Just made-up BS to the rest of us. They're rationalizing why it is they've never done anything truly worthwhile with themselves.
There are few quotes more important to Society in this very age than this from Thoreau:
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."
You may even come to understand that meaning when, on your northbound AT thru-hike, you reach Thoreau Spring near the top of Katahdin. Just a little distance, in all perspective, from the wooden sign atop Baxter Peak.
I truly believe those people who carry their full backpack past every blaze are the leaders of tomorrow. Well no, not so much in the Mark Zuckerberg sense but more in the member of Society that will not stand for mediocrity to life.
I can almost see Lone Wolf's response of, "Huh?"
Ha. He cracks me up sometimes.
I communicate with people from the Trail and my AT thru-hike regularly. They have the right idea. Sometimes it is very difficult for them but -- they keep on keeping on with what they believe in, different as it is sometimes from what Society expects as full and timely compliance.
As I do.
It is not as if I have all the answers.
I don't.
Every single day is an exploration. An experience.
You don't want to let life pass by and find out, later on your deathbed, your realization is that you've never done anything truly meaningful. That you've passed things on to the next without any expansion of life.
Make the plan. Move forward.
A couple of copperheads came by yesterday and today. Moving in -- I haven't figured out whether to let them be or to move them out to Sandels For Varmints. I'll have to do my fairest James Dean and think about it for a while. The New Baby will want to pursue and question. The neighbors baby had a $5,000 question experience -- not that money matters for my New Baby.
It is two brand new baby hawks this year. Enjoying the attack and dive-bomb of each other -- as their Momma watches on saying, "Pulllease." That single baby hawk last June swung by me with a wingtip hitting my earlobe from behind.
I jumped at least a foot into the air. Scared the heck out of Pearson. I proceeded to walk over to the tree where that baby hawk had lighted and shook my finger.
That baby hawk looked down and said to me, "Whatever..."
This year I have drones to sky up to them as they're circling over the valley down below like they always want to do in the summertime.
Momma's probably not gonna like that.
Datto
There's a good chance you're going to want to do this again.
After you carry your backpack past every AT blaze for more than 2,000 miles.
It is enrapturing. You can't shake it. Not that you want to -- it is BEAT and AFAT. Your next point of inflection.
Loving the life we're living,
Playing that Georgia rhythm.
Nothing else every made me feel this fine.
It's the bond with other thru-hikers, the experience of freedom. The lessening of worries, the stress-free life of making miles. The way your body sculpts, the mind clarity. The encountering of the glory of Nature.
You may want to think this through -- what you may be encountering that is. It could mess up your life.
As a good thing.
Datto
Coupon code for REI outlet right now for members only -- 20% off one full price item:
REIMEMBER2016
Datto
Speaklng of coupon codes, at the Anza water cache on the PCT I'd met up with a woman who I'd met briefly on my AT thru-hike. An overnight 80*F change in temps was common on the PCT so at 7:00pm that night it was already getting cold. She said, "I guess t's time for my Victoria's Secret"' and proceeded into her Victoria's Secret tights.
Pretty much made hiking hundreds of miles through the $^%^& desert worthwhile to me.
For you women who enjoy Victoria's Secret, here's a 40% couon code for swimwear (Zow!) -- SAVE40SWIM -- and a stackable code FREE2DAY.
Datto
On another thread here on Whiteblaze is the idea that one would take a Spot device or a Sat Phone when going into the woods -- this, for the current thread, because a hiker named Inchworm got herself lost in Maine on a bathroom break from the AT and eventually died from starvation and dehydration because she couldn't find her way back to the AT from her bathroom break.
What a crazy stupid idea. Just because ONE person got lost that doesn't mean you will get lost. There are thousands of people like Inchworm who work in big companies who can't find their way to the bathrooms and can barely get out of bed without injuring themselves. Those people don't go into the woods and they don't leave the safety of Society ever. They know they're clueless so they adjust and keep close to whatever makes them feel safe.
To take Inchworm's situation as a recommendation to get a Spot device or a Sat Phone is ridiculous -- that will just mess up your AT thru-hike with no value added back. Besides, it's just a bunch of extra weight and you can't eat a Spot device. A Sat Phone -- geez, just take another fistful of cash laying on the front seat of your car, drive down the highway, throw the fistfuls of cash out the window and go back to work on Monday. Forget about the Appalachian Trail -- just go back to work on Monday and do whatever the pointy-haired manager tells you to do every day of your life so you don't ever take any possible risk that you might get a mark.
The Appalachian Trail is one of the most well-marked trails in the world. The chances of YOU getting lost for days because you went off trail to do your bathroom business is so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. There is much more likelyhood you will be struck by lightning while wading in a lake holding a steel bar to the sky blasfeming God while hiking the Appalachian Trail than there will ever be that you got lost for days on-end after taking a dump.
Don't bring Society with you via a Spot or (most laughable) a Sat Phone on your AT thru-hike. It is a Trojan Horse that will mess you up in the head.
Datto
Speaking of spots and the 50th anniversary...
Tonight I'm at the Fontana Dam shelter, commonly referred to as the 'Fontana Hilton' because of the generous shelter accommodations on the shores of beautiful Fontana Lake. A dozen or so thru-hikers were gathered around the campfire when I walked up. One was talking about digging a hole in the steeply sloped ground near the Trail, squatting down and losing his balance.
With one of his hands first behind him to keep from falling backward down the hillside and then the other hand placed in front to keep from falling on his face, he told the other thru-hikers, "You hear what I'm saying? It was like I was in the woods playing Twister!"
We all roared. We'd been there too.
Datto
Time will elapse so quickly. Much faster than you can imagine.
Somewhere along in the early days you will begin to feel the glide. It is remarkable.
Everything just starts to fit. Time is but a wisp.
Then, when it is coming to an end and you're looking for Katahdin in the great distance from Saddleback, you have to wall it away. The sadness that is. It may be your first glimpse of Katahdin but it is more a view to the end, to the beginning again. This one will soon be closing and another one of unknown beauty will open once more.
Datto
Here is something to know.
If you carry your full backpack past every blaze of the Appalachian Trail during 2017 it is not likely to be the greatest accomplishment of your life.
There are reasons for this -- you will have shown your tenacity, your ability to work through obstacles, your willingness to push through to complete what you have set out to do. You will have great confidence in yourself.
Those are the qualities most people in the world are lacking.
You will succeed and exceed. It will become natural for you. That will become your expectation.
But still...
Keep this in mind.
Your purpose for being on this planet is to be happy. You certainly don't want to deviate from that purpose for very long. It's just not worth it.
That is where most fail.
They think their purpose is to make other people happy. Their boss, their spouse, their kids, their parents, their girlfriend/boyfriend, their Pastor for goodness sakes.
Wrong again.
You are the only person responsible for you.
This may become self-evident for you on your AT thru-hike.
Hopefully so.
Then it's a question of what you are going to do about it afterward. After you've experienced life on the Trail.
There's your quandary. The Societal quandary.
Datto
When I had completed my AT thru-hike, on the ride back down to New Hampshire to fly home I had come to the conclusion my AT experience was important. That the world of long-distance hiking would become a major part of my life.
It is an itch. Once you get it, that becomes a delight you just can't avoid doing something about.
In fact, it would drive direction.
Quite a bit of time would expire before I would figure out the ramifications and the means to make it all happen and work well.
What a life I have had since starting my AT thru-hike. Geez, it just couldn't have ended up much better. Things always seem to have worked out, even with my doubts at times -- just like on the Trail.
I hadn't realized, until my AT thru-hike, how much I'd enjoyed living in the woods. Most of my adult working life to that point in time had been spent under fluorescent lights -- that is a stark contrast to what I have intrinsically desired. I hate fluorescent lights -- in the places where I have lived I have even gone to the point of taping over light switches used to power on a fluorescent light. I think of fluorescent lights as the identity of what it is I am wanting to avoid.
But fluorescent lights and the associated work-life requirements are unavoidable in the modern world -- in the modern Society.
Beauty too became very important to me over time. Visual, audible, tactile beauty. I'd had my dose of ugly and I didn't really want much ugly anymore. I knew what ugly was and had had enough of it and wanted it eliminated -- well, as much as possible in modern Society that I could get away with anyhow.
So, after considerable thought I'd put a plan together to make it all happen.
Plans, of course, are a dime a dozen. Great glorious plans. Minutely detailed plans.
it's the execution that really is the substance. And knowing where compromise is fitting and where holding the line is required.
Datto
Upon my return to Society after completing my AT thru-hike -- the real questions were three-fold:
1) Where am I going to live after my AT thru-hike?
2) Where am I going to get a job after my AT thru-hike?
3) How can I take another adventure every three years?
As far as answering Question 1 above -- you should already have this answered prior to starting your AT thru-hike. If you don't, you may be in for some major stress after returning from your AT thru-hike. It'll probably haunt you in your head while you're hiking too. A much better approach is to get this answered ahead of time before you start your AT thru-hike.
If you're thinking, "Well, I'll just get an apartment someplace after my AT thru-hike" you should know most apartment complexes require you have a current employer listed (as well as many other pieces of credit-related information that will be confirmed by the apartment complex) in order for your apartment application to be approved. Since you may not have a job right after you return from your AT thru-hike, there's a good chance no one will lease you an apartment.
