View Full Version : Comparison of initial and repeat at thru hikes
My thru hike in 2011 was a wonderful experience the likes of which I will never forget. Since then I have toyed with the idea of trying the PCT but somehow the desert and early entrance into the High Sierras don't set well with me. So Im thinking what's wrong with doing the AT again???!? Oh its bound to be easier since Ive done it but would I get the same high from it??? Of those of you out there that have thru hiked more than once how would you compare the 2 journeys and the feeling you took home from each of them. Is something lost in the repeat thru hike??!? Im curious.
Slo-go'en
04-05-2013, 01:12
Nothing wrong with doing the AT again - and again - and again... The AT is addictive and hard to let go of. However, doing a long section hike on the PCT or CDT is well worth the effort while you still can.
cliffordbarnabus
04-05-2013, 01:12
completely different....just like if you'd started your first thru a day later...or even an hour earlier. everything is constantly changing...
that said, the pct is also one helluva sweet walk
Mountain Mike
04-05-2013, 02:31
There are part of the AT I have gone back to several times. Different weather, people, etc. I highly reccomend the PCT. I kinda doubt I will ever do another thru hike again other than AT because it often forces a traverse of some sections of trail in less than their prime & need to make miles vs the freedom of stopping at a beautiful spot take more precedence in my life. When I attempted my thru of PCT bad snow year made me skip around the Sierras. Two years later I went back in late summer & it was one of the greatest hikes I did. No raging fords, limited bugs..when I didn't think it could get any better It just kept amazing me.
Maybe try hiking in the opposite direction?
Lone Wolf
04-05-2013, 06:19
Maybe try hiking in the opposite direction?
i did that. i liked it better
My thru hike in 2011 was a wonderful experience the likes of which I will never forget. Since then I have toyed with the idea of trying the PCT but somehow the desert and early entrance into the High Sierras don't set well with me. So Im thinking what's wrong with doing the AT again???!? Oh its bound to be easier since Ive done it but would I get the same high from it??? Of those of you out there that have thru hiked more than once how would you compare the 2 journeys and the feeling you took home from each of them. Is something lost in the repeat thru hike??!? Im curious.
The misery of the "desert" is highly exaggerated. And you can control when you hit the Sierra and also with a bit of flexibility the year you do it. There is I much variation year to year with the snow that wouldn't know reading trail journals that they are the same trail. Having said that, if it is more comfortable to hike the AT and that meets your desires then do it again.
I had the goal of hiking the AT - did that. Now I want to hike the PCT. After that I bet I want to hike the CDT.....
So many trails, so much to see - I wouldn't want to start watching reruns until I ran out of ones I hadn't see yet.
Ive had the same feeling about the rerun part of it that's why Ive considered the PCT. I hiked the JMT a few years ago and was awestruck by the beauty of it. I had a great time trout fishing up there and the weather was perfect. But that was September and I don't see the wisdom in repeating it in June with the conditions at that altitude.
The thing about the AT for me is that it isn't really challenging. It's more just walking down a mostly well maintained path popping into town every few days, rinse, repeat. Don't get me wrong - it's a heck of an accomplishment and well worth doing and all that.
I don't want to parachute into Siberia and bushwhack my way to Moscow but I like more of a challenge.
A big part of the reason I hike is the part where you have to figure out what to do next. Walking is just walking.
Edited to add: Hiking the Sheltowee Trace trail last month in the opposite direction of the guidebook written for it with paper maps that self-destructed when they got wet was awesome. I bitched about the blazing (or lack of) almost every day but it kept me on my toes and made for a great experience.
garlic08
04-05-2013, 09:40
The hiking partner I met on the PCT, my first long hike, had hiked the AT earlier. We went on to hike the CDT together, then he decided to re-hike the AT with me. We had shared a lot of miles and experiences together, and it was fun to watch his re-hike of the AT. And he enjoyed watching my first impressions, and me falling in love with the AT. His first AT hike was as a novice, his second was as a very seasoned veteran of long trails. Completely different hikes, he reported. His viewpoint was altered by the other hikes, and by my presence, so it's a different scenario.
I don't think I'd hike the AT again unless I could accompany someone like my friend did for me. And I'd recommend a different experience for your next hike, too.
