SavageLlama
09-24-2004, 10:33
TRAIL OF FOUR CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
By JUDI TULL
September 23, 2004
Daily Press (http://javascript<b></b>:NewWindow(%20'FIISrcDetails','?from=article&ids=dail');void(0);) (Virginia)
A promise to hike the A-Trail creates memories for a lifetime
Ten years ago, Max Brown, Lonnie Johnson, Charlie Thomas and Adam Bliss overheard one of their Boy Scout leaders talking about how he had walked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. To 13-year- old boys who had already hiked small portions of what's called the "A- Trail," that sounded like something to plan on. They made a promise: when they graduated from college, they'd take time off and do it.
They did.
Max and Charlie graduated from Old Dominion University in December; Adam graduated from Virginia Tech at the same time. Although Lonnie was still attending ODU, he took a year off.
In March, their families took them down to Springer Mountain, Ga., and drove away.
"That's when we knew it was real serious," Charlie said.
Serious, indeed. These four young men, who have been friends since their grade-school days at Seaford Elementary, had packs on their backs and nowhere to go but north. Way north. More than 2,000 miles ahead of them.
On their first day, they walked 8 or 9 miles.
They groan -- "Sore!" "Kicked!" -- when they remember their first morning waking up on the trail.
"My knees felt like they would give out," Lonnie said.
Eventually, it got better. They walked in spite of their pain and increased their speed. After a thousand miles or so, they were making 10 to 15 miles a day and hardly felt it.
The weather was moderate when they left Georgia, but when they hit western North Carolina the temperatures plummeted into the teens.
When they ran into a fellow hiker with a weather radio and found out single-digit temperatures were expected, they found a road and hitchhiked into the nearest town to spend one of their few nights in a motel.
Hitchhiking is a common practice near the trail, with locals accustomed to the annual onslaught of hikers and willing to give them a ride. On one condition:
"They made us ride in the back of the pick-up trucks because of how badly we stunk," Lonnie said.
A-Trail hikers traditionally take on trail names. Max was "Big Foot," Lonnie was "Dart," Charlie was "Junior" and Adam was "Ward." Together, the four were dubbed "The Rat Pack" by fellow hikers, who often doubted the four would complete the trail together, they said.
They picked and ate blueberries as big as marbles on mountaintops; they slept in an old jail house in Pennsylvania; they survived seven days of solid rain in Vermont and agreed that the White Mountains of New Hampshire were both the most visually awesome part of the trip as well as the most difficult to climb.
From time to time, they got on each other's nerves, but learned to walk away to give things time to simmer down, as old friends often do.
They took part in some A-Trail traditions. At the true halfway point in Pine Grove Furnace, Pa., they joined the "Half Gallon Club" when they paid $5 apiece for a half-gallon of ice cream that they ate in one sitting.
At White House Landing in Maine, they blew an air horn hanging on a tree beside a lake. Just as the guidebook had said, the man who lives in the house on the other side paddled across the lake in a canoe to pick them up and took them to his house where his wife cooked full 1-pound cheeseburgers for them at $6 apiece and sold them foot-wide brownies for a buck.
By the time they hit New England, they were covering upwards of 20 miles a day. As they neared the end point at Mt. Katahdin, Maine, they were in the most remote wilderness of the trip.
They couldn't hear a car; they camped by streams; they tolerated the rains of Hurricane Charley and forded the swollen Kennebec River in a canoe ferry.
When they got to Baxter State Park, their parents and girlfriends were waiting for them. But they had 10 more miles before they got to the top of Mt. Katahdin, which they walked the next day, 157 days after they had set out.
It took them some time to settle back in to non-trail life.
"It's so much easier to be out there," Lonnie said.
"Time slows down on the trail," said Max.
No regrets, triumph only.
"Every day it was something new," Adam said. "It was definitely worth the pain."
"In the end," Lonnie said, "no matter what you endure, it's worth it."
"People kept saying we wouldn't make it," Max said. "But we did."
And they came back friends.
APPALACHIAN TRAIL INFORMATION
* The Appalachian Trail is 2,174.1 miles long and runs through 14 states: Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine.
* Types of hikers: Through-hikers do the entire trail in one attempt; flip-flop hikers do portions of it at a time, but complete it within a year; section hikers do portions over an extended period of time
* 7,830 hike completions since 1936 (includes through-hikers and those who have completed it in sections over a period of time)
* Oldest male through-hiker: Earl Shaffer at age 79
* Oldest female thru-hiker: Emma Gatewood at age 67
* Starts in 2004: 1,535
* Completions: 50 (as of Sept. 3, 2004)
* No formal registration is required. These numbers are based on hikers voluntarily signing in at Neels Gap, Ga., 30 miles above the starting point at Springer Mountain, Ga., and then reporting their completion.