So you could find yourself in a Catch-22 situation rather quickly if you don't address Question 1 prior to starting your AT thru-hike.
Instead, if you're currently living in an apartment complex prior to starting your AT thru-hike and you've always paid your rent on-time (you've never been late with your rent in the mind of the property manager, not necessarily your mind), then go and talk to the property manager in person (not a leasing agent -- they're clueless and just do what they're told and are paid to look pretty). Discuss with the apartment property manager, ahead of time (not at the last minute), that you'll want to return to this apartment complex after you complete your AT thru-hike. Ask them what the process would be to get back into the apartment complex smoothly while doing your job search following your AT thru-hike. There may be a chance the property manager will allow you back into an apartment without all the hoopla of going through a complete application/credit review/employer review process. If the apartment manager tells you there's no way you can return to the apartment complex without having a job first, then you know ahead of time this option won't likely work and you'll need to find another solution to address Question 1.
if you're thinking you'll just have someone sub-lease your apartment while you're on your AT thru-hike, you should know sub-leasing of an apartment in an apartment complex is prohibited by almost all apartment complex leases. Reason -- they don't want you bringing in riff-raff to their apartment complex without their approval (also, sometimes people will bring in tons of others to live in a single apartment in order to reduce costs per person). If you go ahead anyhow and secretly sub-lease your existing apartment to someone else while you're on your AT thru-hike, you could create a major problem needing addressing back home if the apartment complex finds out. You may discover later that it will be difficult to ever lease an apartment again since the next future apartment complex will require you to list your past residences and they'll surely call your most recent place where you previously had a lease.
That all assumes whomever you sub-lease to actually pays their agreed upon rent on-time to you. If they don't and just keep residing in your apartment while not paying you the rent they owe, then you have another major problem back home that you'll have to address remotely from the Trail (or more likely, have to leave the Trail to take care of the problem).
You'll also have to address the lease term of your existing apartment too -- regardless of whether you come back to this apartment complex or not. If you walk out on your apartment lease where your lease term has not come to an end, then you may have serious problems leasing an apartment again in the future. Your future apartment complex will likely call your past apartment complex and they'll know you walked out on a past lease and may reject your future apartment application. Instead, if you know you're going to start your AT thru-hike in April 2017 then get your lease arranged so the term of the lease completes at the end of March 2017. One way to do this is to switch to a month-to-month lease ahead of time (and pay a monthly additional cost for the month-to-month lease) so you only have to give thirty days notice in order to vacate your apartment. Don't wait to get this situation known and solved ahead of time.
By the way, don't expect to receive your full apartment deposit money back from the apartment complex where you're currently living. For one, your idea of a spotless apartment is probably not the same as what the apartment complex considers a spotless apartment. In addition, some apartment complexes will keep your apartment deposit money regardless of whether you leave the apartment spotless or not. It's their way of doing business and they know you really have no way to get your deposit money back anyhow (without resorting to expensive legal means of pursuit which very few tenants undertake)-- so they just keep the money. Certainly don't count on getting that money back in order to utilize that money for funding some of your AT thru-hike.
In any case -- deposit money back or not -- you must leave your apartment spotless when you leave. If you don't, the next place in the future where you're trying to get an apartment lined up will likely find out your a slob and may reject your apartment application simply on that basis alone.
Of course, if you already own a house and you're making mortgage payments while you're on your AT thru-hike, then your Question 1 problem is solved.
if you're married and have a mortgage, your spouse may be making the required house payments in your absence while you're on your AT thru-hike -- so you've answered Question 1 above. That assumes your spouse doesn't file divorce papers while you're on your AT thru-hike (which happens more frequently than you might imagine).
As for me, I usually either made arrangement ahead of time with my college roommate back in Indiana to rent a room from him at his house or I kept my existing apartment (remaining vacant) while I was on a long-distance hike/adventure. There were two times where I made arrangements with the property manager of an apartment complex where I was living to allow me to return smoothly back to that apartment complex after my long-distance hike. The apartment manager at one place was a sweetheart of a person and it was no problem at all to return there following my long-distance hike (apartment property managers are not normally sweethearts). At the other place I had to show "sufficient personal assets (Va Voom)" to allow me to come back to that apartment complex without having a current employer. The whole business of sufficient personal assets is in the judgment of the property manager, not you. They're trying to determine if you're a deadbeat or not before they let you into an apartment complex as a tenant. You may not realize this but property managers see lots of apartment complex applications from deadbeats. You're assumed to be a deadbeat until proven otherwise (by review of your personality and appearance in-person and review with confirmation of the truth of the information you've provided in your apartment application that makes you a good risk to have as a tenant).
You have almost a year to figure out where you are going to live after returning from your AT thru-hike. Don't let time elapse without addressing this question sufficiently that it's not a bother while on your hike.
On to Questions 2 and 3.
Datto
Stepping away from the usual process question and answer activities...
There is a very strong bond developed between AT thru-hikers.
It is unmistakable and deep.
There is none of that chest-bumping you see on TV between people of the same team avocation.
It's not like that.
At all.
It is a full-on hug with a tight grip of affection.
It's the appreciation, the respect, the admiration of others.
If you've carried your full backpack past every blaze you know who are the people who deserve your greatest respect.
Well no, they may not be like you. In the least.
At all.
But in retrospect you think they are like you. But not in the same way as you would expect to be expected by Society.
They are Great. With a capital G.
I was in a major city (to me) looking for a gift. A woman had asked me out on a date -- said her parents had season tickets to a performing arts theater and had wondered if I would like to come and join them for the play.
Well of course I said yes.
I'd met that woman on my AT thru-hike. She and I had an affection toward each other and each of us wanted, at that time, to see what would develop.
On my way to that date (about five hours away via car driving) I'd stopped in a big city to get her a gift. A gift only a thru-hiker would appreciate.
In the store where I was shopping for a "thru-hiker gift" I'd heard my name out loud. My trail name. At first I'd thought it was my imagination. My imagination of someone saying my Trailname aloud in that store.
It hadn't been my imagination. It was another AT thru-hiker. A southbounder to boot.
He'd finished his AT thru-hike about three months before I'd started my northbound AT thru-hike. His "summit photo" to complete his southbound AT thru-hike on Springer Mountain had him with thick ice all over his face and beard.
During January.
I had remembered seeing his summit photo and thinking, "is that going to happen to me going northbound?"'
Geez that had looked awful cold to me.
We would greet each other in that store with fantastic grips of affection. The complete hug, no chest bumps need apply.
His southbound AT thru-hike was one of the major reasons I would do a northbound AT thru-hike. He probably doesn't know that today.
At the time I had considered southbounders to be crazy people.
Why would people take on such a difficult challenge as an AT thru-hike and in addition, oh by the way, take on extra challenges to go south from Katahdin? Have your ass kicked right away rather than just blending into it? Thank you very much. May I have another?
These were aggressive people who didn't think carrying a backpack for more than 2,000 miles was enough of a challenge. I had thought these are the people who are such over-achievers they need to have even more challenge than just the usual 2,000 miles.
That usual 2,000 miles being so Bourgeoisie. Heh.
I have an affection for southbounders. Sometimes they don't take my humor, as a northbounder, kidding them like I do, as being serious.
But it is affection just the same. An admiration.
If I had chosen to go southbound, I'm not sure I would have finished. It is so much more difficult.
The new girls have progressed to the point they are now in their own intermediary coop next to the Chicken Bastion. The other chickens can see the new ones. Hear their chirps and coos so they know each other.
So when they combine together, in a month or so, there is less of an argument and a knowing of who's in-charge.
Not much different than a Wall Street merger don't cha know.
Datto
An interesting encounter of me and a southbounder on my northbound AT thru-hike.
She was an attractive women who was a foot shorter than me. A hundred pounds lighter than me at that time (even with significant weight loss by me at that time during my AT thru-hike).
Her backpack was nine pound heavier than mine when we'd weighed them someplace in New England.
I remember, to this day, thinking "How does that happen?"
Well yes, you can attribute it to lower center of gravity and all the physics attributed to things you can't possibly understand about AT thru-hiking.
To make reason behind southbounders.
Geez I was so impressed by her.
Datto
mogwai316
05-31-2016, 17:18
I've been reading this whole thread start to finish today, and it's been really inspirational. Definitely makes me want 2017 to be the year I finally quit reading about hiking long trails and actually start doing it. Thanks for the time you put into writing your posts!
Blisters.
You'll likely get them and possibly lots of them -- more than you can imagine right now if you're reading this at home or at work.
Compeed (a quite expensive blister care product of stick-on patches) has been the best blister care product for me -- *IF* -- I can get the blister patches to stick to my foot skin. That is a really big IF. Compeed has moisture absorbing capabilities built into the patch (to absorb all the goo excreted by the wound) and over time, the patch becomes a little more porous to allow air through to help heal and dry the wound. The patch, in theory, stays attached to your foot and protects the wound from more abrasion and spot heat.
That's the real problem for a thru-hiker -- getting any type of blister care product to stick for more than an hour.
Reason: On an AT thru-hike your feet are going to be soaking wet much of the time, particularly on a northbound AT thru-hike. Your current socks are likely to be wet and your "backup" pair of socks are likely to be wet. Your shoes will be soaked much of the time too, regardless of whether your socks are newly washed -- your newly washed and dried socks that you just pulled out of your backpack will be wet again within an hour because your shoes are likely to be already soaked and undryable.
With all that moisture surrounding your feet, the skin on your feet becomes very soft and much more susceptible to damage from chafing and heat.
In addition, there is likely to be a layer of slime on your feet from days and days of crud and beasties build-up until you get to town and, eventually, get your feet washed and dried. Trying to get that slime off your feet so your blister care product can stick -- that's the problem as well as the usual excessive moisture everywhere.
What I do to try to overcome the hurdle of all that slime making it too slippery for the blister care product to stick -- I clean and dry my hands as best as I can and then use some of my hand sanitizer (that I always carry in my shorts pocket) to try and clear off the invisible slime and dirt AROUND the wound (not on the wound -- that would certainly hurt). I try to clear off enough space in a large enough area on my foot where the blister care treatment is intended to stick to your skin.
Then, and here's the key part, I let my foot dry for at least fifteen minutes (after the hand sanitizer has been used) before I even think about the blister care product. Then I re-assess whether the area around the wound is dry. If so, I take out the Compeed patch, take off the paper protecting the stickup part and then apply the patch with the center of the patch centered on the wound. I press the Compeed patch in place thoroughly all around the perimeter of the patch at least twice and then wait at least another fifteen minutes or more (with zero movement of my foot) for the patch stickum to setup. All that effort gives the blister care product time (hopefully) to get stuck to my foot. The Compeed patch, assuming it sticks to my foot, is on there forever (until the patch decides to come off on its own).
I can tell you the reason why Compeed (and similar patches) don't seem to work for AT thru-hikers is the thru-hiker doesn't want to take that much time and make that much of an effort to treat a blister in the middle of the hiking day. An AT thru-hiker is usually focused on making miles for the day and taking that much time out to treat a blister just seems to be wasteful. So the necessary time to get the blister patch stickum setup properly never happens and the patch comes off easily within the first hour of use. Also, the people who design and manufacture the blister patch really don't have an AT thru-hiker (and associated slime and dirt out in the woods) in mind as their primary customer.
One of the real dangers of using Duct Tape or even some types of Moleskin is the stickum on those products is so great there's a chance it will move on your foot (from continued abrasion and pounding from your hiking shoe) and take off the first layer of skin with it during that movement. You could end up with a really big patch of soft skin that gets ripped off, exposing an even bigger wound. Then you could get yourself in a really big mess and have to take days off sitting in a motel to get your blisters healed up before you can come back to the Trail and start making northbound progress again. That's also a sizeable gash in your wallet too. I saw some big blister problems on hikers during my AT thru-hike -- raw 2nd layer skin the size of a golf ball or even larger -- on both feet.
Make sure, as I've talked about above, that your feet don't swell inside your hiking shoe and have nowhere to go in order to expand. That will likely cause lots of blisters all over your foot (back heel, top of your foot, between your toes, bottom of your foot).
This is another reason why you carry your backpack deliberately in the rain/snow on your pre-hike prep hikes. It gives you some hands-on (foots-on) experience dealing with blisters if you're going to get them. Then, you can deal with methods of blister treatment and decide what works best for you.
Compeed patches come in different sizes (the larger patches even more outrageously priced than the smaller patches). I usually bought a selection of sizes -- the smaller patches I used on the blisters I would get between my toes from the pounding my toes would take on the downhills. I tried to reserve the larger, more expense patches for heel-type injuries or top-of-my-foot injuries. I also bought extras to occasionally give to other hikers who had never heard of Compeed, then give them the instruction on the time necessary to get the patch to stick. Most of the time the other hiker's feet were so growdy with stank and colonies of something that I'd be amazed if anything would stick to their foot.
Datto
So why don't AT thru-hikers stop and dress a blister before that blister gets to be any kind of a problem?
The pain from a newly formed blister, in the beginning of an AT thru-hike, is but a whisper among the shouting coming from other parts of your body (knees, shoulders, hips, mind). Exhaustion also has you not thinking sequentially (cause/effect) as you might do back home sitting in your cubicle.
Datto
Another Kevin
06-02-2016, 11:41
On another thread here on Whiteblaze is the idea that one would take a Spot device or a Sat Phone when going into the woods -- this, for the current thread, because a hiker named Inchworm got herself lost in Maine on a bathroom break from the AT and eventually died from starvation and dehydration because she couldn't find her way back to the AT from her bathroom break.
What a crazy stupid idea. Just because ONE person got lost that doesn't mean you will get lost. There are thousands of people like Inchworm who work in big companies who can't find their way to the bathrooms and can barely get out of bed without injuring themselves. Those people don't go into the woods and they don't leave the safety of Society ever. They know they're clueless so they adjust and keep close to whatever makes them feel safe.
You probably misread me as being one of THOSE people...
I carry a PLB - not a SPOT or InReach, a real PLB - on about half my trips, because I carry it when I'm solo, or intending to go off-trail, or there are snowshoes and crampons about.
None of the above applies to an A-T thru hike, with the possible exception of a "nontraditional" pattern that would put the hiker in Maine in the shoulder season.
There is something about sliding off an icy trail that makes one want to be found fairly quickly in the Winter, up North. As someone who regularly hikes in the Winter, I do take exception to some poor advice, Datto, gave for cold weather hiking attire. Fleece gloves are awesome for winter hiking. Pair them with mittens or mitten shells and they are bombproof. If it is cold and you are hiking and sweating, you are moving too fast or wearing too many insulating layers. A long sleeve wool t-shirt, fleece jacket and a windshell takes me down to sub-zero temps. That down jacket in my pack stays there until I stop for a break. The secret is to have lightweight layers that you can take on and off as needed.
Another Kevin
06-02-2016, 12:48
On an AT thru-hike your feet are going to be soaking wet much of the time, particularly on a northbound AT thru-hike. Your current socks are likely to be wet and your "backup" pair of socks are likely to be wet. Your shoes will be soaked much of the time too, regardless of whether your socks are newly washed -- your newly washed and dried socks that you just pulled out of your backpack will be wet again within an hour because your shoes are likely to be already soaked and undryable.
With all that moisture surrounding your feet, the skin on your feet becomes very soft and much more susceptible to damage from chafing and heat.
If you're going to be hiking on wet trail, wax your feet. BodyGlide works for some people but doesn't quite do it for me. Hydropel was great, but they went out of business.
Skurka recommends Bonnie's Balms Climbing Salve, and I've also heard that Burt's Bees Res-Q-Ointment works. I use a product called Gurney Goo. It has beeswax, silicone and tea tree oil, so it's both water-repellent and antifungal. It made a huge difference when I started using it nightly when hiking in wet areas. (Maybe touch it up in the morning.
The other thing that's important is to keep stuff as clean as you can. If I'm slogging through serious mud, I'll likely wash my socks twice a day. They'll be wet, can't help that, but at least they won't have gritty mud abrading my feet. And I wash my feet - with soap and water -- just as often. I carry a Sea-to-Summit bucket as one of my luxuries, so as to keep stuff (and me) as clean as I can under the circumstances.
And always, if I'm bandaging anything, I wash it first. Soap is your friend on the trail.
Another Kevin
06-02-2016, 13:06
There is something about sliding off an icy trail that makes one want to be found fairly quickly in the Winter, up North. As someone who regularly hikes in the Winter, I do take exception to some poor advice, Datto, gave for cold weather hiking attire. Fleece gloves are awesome for winter hiking. Pair them with mittens or mitten shells and they are bombproof. If it is cold and you are hiking and sweating, you are moving too fast or wearing too many insulating layers. A long sleeve wool t-shirt, fleece jacket and a windshell takes me down to sub-zero temps. That down jacket in my pack stays there until I stop for a break. The secret is to have lightweight layers that you can take on and off as needed.
The prospect of sliding off an icy trail in a Northeast winter is terrifying, which is why I always have some sort of traction in winter. On a lot of trips, I bring microspikes, ascent snowshoes, ski poles, crampons and ice axe, switching off among them as conditions warrant. I think my winter traction gear outweighs my summer pack, but when you need it, you really need it.
Your description of your clothing system matches exactly what I do, but I, too, live Up North. Winter hiking is all about moisture management. If you get wet, from the inside or the outside, your trip is ruined. There are lots of times you'll see me hiking in the winter wearing just my rain suit (for wind protection) and long johns underneath. Fleece gloves and a fleece or acrylic beanie, that I can take off to cool down fast. The other thing about winter hiking is how rapidly your body heats up when you get moving. If you don't start cold, you'll finish wet.
But to be fair, Datto is giving advice for a traditional thru-hike, which means that deep winter conditions Up North aren't in the range of what he's considering. Georgia in the shoulder season, hot weather for most of the trip, shoulder season again in northern New England.
I'm heading toward answering the two remaining post-hike questions from above. 2) Getting a job after the AT and 3) How do I take an adventure every three years.
So let me tell you about just one of the ways my AT thru-hike changed me.
It made me aware of how much I had changed from growing up in small-town Indiana.
My parents had made life idyllic for me. I had grown up in a cocoon. Sheltered really. Growing up in small-town Indiana was fantastic. It was the best of everything. It allowed me to eventually excel.
It had also allowed me to be around brilliance. I hadn't known it at the time.
Corporate America chipped away at all of that. It was a deterioration of what I was about. What I'd had for expectations.
My AT thru-hike changed all of that.