Information courtesy of The Appalachian Trail Conference *
By JUDI TULL
September 23, 2004
Daily Press (http://javascript<b></b>:NewWindow(%20'FIISrcDetails','?from=article&ids=dail');void(0);) (Virginia)
A promise to hike the A-Trail creates memories for a lifetime
Ten years ago, Max Brown, Lonnie Johnson, Charlie Thomas and Adam Bliss overheard one of their Boy Scout leaders talking about how he had walked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. To 13-year- old boys who had already hiked small portions of what's called the "A- Trail," that sounded like something to plan on. They made a promise: when they graduated from college, they'd take time off and do it.
They did.
Max and Charlie graduated from Old Dominion University in December; Adam graduated from Virginia Tech at the same time. Although Lonnie was still attending ODU, he took a year off.
In March, their families took them down to Springer Mountain, Ga., and drove away.
"That's when we knew it was real serious," Charlie said.
Serious, indeed. These four young men, who have been friends since their grade-school days at Seaford Elementary, had packs on their backs and nowhere to go but north. Way north. More than 2,000 miles ahead of them.
On their first day, they walked 8 or 9 miles.
They groan -- "Sore!" "Kicked!" -- when they remember their first morning waking up on the trail.
"My knees felt like they would give out," Lonnie said.
Eventually, it got better. They walked in spite of their pain and increased their speed. After a thousand miles or so, they were making 10 to 15 miles a day and hardly felt it.
The weather was moderate when they left Georgia, but when they hit western North Carolina the temperatures plummeted into the teens.
When they ran into a fellow hiker with a weather radio and found out single-digit temperatures were expected, they found a road and hitchhiked into the nearest town to spend one of their few nights in a motel.
Hitchhiking is a common practice near the trail, with locals accustomed to the annual onslaught of hikers and willing to give them a ride. On one condition:
"They made us ride in the back of the pick-up trucks because of how badly we stunk," Lonnie said.
A-Trail hikers traditionally take on trail names. Max was "Big Foot," Lonnie was "Dart," Charlie was "Junior" and Adam was "Ward." Together, the four were dubbed "The Rat Pack" by fellow hikers, who often doubted the four would complete the trail together, they said.
They picked and ate blueberries as big as marbles on mountaintops; they slept in an old jail house in Pennsylvania; they survived seven days of solid rain in Vermont and agreed that the White Mountains of New Hampshire were both the most visually awesome part of the trip as well as the most difficult to climb.
From time to time, they got on each other's nerves, but learned to walk away to give things time to simmer down, as old friends often do.
They took part in some A-Trail traditions. At the true halfway point in Pine Grove Furnace, Pa., they joined the "Half Gallon Club" when they paid $5 apiece for a half-gallon of ice cream that they ate in one sitting.
At White House Landing in Maine, they blew an air horn hanging on a tree beside a lake. Just as the guidebook had said, the man who lives in the house on the other side paddled across the lake in a canoe to pick them up and took them to his house where his wife cooked full 1-pound cheeseburgers for them at $6 apiece and sold them foot-wide brownies for a buck.
By the time they hit New England, they were covering upwards of 20 miles a day. As they neared the end point at Mt. Katahdin, Maine, they were in the most remote wilderness of the trip.
They couldn't hear a car; they camped by streams; they tolerated the rains of Hurricane Charley and forded the swollen Kennebec River in a canoe ferry.
When they got to Baxter State Park, their parents and girlfriends were waiting for them. But they had 10 more miles before they got to the top of Mt. Katahdin, which they walked the next day, 157 days after they had set out.
It took them some time to settle back in to non-trail life.
"It's so much easier to be out there," Lonnie said.
"Time slows down on the trail," said Max.
No regrets, triumph only.
"Every day it was something new," Adam said. "It was definitely worth the pain."
"In the end," Lonnie said, "no matter what you endure, it's worth it."
"People kept saying we wouldn't make it," Max said. "But we did."
And they came back friends.
APPALACHIAN TRAIL INFORMATION
* The Appalachian Trail is 2,174.1 miles long and runs through 14 states: Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine.
* Types of hikers: Through-hikers do the entire trail in one attempt; flip-flop hikers do portions of it at a time, but complete it within a year; section hikers do portions over an extended period of time
* 7,830 hike completions since 1936 (includes through-hikers and those who have completed it in sections over a period of time)
* Oldest male through-hiker: Earl Shaffer at age 79
* Oldest female thru-hiker: Emma Gatewood at age 67
* Starts in 2004: 1,535
* Completions: 50 (as of Sept. 3, 2004)
* No formal registration is required. These numbers are based on hikers voluntarily signing in at Neels Gap, Ga., 30 miles above the starting point at Springer Mountain, Ga., and then reporting their completion.
Information courtesy of The Appalachian Trail Conference *