It made me quietly selfish. That is a very good thing.
Today, Pearson was in the Wal-Mart looking for toys for the New Baby.
Just happened to meet a nice woman in the toy department of Wal-Mart who was an AT section hiker.
I don't know -- I guess AT people are recognizable? Are we so easily seen and recognized? Is it our smell or castaway look or something else?
The woman talking to Pearson had owned a Doberman in the past at the same time she had rescued a baby raccoon. The baby raccoon would become housebroken, would join the family as a full-member and then would ride around on the back of the Doberman in the house for fun. The Doberman loved it.
So she and Pearson would talk a bit about the AT and long-distance hiking and the Pacific Crest Trail at times. This before Pearson would select what was expected to be the bullet-proof toy for the New Baby.
The lady had such a closet desire and fondness for the AT as well as finishing the AT and then moving on to the really high mountains of the PCT. She was from upstate New York, had relocated to Florida and then had realized her desire to live in the mountains. That's some of how she'd ended up in Murphy, NC.
She, of course, was not the first nor the second person here in Murphy who'd had such an interest in the AT.
Heck, the AT is just down the road. I go down there and watch the AT thru-hikers. Offer rides (mostly too late as they've already come back from a resupply in Franklin, NC and are heading out).
It reminds me so much of small town Indiana.
Murphy, NC that is.
Of course, with mountains and mountain folk.
Datto
Just wanted to mention to 2017 prospective AT thru-hikers why Whiteblaze is so important to you.
You get varied opinions -- that's what you want. Digest opinions from many people who have previously taken on the challenge of an AT thru-hike.
Then you sort it out in your own head. Figure out what works for you.
I think if you knew, as a prospective 2017 AT thru-hiker, how many past AT thru-hikers are likely reading your questions and your fears and concerns (or mine) here on Whiteblaze. You'd probably be amazed at all the opinions.
That's what you want -- varied opinions from people who have done it.
Datto
Just wanted to mention to 2017 prospective AT thru-hikers why Whiteblaze is so important to you. Digest opinions from many people who have previously taken on the challenge of an AT thru-hike.
I'm not talking about the people who are live on the AT and announcing via social media they've just ate a pudding.
Next!
Forget about social media on the AT. Just do the AT. Just thru-hike the AT as your goal. Forget about announcing to the world that you've just at a pudding.
Instead, think about how you can be nice to the people you meet on your AT thru-hike. It will pay you back in spades.
Datto
Determination.
Let me talk briefly about the determination of a hiker on a long-distance hike.
Just so you know.
I saw some really bad injuries of people who were thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Enough so I might have gone off-trail to get medical attention.
Even with that whole business of taking off all the skin from wrist to elbow at shelter in the Smoky's.
One day on another trail I had decided to take a nap on that trail and had stretched across the trail with my body.
I had heard through the hiker grapevines that a thru-hiker I had met ahead of me had fallen and had broken her arm.
So unfortunate she had to leave that trail.
As I was sleeping with my body across that trail, I was kicked in the side of my thigh.
It was that hiker who had broken her arm.
She was giving me an earful about blocking the trail.
Cast and all.
I remember thinking, "She's hiking this trail with her arm in a cast."
Well yes, after all, it's not like it's a leg or something.
You should be looking at this being that kind of determination to make it to Katahdin.
Datto
Do not eat food out of a hiker box. Are you crazy?
Why in the world would you ever consider that to be wise?
This is crap others wouldn't eat. Sometimes it is included from specimen bags as evidence from a trial.
Ah, that doesn't sound apetizing to me. Even today. Or forever.
Why don't you eat the dirt next to the sidewall of the shelter?
Just about as smart as eating from a hiker box.
Datto
If I have to actually tell you not to eat crap out of a hiker box, then you are too much of an idiot to be hiking the Appalachian Trail. You should just be forced to puke your guts out, then go home and complain to your neighbors the food on the Appalachian Trail made you sick.
Datto
Another Kevin
06-02-2016, 17:51
Just wanted to mention to 2017 prospective AT thru-hikers why Whiteblaze is so important to you.
You get varied opinions -- that's what you want. Digest opinions from many people who have previously taken on the challenge of an AT thru-hike.
Then you sort it out in your own head. Figure out what works for you.
I think if you knew, as a prospective 2017 AT thru-hiker, how many past AT thru-hikers are likely reading your questions and your fears and concerns (or mine) here on Whiteblaze. You'd probably be amazed at all the opinions.
That's what you want -- varied opinions from people who have done it.
Or people like me, who haven't done it, but have done a lot of other sorts of hiking and have a very different perspective on it. The longest hike I've ever done was the 137-mile Northville-Placid Trail, and it seemed a perfect length. I enjoyed it a lot, but was ready to get back when I was finished. It's also a lot more remote than the A-T. I saw a total of seven parties of other hikers, if I recall correctly (four pairs, two solos and a foursome), and they were all going the other way. I always had my campsite all to myself. A lot of the rest of my hiking has been blue-blazing, and no-blazing. Peak-bagging and trail-clearing and map-making and photography. Rock scrambling and snowshoeing and plooshing about in beaver swamp. And even a few hundred miles of following little white rectangles painted on trees.
Datto and I agree on very little, it seems, but he's on my list of "someone I'd like to meet in a pub or around a campfire someday," mostly because his trail journal is freakin' hilarious. But he's also on my list of "people I'd like to meet around a campfire or in a pub, rather than hike with," because our personal hiking styles are so very different. We wouldn't get along if we were traveling together. But that's OK. There's more than one way to do it.
Most of the newbies on here are too green to know what their hiking style is - and when asked, answer with their aspirations rather than their style. When they ask questions that depend strongly on hiking style, I tend to throw out answers from my weird perspective, if only to get them thinking. Some are in it for the challenge, some are in it for the party, most won't actually learn why they're doing it until they're well along. None of them know whether they would go for "fast and light" or "ultimate comfort" or what point in between would be their ideal point. Few of them know whether they'd prefer to be packed up and moving as soon as possible in the morning, ideally by first light; or whether they are more the type to laze around camp for a bit, maybe have a hot breakfast or a second cup of coffee. They'll have to find their own answers to most of their questions, because they've come in without even knowing what questions to ask.
A few (like me) are in it because they like to see new places, and some of those new places are more than a half-day from a road, so a backpack comes along for the ride. For me, the Northville-Placid was a string of pretty cool places that I hadn't been to before. Getting to Northville (I went SOBO) wasn't the real goal. I just wanted to see Duck Hole and the Cold River and the West Canada Lakes and the Sacanadaga River footbridge and .... so why not thru-hike the trail? Similarly, I do the occasional peak-bagging. The Catskill 3500's have mostly been pretty awesome places, so I'm glad that I've done the 33 that I've done, and looking forward to the half dozen that I have left. But it's not about the challenge, not about ticking them off the list - the list is just a way of saying, "here are probably some great places that I haven't been." I guess I'm a tourist at heart.
Datto would tell me - indeed, has told me - that I'd never succeed as a thru-hiker with that attitude. I'm not entirely sure he's right. I'd at least be going in with some substantial hiking in bad weather behind me, so I'd not be blindsided by that reality. But it's most likely moot, since although I love the AT, I'm not really taken with the prospect of trying to do it all at one go.
And since a lot of the newbie questions aren't really specific to thru-hiking, I still feel all right with answering them. The way you take a bath in the woods, or address a maildrop, or dress for hiking in sleet, or keep the deerflies off, don't change whether you're going a hundred miles or two thousand. If you get six hundred miles on a pair of trail runners, you'll have to replace them in six hundred miles, whether it takes you two months or two years to get that much wear on them. You don't need to lug a gallon of drinking water in the East, pretty much ever, whether that's on a thru-hike or a leisurely weekend stroll. Whatever your ambitions, it's wise to spend several short trips, in as varied weather as you can manage, dialing in your gear and your routine. And bring a freaking trowel! Those things aren't thru-hiking, they're just hiking.
Just the musings of a clueless weekender.... who's been out for a lot of clueless weekends and hopefully learnt a thing or two.
JumpMaster Blaster
06-02-2016, 20:53
Or people like me, who haven't done it, but have done a lot of other sorts of hiking and have a very different perspective on it. The longest hike I've ever done was the 137-mile Northville-Placid Trail, and it seemed a perfect length. I enjoyed it a lot, but was ready to get back when I was finished. It's also a lot more remote than the A-T. I saw a total of seven parties of other hikers, if I recall correctly (four pairs, two solos and a foursome), and they were all going the other way. I always had my campsite all to myself. A lot of the rest of my hiking has been blue-blazing, and no-blazing. Peak-bagging and trail-clearing and map-making and photography. Rock scrambling and snowshoeing and plooshing about in beaver swamp. And even a few hundred miles of following little white rectangles painted on trees.
Datto and I agree on very little, it seems, but he's on my list of "someone I'd like to meet in a pub or around a campfire someday," mostly because his trail journal is freakin' hilarious. But he's also on my list of "people I'd like to meet around a campfire or in a pub, rather than hike with," because our personal hiking styles are so very different. We wouldn't get along if we were traveling together. But that's OK. There's more than one way to do it.
Most of the newbies on here are too green to know what their hiking style is - and when asked, answer with their aspirations rather than their style. When they ask questions that depend strongly on hiking style, I tend to throw out answers from my weird perspective, if only to get them thinking. Some are in it for the challenge, some are in it for the party, most won't actually learn why they're doing it until they're well along. None of them know whether they would go for "fast and light" or "ultimate comfort" or what point in between would be their ideal point. Few of them know whether they'd prefer to be packed up and moving as soon as possible in the morning, ideally by first light; or whether they are more the type to laze around camp for a bit, maybe have a hot breakfast or a second cup of coffee. They'll have to find their own answers to most of their questions, because they've come in without even knowing what questions to ask.
A few (like me) are in it because they like to see new places, and some of those new places are more than a half-day from a road, so a backpack comes along for the ride. For me, the Northville-Placid was a string of pretty cool places that I hadn't been to before. Getting to Northville (I went SOBO) wasn't the real goal. I just wanted to see Duck Hole and the Cold River and the West Canada Lakes and the Sacanadaga River footbridge and .... so why not thru-hike the trail? Similarly, I do the occasional peak-bagging. The Catskill 3500's have mostly been pretty awesome places, so I'm glad that I've done the 33 that I've done, and looking forward to the half dozen that I have left. But it's not about the challenge, not about ticking them off the list - the list is just a way of saying, "here are probably some great places that I haven't been." I guess I'm a tourist at heart.
Datto would tell me - indeed, has told me - that I'd never succeed as a thru-hiker with that attitude. I'm not entirely sure he's right. I'd at least be going in with some substantial hiking in bad weather behind me, so I'd not be blindsided by that reality. But it's most likely moot, since although I love the AT, I'm not really taken with the prospect of trying to do it all at one go.
And since a lot of the newbie questions aren't really specific to thru-hiking, I still feel all right with answering them. The way you take a bath in the woods, or address a maildrop, or dress for hiking in sleet, or keep the deerflies off, don't change whether you're going a hundred miles or two thousand. If you get six hundred miles on a pair of trail runners, you'll have to replace them in six hundred miles, whether it takes you two months or two years to get that much wear on them. You don't need to lug a gallon of drinking water in the East, pretty much ever, whether that's on a thru-hike or a leisurely weekend stroll. Whatever your ambitions, it's wise to spend several short trips, in as varied weather as you can manage, dialing in your gear and your routine. And bring a freaking trowel! Those things aren't thru-hiking, they're just hiking.
Just the musings of a clueless weekender.... who's been out for a lot of clueless weekends and hopefully learnt a thing or two.
Very true.
"Okay look Charles, can I call you Chuck? This trip your taking, it's just the same as if you flew from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. Then you went home. Next year you come back and you fly from Salt Lake to Denver. Then you go home again. The following year, you come back to Denver and it's gravy time -- you fly to St. Louis and go home and sleep in a warm bed again. After you get rested up and maybe make some money, then you come back and fly from St Louis to Columbus, Ohio and go home again and go back to work. Then next year from Columbus, Ohio to New York City and it's over. Wah-Lah. It's just lke all of that except you have to do this over water, you fly to Paris and you can't go home and sleep in your bed and eat regular until the whole entire flight is completed. But it's just the same. So go ahead and get started. It shouldn't be much of a problem for a guy like you. It's just a bunch of individual section flights and you're already used that, right? What's the problem?"
I have section hiked a very long-distance trail to completion and I have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail to completion.
A summation of the parts of a section hike is nowhere near that of a thru-hike. It just doesn't sum like that. A section hike is entirely different than a thru-hike. Assuming both are the same is taking a bunch of tiny, miniature horses grouped together next to a Budweiser Clyedsdale and calling both the same -- calling them both one big majestic horse.
it's not the same. Not even close. The requiremens and challenges are entirely different.
Datto
The reason I'm educating 2017 AT Thru-hikers In-Plannng is to boost the percentage of people who carry their full backpack past every blaze and then complete their AT thru-hike during 2017.
That's the goal.
I can either do this by having people become better prepared so their chances of completion are improved or by reducing the number of people who attempt an AT thru-hike in 2017 -- because they're more knowledgeable about what an AT thru-hike entails and know, ahead of time before they turn in their resignation next year, that an AT thru-hike is probably not for them. Those people can then move on to something that is more to their liking (backpacking through Europe for instance).
By better educating prospective AT thru-hikers there would/should be fewer people who leave the Trail because they have discovered the AT is not what they had expected (the number one reason why people leave the AT during their AT thru-hike).
It is so much better for people to know ahead of time whether an AT thru-hike is something they really want to take-on -- or not.
I am very glad past AT thru-hikers had helped me understand what I was getting myself into before I actually turned in my resignation, got on an airplane and arrived at Springer Mountain, Georgia.
Datto
Regarding eating out of a hiker box, for a well-prepared AT thru-hiker there is no justifiable reward. It is all risk and to me, it could be hike-ending risk.
So why do it?
It's the same question of hiking north from Mt. Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire when a storm is brewing. It is all risk and to me, it could be hike-ending/life-ending risk.
So why do it?
It is the same question of starting a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail when your spouse is against the idea. It is all risk and to me, it could be hike-ending and marriage-ending risk.
So why do it?
A thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail is already a risky enough venture. Why in the world would anyone add even more risk to something that is already risky with a 15% chance of completion?
Doesn't make a bit of sense to me.
But if a Wallenda wannabe shows up and must eat someone's past discards of unknown origin out of a hiker box while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, by all means, become a complete idiot and knock yourself out.
There's a book coming out entited Thru-Hiking The Appalachian Trail for Complete Idiots. Page One -- always eat as much as possible out of hiker boxes. Page Two -- you only need $1,500 -- anything more is such a waste -- Go for it. Page Three -- The risks of the White Mountains are much overrated -- you'll be fine.
Datto
Most of the newbies on here are too green to know what their hiking style is - and when asked, answer with their aspirations rather than their style.
That's one of the many reasons why this listing of Datto's Tips has been put together -- so people (specifically prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers) who are relatively new to long-distance hiking can make better choices early-on and get to the point where they are doing their pre-hike prep hikes. if my advice is taken, the'll be right in the ballpark with Goldilocks Gear -- not too light as to have the thru-hiker freeze every night (or so light as to become a maintenance project from not being thru-hiker ready stuff) and not too heavy that it has to be replaced in order to have a lighter pack on an AT thru-hike.
But then again, gear does not get a person to Katahdin. That's why not much emphasis is place on gear with Datto's Tips. The cost of gear is negligable when compared to the cost of turning in a resignation at a job and then not making it out of Georgia on an AT thru-hike. That is one of the many reasons why Datto's Tips focus more on what the experience of an AT thru-hike is like (warts and all). This so some prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers will never spend a cent on their AT thru-hike because they can see ahead of time, it's not for them.
Those prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers who are still game for the challenge (after reading Datto's Tips) can get off on the right foot immediately with their resources (money and time mainly) in order to put themselves into the group who has the best chance to complete an AT thru-hike.
Datto
The other point of Datto's Tips is to allow prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers to take a more rifled approach to the challenge rather than shotgunning and pinballing their way from now until they reach Katahdin.
A rifled approach breeds success.
Datto
A 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker who carries their backpack past every blaze and reaches Waynesboro, VA is already going to know almost everything listed in Datto's Tips.
It's the "Getting To Waynesboro" part that makes Datto's Tips important to the prospective 2017 northbound AT thru-hiker.
Datto
Why Waynesboro, Virginia?
Because:
1) An AT thru-hiker who has carried their full backpack past every blaze to reach Waynesboro already knows their daily system and rituals and are comfortable, at that point in their AT thru-hike, with life on the Trail.
2) The terrain beginning north of Waynesboro is easier (not easy, just easier) than what that AT thru-hiker has experienced while carrying their full backpack past every blaze to get to Waynesboro.
3) North of Waynesboro, decent food (that doesn't come out of their cookpot) is but a few steps away from the AT treadway -- that creates a real boost in morale and is a delight.
4) The length of the daylight hours is at/near maximum so an AT thru-hiker who's carried their full backpack past every blaze to get to Waynesboro now doesn't have so much pressure to get the daily miles completed.
5) An AT thru-hiker has likely developed strong friendships/relationships with other AT thru-hikers by Waynesboro so there's quite a bit of commraderie.
Basically, the glide of an AT thru-hike has already begun. An AT thru-hiker can begin to see how great of an experience life on the Trail has become. It's highly likely an AT thru-hiker has already done the math to see that reaching Katahdin is possible.
Then, it's a matter of money, health (mental as well as physical) and gumption.
Datto
Traveler
06-03-2016, 09:33
To point out the obvious perhaps...
Failures often provide far more value in life than quick successes do. Determining if one can get out of GA on an AT thru hike is not something opinion will provide, like many things in life its earned through experience. The walk itself is the journey, the mountains at the south and north end simply mark the start and end points. If the journey only lasts 100 miles, the lessons from that will stay with an individual for as long as the lessons learned by those who complete it.
No moralizing here outside of, if you think you can and want to do anything in life, then do it. The worst that can happen is you become fabulously successful at it with little effort.
Another Kevin
06-03-2016, 16:28
I have section hiked a very long-distance trail to completion and I have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail to completion.
A summation of the parts of a section hike is nowhere near that of a thru-hike. It just doesn't sum like that. A section hike is entirely different than a thru-hike. Assuming both are the same is taking a bunch of tiny, miniature horses grouped together next to a Budweiser Clydesdale and calling both the same -- calling them both one big majestic horse.
it's not the same. Not even close. The requirements and challenges are entirely different.
<---- That's why I identify as clueless under my name there!
I can't presume to comment on the physical, mental, spiritual challenges of a long-distance hike, not having done one. And in general, I don't. I'll leave that to you.
But entirely different? For most of the questions that show up on this site? Isn't that overstating the matter just a bit?
A herd of Shetland ponies doesn't make up one Clydesdale. But when someone is asking a question about how to dispose of horse manure, it makes very little difference what sort of horse produced it.
More than a quarter of people who declare their intentions to thru-hike drop out by Fontana. I'm very confident that I'd make it that far, barring mishap, because I've done hikes that are longer and more difficult, in weather just as bad as the Spring in Georgia. Some of what fells them is that they have romantic ideas of what hiking is like, and find that the reality isn't at all like them. And some fall to flaws in technique - they don't know how to live in the woods in adequate comfort. I can have an opinion, and help with both of those, because I have spent a fair amount of time Out There, in considerably more varied conditions than exist on the AT, and have my gear and technique dialed in fairly well. At least in my clueless opinion - but that's the one that matters for my gear, my food, my itinerary. You don't have to carry my stuff, eat my food, or go at my pace.
I will agree with you enthusiastically that it's not nearly the same experience. But the experience is what you have when you're finished with it. A lot of what you need to know when you're starting out - the stuff that would keep you from getting to Fontana - is the same whether your original plan was to go to Maine or to head home from just past the North Carolina line. You still have to make it that first hundred miles. If you decide to call it quits in Helen or Neels Gap because your pack was too damned heavy, or you screwed up your feet hiking in muddy, ill-fitting socks, or you can't stand hiking with the screaming squirts that you got from letting someone reach into your gorp bag, it makes no difference whether the plan was for fifty miles or two thousand.
I can't tell people how to deal with the Virginia Blues. I've never had the Virginia Blues. I can tell people how to address and claim a maildrop - because I've been on a hike long enough and remote enough to need a maildrop resupply (at least at my slow pace). I can't say what it's like to have to choose between your hike and a family wedding or funeral - I've always been able to come home. I can say what it's like to fall in a river in the North Woods, or have to hole up in a town waiting for bronchitis medication to start working, or hike fifteen miles on a sprained knee - because I've done those things.
And who knows? Maybe some of those would-be thru-hikes would be happier with my hiking style. I know I am. I like my life, for the most part. My job isn't often soul-sucking, my family are good to be around, I have ties to church and community. I really love getting Out There, and I really love coming home. Maybe there are others like me.
Even though it doesn't appeal to me just now, someday I may turn into the "thru-hiking retired old fart with an American Express card" - and it's surely done that way, too! Many here would look down on that, too, as somehow being less "real" than doing it in poverty because you've had to give up your regular life to pursue that dream. And it surely would be an entirely different set of challenges as well. (A lot more worrying about health, a lot less worrying about money. The upside of being able to take more town days. The downside of needing to. I like to think that with the number of nights I've slept rough and the number of miles I've got behind me, toting a pack in varied weather, that I'd be going in with my eyes open - at least to what hiking is all about. I like to think that a guy who can come off a two-week trip, do the wash, stow the gear, go back to work, and be ready to go out with a smile the next weekend would stand a pretty good chance.
But that's just me being clueless again.
(And your journals are still freaking hilarious, by the way...)
Music.
The adage for some thru-hikers to people who are new to long-distance hiking is you're carrying way too much clothing and not enough good music.
For me, I have found that to be oh-so-true.
This is not a suggestion to be always-connected to the Internet during your AT thru-hike in order to utilize Spotify and Pandora. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I think that is a stupid reason to deliberately mess up your AT thru-hike with a constant connection.
Instead, carry the music locally -- MP3 or similar locally, carried without requiring a constant connection to the Internet.
I believe music enhances the AT thru-hiking experience.
Substantially.
If you are into music (who isn't these days) and are a prospective 2017 AT thru-hiker, you have almost a year to gather up the music most enjoyable to you and put it into the form of being available locally to you on your upcoming AT thru-hike.
I would say get 3x the amount you think you need (I'm not exagerating). That times-amount has always worked for me so I never got bored with the music during my hiking travels in the world.
What I did for my northbound AT thru-hike was to specifically gather unfamiliar music (in addition to that with which I was familar).
Mostly I was a pop/rock type person and I had decided to carry classical and country music along with quite a boatload of rock and pop music that I had deemed suitable for me.
Man was that pleasant while I was hiking. The whole mix was such an added experience. Well yes, I did have days where I listened to just the weeds and seeds growing along the Trail. But many days I listened to good music all day long. That was particularly true when I was taking on a stretch-amount of mileage specific to that day of my AT thru-hike.
Here are just a few suggestions to start you off on an a bit of an eclectic mix that you might not usually carry:
Virginia -- Body Heat, James Brown. What I really enjoy about this tune, today, is the number of times Google Play has the lyrics listed as [incomprehensible]. That absolutly cracks me up Shu-Shucks. You can't possibly listen to this song without moving faster on days in Virginia when you're trying make max miles.
Your Next Mountain -- Start Me Up -- The Rolling Stones. If that tune doesn't kick you into 4th gear you are hopeless with motivation from music. Stay with the Hokey Pokey (an enjoyable AT thru-hiker who I'd met on my AT thru-hike).
For that hot thru-hiker you just met -- I Can't Describe (ft T.I) --Jennifer Hudson (see my upcoming topic about AT Relationships). I like T.I.
When it's raining -- The Sweetest Taboo -- Sade (pronounced Shar-day). I like the rain in this song but the off-beat/downbeat of the drums is excellent. Chopin is also very good for days when it is raining all day --enjoyed the tickling of the ivories to make a rain sound. Of course, that was more than a hundred of years before The Original Crazy One.
For New England -- Ain't No Mountain High Enough -- Michael McDonald.
For that hot thru-hiker you just met who's a lesbian -- Our Country -- John Mellencamp. If you are a parent, you should also listen to the song I'm Not Running Anymore by John Mellencamp and then look on the Internet to see what happened to those kids he's talking about in that song.
South of the Mason Dixon Line -- Ron White, Larry The Cable Guy, Kathleen Madigan (particularly her bit about West Virginia), Gary Gulman, Brian Regan, Mike Birbiglia and Jim Gaffigan (who grew up near me in Indiana). This is just to get your started. You should plan on fewer miles on the days you're listening to any of those comedians. They are almost as funny as your fellow AT thru-hikers. It's tough to get into The Zone when you are laughing so much. I mean, at your fellow AT thru-hikers. Make them stop -- you don't have forever to get to Katahdin.
Datto
Today, a few hours ago, I got off the telephone with a very nice tax auditor lady named Judy from the State Of Arizona.
Boiled down, she was questioning my lifestyle and whether I had really fulflled my tax obligation so many years ago while I was practicing my professional face-planting on the Continental Divide Trail. I've had Jerry, a CPA, do my taxes for decades. Taxes is what Jerry lives for so I never have to worry about stuff I don't care one simple-minded iota about.
My conversations with Judy, the Arizona tax auditor lady today -- I consider the conversations with her to be absolute proof of my life success. What I have fulfilled with the lifestyle I have taken on these past years.
Society believes I have lost my mind.
That's the look I'm goin' for.
It is the successful striving toward what I have been pursuing.
To be honest, I was wondering if this was going to be one of those really serious interspective type confrontational telephone calls.
Or whether I could interject humor into a distant tax auditor. On a Friday afternoon. How can you not be susceptable to humor on a Friday afternoon?
My goal in life fulfilled.
I was tryng to convince Judy I should be able to weasel out of providing all the paperwork necessary to prove my substantative role in Society.
As soon as I mentioned how many storage units I'd have to go through to come up with all the paperwork to prove I hadn't lived in the state of Arizona during 2011, well, that was when I realized I was just the straight man for the inner-comedian wanting to immerge from an Arizona state tax auditor.
This from comedian Judy: "Maybe you should consider getting yourself onto Storage Wars."
Of course, that got things going downhill pretty fast. Just as I had planned. Pretty soon Judy and I are discussing some of the weirdos on the TV show Storage Wars and how my predicament might fit into a plotline for the next season. I hadn't even told Judy that I owned a big honking pickup truck neither.
Pearson was sitting on the sofa wondering how a serious call to a state tax auditor could have me laughing so much. Listen, if you can't get someone laughing about taxes, you're doing something wrong.
I didn't even have to invoke choreography. I am sure I coulda got Judy doing a Conga dance in her cubicle way over in Arizona on this late Friday afternoon. Just to finish off the week properly. You know, state tax auditors are people too.
Pearson was so glad -- Pearson has seen my choreograhy first hand -- nothing like starting the weekend out on an embarrassing bad note here at Datto's Cabin.
Hey, in my head I am excellent.
Datto
By the way, I am the AT thru-hiker who carried a pound of tax paperwork for more than 700 miles on my northbound AT thru-hike because I really didn't want to have to deal with an IRS problem. Finally I'd gotten the nerve to open up the papers and decipher what it was all about while in Virginia.
It was the comedy of the day in the Shelter. My compatriots telling me as soon as they caught Eric Rudolph, they were coming down the Trail for me. Nothing like a great support team to urge you on.
Turned out to be no big deal.
Made for an interesting day though.
Datto
Speaking of face-planting...
One day on the PCT I was hiking with Pearson in the state of Washington.
Pearson wanted to stop for lunch so I took my pack off and got out the cookpot. Pearson said the mountain goats were supposed to be just down the trail a ways so we should pick up and go down and lunch with the mountain goats.
Okay, so I just grabbed everything and lumped it into the top of my backpack without closing my backpack -- the goats were just down the trail about 0.5 so I figured we'd just be a short ways before we'd be starting lunch again.
Pearson is up ahead of me when I tripped and started one of those cart-wheeling type face plants toward the dirt. I was just about horizontal when the cookpot careened out of the top of my backpack and landed, just in time, onto the rock where my face was headed. I slammed into the bottom of the cookpot with my face and, fortunately, didn't hit the rock.
Pearson heard all the clanging from the cookpot and ran back to see what had happened.
I stood back up quickly (ah, so no one saw me face-plant again?) and Pearson said to me, "What happened to your face?!"
I said, "I don't know. I hit the cookpot.
Pearson said, "Your face is all black."
Well yes, those Esbit tablets were blackening the bottom of the cookpot where I had slammed my cheek into the bottom of the cookpot.
We proceeded down to where the mountain goats were located. Must have taken my a half and hour during lunch to get most of that black off the side of my face.
Good thing I hadnt dented the rock.
Datto
Do you know why I liked meeting up with Blister Sister a few times on my AT thru-hike?
Blister Sister knew how to have fun.
That was really the case of almost everyone who was a northbounder by mid-Virginia, but no more so than Blister Sister.
One of my first encounters with Blister Sister was after she and a group of other hikers had dressed up a farm goat with women's panties. The goat was either staked to Baltimore Jack's tent or put completely inside his tent as a surprise (can't remember which). Baltimore Jack wasn't around his tent at that time. Then the rest of the story was portrayed verbally by Blister Sister after Baltimore Jack had returned to his tent. This to us other AT thru-hikers in the shelter that particular day when it was raining cats and dogs just a few feet away. Blister Sister was laughing telling us the story and all the rest of us AT thru-hikers were laughing out loud too.
At the shelter where I'd heard that story, Blister Sister also had whipped out some photos of a hiker standing inside a dumpster holding a found-dead woodchuck to the camera lens as if that dead woodchuck was Lambchop the puppet. I'd busted out laughing -- it was from a series of photos Blister Sister had recently gotten developed at a one-hour shop in the last town.
Blister Sister had bought a Cherry Cheesecake mix in town and was in the middle of creating a masterpiece, complete with the necessary cooling of the cheesecake by floating the pie pan in a nearby stream when the rain outside the shelter had let up for a while.
Man did that taste good in that shelter. I can tell you this -- every single AT thru-hiker in the shelter that day could have easily, no problem at all, eaten the entire cheesecake themselves. We were all so glad Blister Sister had shared.
On the approach to Harpers Ferry, WV Blister Sister made sure everyone knew where there was going to be 50 cent mugs of beer and the time of day the beer would be available at a particular bar in Harpers Ferry, how to get to the bar, what else was nearby, a veritable travel agent for the rest of us hiking in the "blistering" heat of northern Virginia. None of us would have gone 0.4 off-trail for water but for 50 cent beer, we would go 2.1 by hanging a left where the AT crossed the main drag of Harpers Ferry. Good time talking with Blister Sister at that bar and the rest of the AT thru-hikers who would arrive, sometimes out of breath from cranking out hurried miles to get to the bar during the timeframe when the cheap beer was available. I remember the look on that bartender's face -- "How did this many people arrive here all of a sudden?"
Sitting next to Blister Sister at the bar I had been amazed at having hiked a thousand miles -- it seemed to have transpired so quickly. Wasn't I just at Springer Mountain?
Good company, good music, good beer that day. For an AT thru-hiker I don't know if it gets much better than that in town when you're celebrating the 1,000 mile mark.
During that particular time on my northbound AT thru-hike I would take to finding a shelter around the time of 11:30am and camp out in that shelter until 5:00pm. This to avoid the delirium of trying to make miles during the oppressive heat of the day.
One day I had shown up to the designated shelter at 11:30am and had started my camp-out to wait out the heat of the day.
Blister Sister would show up a few minutes later and while lunch was being cooked, Blister Sister would try to rescue a huge snake that had gotten itself trapped in the rafters of the shelter. That huge black snake had squeezed between the top of the rafters and the plywood sheathing above -- this to surprise a bat hanging upside down from the rafters. Upon inspection, the outline of the bat and it's folded wings could be seen in the bulge of the snake body.
Unfortunately for the snake, the bulge was too big to allow the snake to back-out from where it had performed the attack on the bat. The snake was likely going to die from not being able to get out of the rafters after the attack, particularly in the heat of that day.
Blister Sister assessed the situation while lunch was cooking -- grabbed the head of the snake on the front side of the place where the snake had squeeze above the rafters. Then grabbed the back body of the snake and inched the snake forward to get the snake out of the predicament. Then put the huge snake back up into the underside boards of the front of the roof so the snake could go about it's merry way when it got around to figuring out what had just happened.
Then it was lunchtime out at the picnic table at the front of the shelter.
When I'd arrived at The Secret Shack later on up the Trail, I was glad to have encountered Blister Sister again. The Secret Shack had pens where donkeys were grazing. While Blister Sister and I were at the fence looking at the donkeys, I'd mentioned to Blister Sister we should hop up on the donkeys so we could tell people we had ass-blazed the Appalachian Trail. That got a laugh out of Blister Sister.
After a while, everyone was telling stories about their thru-hike so I told the group about my bear encounter from yesterday morning. Jim, the owner of The Secret Shack had asked how big the bear was and I told him it was bigger than Barry White - probably at least 350 lbs.
Jim wasn't familiar with Barry White so I sang a few bars of Barry White's most famous song [including associated choreography].
"Darlin' I...can't get enough of your love Baby."
Jim, Wahoo and Blister Sister sat there smiling at me.
I said, "Wow, I guess I've never done an impersonation of Barry White before."
Blister Sister chimed in, "You still haven't."
Badda Bing! Tough crowd here at The Secret Shack tonight.
Datto
jimmyjam
06-04-2016, 19:19
I've eaten a lot of stuff out of hiker boxes ( and left a few things for others) and never gotten sick. I think somebody's got typearria= lotta spoutin off at the mouth going on.
I've eaten a lot of stuff out of hiker boxes ( and left a few things for others) and never gotten sick. I think somebody's got typearria= lotta spoutin off at the mouth going on.
I have seen, I'm wild guessing, about 100 hiker boxes -- here in the mainland US and in other countries. The hiker boxes for trails in mainland US (including the AT) were easily the nastiest. Never would I suggest anyone eat someone's unknown discards from a hiker box on the AT, particularly people who have lots to lose who have invested in thru-hiking the AT.
If you are a prospective AT thru-hiker for 2017, you have a almost a year to get your financials in order so you don't get yourself into a position where you're considering doing something as stupid as eating discards out of a hiker box on the AT. Or anywhere for that matter.
Datto
Ohio Chris
06-04-2016, 21:02
Enjoying the read Datto, thanks!
I hope to be in the class of '17
JumpMaster Blaster
06-05-2016, 21:10
On another thread here on Whiteblaze is the idea that one would take a Spot device or a Sat Phone when going into the woods -- this, for the current thread, because a hiker named Inchworm got herself lost in Maine on a bathroom break from the AT and eventually died from starvation and dehydration because she couldn't find her way back to the AT from her bathroom break.
What a crazy stupid idea. Just because ONE person got lost that doesn't mean you will get lost. There are thousands of people like Inchworm who work in big companies who can't find their way to the bathrooms and can barely get out of bed without injuring themselves. Those people don't go into the woods and they don't leave the safety of Society ever. They know they're clueless so they adjust and keep close to whatever makes them feel safe.
To take Inchworm's situation as a recommendation to get a Spot device or a Sat Phone is ridiculous -- that will just mess up your AT thru-hike with no value added back. Besides, it's just a bunch of extra weight and you can't eat a Spot device. A Sat Phone -- geez, just take another fistful of cash laying on the front seat of your car, drive down the highway, throw the fistfuls of cash out the window and go back to work on Monday. Forget about the Appalachian Trail -- just go back to work on Monday and do whatever the pointy-haired manager tells you to do every day of your life so you don't ever take any possible risk that you might get a mark.
The Appalachian Trail is one of the most well-marked trails in the world. The chances of YOU getting lost for days because you went off trail to do your bathroom business is so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. There is much more likelyhood you will be struck by lightning while wading in a lake holding a steel bar to the sky blasfeming God while hiking the Appalachian Trail than there will ever be that you got lost for days on-end after taking a dump.
Don't bring Society with you via a Spot or (most laughable) a Sat Phone on your AT thru-hike. It is a Trojan Horse that will mess you up in the head.
Datto
Okay, here's where I part opinions with you Datto. Giving advice is one thing, but completely discouraging someone from bringing a device like this is another. If Inchworm had brought her Spot with her, maybe she'd still be here. There's a fine line between offering sage advice and mocking/belittling someone who wants to be safe, especially with a potentially lifesaving device such as this. A lot of successful thru hikers took Spot devices with them. A lot didn't. Is there a correlation? I think not. But if you're in a position where newer, more inexperienced hikers may be hanging on to your every word, understand that 1-technology has come a long way, and 2- not everyone's situation is the same. Maybe it was okay for YOU to hike in 40 degree weather in shorts and a t-shirt, but that may not be okay for someone else. I've read many a journal of hikers who started in March and wished they'd brough some kind of traction device (ie Katoolah miscrospikes).
What is discouraging about WB is the preponderance of "hike MY hike". Wear this, don't wear that. Or, "I'm a warm sleeper, you don't need this, only take that". What may work for one person doesn't work for another. That's why there is so many different backpacks/tents/sleeping bags, etc on the market.
You posts have been interesting to read, but like many things here on WB, have a tendency to morph into "do it my way or else face failure". There's more than one way to skin a cat, as I'm sure there's more than one way to hike the AT.
On another thread here on Whiteblaze is the idea that one would take a Spot device or a Sat Phone when going into the woods -- this, for the current thread, because a hiker named Inchworm got herself lost in Maine on a bathroom break from the AT and eventually died from starvation and dehydration because she couldn't find her way back to the AT from her bathroom break.
What a crazy stupid idea. Just because ONE person got lost that doesn't mean you will get lost. There are thousands of people like Inchworm who work in big companies who can't find their way to the bathrooms and can barely get out of bed without injuring themselves. Those people don't go into the woods and they don't leave the safety of Society ever. They know they're clueless so they adjust and keep close to whatever makes them feel safe.
To take Inchworm's situation as a recommendation to get a Spot device or a Sat Phone is ridiculous -- that will just mess up your AT thru-hike with no value added back. Besides, it's just a bunch of extra weight and you can't eat a Spot device. A Sat Phone -- geez, just take another fistful of cash laying on the front seat of your car, drive down the highway, throw the fistfuls of cash out the window and go back to work on Monday. Forget about the Appalachian Trail -- just go back to work on Monday and do whatever the pointy-haired manager tells you to do every day of your life so you don't ever take any possible risk that you might get a mark.
Datto
What a pompous azz.
What a pompous azz.
Thanks for making me aware -- I had no idea. I shall purposely strive toward improvement so my extended family no longer feels shame.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack for usability, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to successively spend monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
No one has to agree with me. Heck, that's what the success of the Internet is all about. Prospective AT thru-hikers can make up their own mind.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes, for usability. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to spend repetitive monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
On my AT thru-hike, the AT miles before that and AT miles since, I've seen enough cast iron skillets and hatchets to choke a small blast furnace -- quite of few of those being carried by people claiming to be AT thru-hikers.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes, for usability. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to spend repetitive monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
On my AT thru-hike, the AT miles before that and AT miles since, I've seen enough cast iron skillets and hatchets to choke a small blast furnace -- quite of few of those being carried by people claiming to be AT thru-hikers.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes, for usability. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to spend repetitive monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
On my AT thru-hike, the AT miles before that and AT miles since, I've seen enough cast iron skillets and hatchets to choke a small blast furnace -- quite of few of those being carried by people claiming to be AT thru-hikers.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes, for usability. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to spend repetitive monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
On my AT thru-hike, the AT miles before that and AT miles since, I've seen enough cast iron skillets and hatchets to choke a small blast furnace -- quite of few of those being carried by people claiming to be AT thru-hikers.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
I didn't write about the Spot device to be necessarily sensitive nor politically correct. it wasn't meant for Franciscan Monks nor Marjorie cutting hair down the road at Salon 64.
It was directed specifically and pointedly at prospective 2017 AT thru-hikers in-planning so they have an acute awareness of why it is important to inspect everything in their backpack, particularly on their pre-hike prep hikes, for usability. It's also for those on a tight budget who don't have the resources to spend repetitive monies on items in their backpack that have little use for a thru-hiker. All this to avoid 150 thru-hikers showing up to Springer Mountain next year with snake bite kits, cast iron skillets, an axe and radiator hose clamps. There is a relatively known weather window for a northbound AT thru-hike so you don't want to be the thru-hikers in Georgia saying aloud to themselves after the first few days, "I'm only making three miles per day and I don't know why."
On my AT thru-hike, the AT miles before that and AT miles since, I've seen enough cast iron skillets and hatchets to choke a small blast furnace -- quite of few of those being carried by people claiming to be AT thru-hikers.
As I was preparing to head to Springer Mountain, GA to start my AT thru-hike I had to do my exit interview at the Fortune 1000 company where I had worked for the previous five years. I was surprised to find my exit interview was being handled by a Big Shot in the company -- an Executive VP as I remember -- the guy who was the head of Human Resources.
I'd arrived at the guy's office and the appointed time, shook his hand and took a seat on the sofa in his office. He sat behind his desk and in the next five minutes, we concluded all the necessary questions and paperwork needing to be transpired during an exit interview. The guy then said to me, "I hear you're going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail?"
I said yes, I was heading there in a few days.
He said back to me, "What kind of skis are you taking?"
The windmills in my head were going round and round thinking, skis...skis. I was trying to figure out whether this was a joke and if he was pulling my leg.
I was caught so off-guard I didn't know what to say so I finally said back to him, "I wasn't planning on taking skis."
He said right away "Of course you are" and turns back to the credenza behind his desk to retrieve a stack of ski equipment magazines. I was then told about all the types of skis there were on the market and which type might be most appropriate for the Appalachian Trail.
I listened to him while saying to myself, "He's serious" and how I was going to lose the remainder of the hour-long time in my life to hear about AT ski equipment. I really didn't want to lose that time but I didn't want to make a bad impression with the guy.
The night before, at his house for my benefit, he had retrieved the ski magazines he'd kept for the past year and had gone through each of the magazines in order to circle the ski equipment I might need.
I really do appreciate it when individuals take the time to go out of their way to help others so I'd decided to play along. When he showed me a catalog page where he had come to the conclusion on what ski equipment would be good for me, I said to him, "So you think that's the one. The right model?"
He said, "Oh yes. These would be the right skis for the Appalachian Trail."
I told him, "Okay, I'll look into those".
Then he turned back to his credenza again and retrieved another stack of magazines -- these being the ones from LL Bean.
Oh no.
That very nice HR Big Shot had also gone ahead, on my behalf, and had sorted through all the gear and clothing in the LL Bean catalogs he'd had on-hand at his house and had circled with a wide felt-tipped marker the right parka I would need for the Appalachian Trail.
it was something fitting for a climb of Everest. The magazine page showing a guy wearing that parka with a big smile on his face. That parka alone must have tallied in, I am guessing, at more than seven pounds and well, with the skis I'd be all set. All-in-all, the weight from the LL Bean recommendations from the HR Guy would have left me no room for food in my backpack.
I said I'd look into those suggestion too.
Finally the meeting came to a close and he was kind enough to neatly tear out all the ski and LL Bean pages from the magazines so I could take them with me when I went home from my last day of work before heading to the AT.
On the way out to my car I'd said aloud something to the effect of, "Another fine day in Corporate America coming to a close."
So I get to Springer Mountain a few days later and start my AT thru-hike the next day. It's a very nice day, weather-wise, to start an adventure. On the second day from Springer Mountain I'd stopped at a shelter near the AT treadway to take a break. Another hiker was already there and I said hello and we did mutual introductions. The other hiker was just finishing eating something from his cookpot and getting packed up so I retrieved a package of gorp type mix from my backpack and started eating. The rush to get to Springer Mountain and the entirety of the adventure had started to sink in. I was looking at the cellophane package of gorp, reading the text on the package, actually thinking of something else when a small advertisement in the corner of the gorp package read, "Win A Ski Trip Instantly".
The other hiker became concerned when I was just about falling down with laughter. To him the laughter came all of a sudden without reason. I was trying to catch my breath to explain to the other hiker why I was laughing but I never reached a level of communication before that other guy hiked out. He'd probably thought I was some kind of lunatic.
I kept that gorp package and sent it back home with other needless items somewhere uptrail. I saw that empty gorp package a year or two ago and it had cracked me up then too -- it's now with other hiking mementos in my Lucky Box (I think) in one of the storage units down the road from my cabin.
Datto
That post directly above is apparently from my other four personalities. Lots of talking to myself when I'm hiking.
Datto
Another Kevin
06-07-2016, 18:47
That post directly above is apparently from my other four personalities. Lots of talking to myself when I'm hiking.
I do that all the time, because sometimes I need expert advice. :)
OldNorth
06-07-2016, 18:52
Thanks for writing this up, I really enjoyed reading it.
That post directly above is apparently from my other four personalities. Lots of talking to myself when I'm hiking.
Datto
One of the nice benefits of being a donating member is the ability to edit one's posts. Nice to pay my own way, too, rather than, you know, grazing for free out of an internet hiker box, so to speak.
One of the nice benefits of being a donating member is the ability to edit one's posts. Nice to pay my own way, too, rather than, you know, grazing for free out of an internet hiker box, so to speak.
Yes. I know about that editing capability (and the other handy features). I've been a donating member on WB in the past having first posted relevant information and personalily helping AT hikers on WB well more than a year before you joined. In more recent years I've had to take the annual money I would have used to remain a donating member in order to buy my flak jacket.
Grazing? Don't be silly.
Datto