My next hike although not a long thru hike like the AT and PCT will be the SHT. It falls into the same category as the vacation hikes Ive done before retiring: the LT(NOBO & SOBO), WT, Sheltowee Trace, Isle Royale, and JMT. The Superior Hiking Trail Ive heard is the best trail between the AT and the Continental Divide. But being retired and before I get too old Id like to do another long one. That gets me going like a section hike or 3 week thru hike on a shorter trail doesn't. The exception to this was the LT-- that was a toughie. So I think I could manage So. Cal's desert. Then maybe skip up to N. Cal or Oregon with the intention of finishing in Manning Park after going back to do the High Sierras when the fords die back. This should have been the year since snowpack is 80% normal.
I think doing a second AT thru-hike would be almost exciting the second time as the first. I have thru-hiked and frequently have returned to the AT as a section hiker. I found it exciting to revisit places I remembered the first time around. It amazed the details that I remembered. A lot seemed the same except for the folks that I met the first time.
I have a friend in our local hiking club who is section hiking the AT. Every spring and fall he returns to where he left off to knock out another 100+ mile chunk. I have accompanied him several times to VA. both before and after my own thru hike in 2011. This was a great learning experience for me before 2011 and a bit of Deja Vu after 2011. It brought back memories of what I was thinking back then, who I was bumping into on the trail and what I anticipated up ahead.
To be honest, I don't think I could have a better experience that I'd had on my AT thru-hike. It was simply the best time, the best people I could have ever have imagined to have joined up with on such a quest.
I've had the very fortunate experience to have seen first hand, in other circumstances, when the sum of the parts are exceeded greatly. It's just the most amazing of experiences to reflect back on. To have seen this then again on my AT thru-hike, even with everyone on their own pursing their dream -- but still having the accumulation of everyone together -- each capitalizing on the group experience -- separated to some extent though -- to move themselves forward. It wasn't just my own dogged determination that got me to Katahdin. It was the great laughter of hiking with Godfather and Riddler, and the determination of Rainbow and Superman and Moxie and Bear -- to have been blown over on my side while trying to get a photograph with Chief on Mt. Washington in the 72mph winds. Or meeting up again with Excellent Good Half Moon in Monson (who had the most ugly of injuries way back in Georgia -- I couldn't even look at his injury it was so ugly -- but yet he had persisted northward). And seeing pretty Fungal, with great personal injury and discomfort -- enough so that grown men could not look at her injuries -- continue and relentlessly push forward toward Katahdin with her smile and personality without regard to pain that most would have called it over.
You just don't have many opportunities in your short life to run into people in the world where you admire them for their determination and persistence and discipline and striving to succeed regardless of obstacles. Heck, most of them just didn't know they were doing something out of the ordinary -- it was just their way of taking on the quest. Being absorbed in it all.
That is the part that it's hard to believe I would ever be able to have the experience again.
By the way, the desert in a "hot year" on the PCT was the most difficult thing I've every done. I still think about the 4:30am waking up to beat the heat of the morning in the conclave of bushes The Andersons had built for PCT thru-hikers -- complete with Halloween skeleton dangling off the bushes above the ice chest. It was the closest I'd ever come to thinking it was The Ritz -- the ice chest that is. It is something to be able to reach Kennedy Meadows and having come through the desert of the PCT during a hot year. Nothing to underestimate, that's for sure.
As far as the Sierra on the PCT -- I'd chosen specifically to pursue it on a low snow year and that was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Not that it was easy but it sure gives you great admiration for those who had come through the Sierra during a high or even a normal snow year. If you look at the photos in the PCT Handbook where people are crossing Forrester Pass in a blizzard -- that's your wake up call that severe bad things can happen awfully quick on the PCT. Much more so than on the AT (Ha, even with all the weather related challenges I'd had on my AT thru-hike).
On the CDT -- I don't think most hikers realize how difficult, dangerous and beautiful things can get.
Datto
By the way, the desert in a "hot year" on the PCT was the most difficult thing I've every done.
"Well asking around, seemed everyone said to talk to this Karen woman. Best tell everyone said she'd clean hiked every name brand trail in the entire country. Written a bunch of books about it too. If anyone would know, this Karen woman would be the one to clue us in on the details we might be a missin'.
To tell the truth, now and again I got the idea Tony and I would be finding some kind of gold treasure out in the desert hills that no one, yes everyone, had ignored all the time hiking past this golden treasure. Just sittin' ready to jump out and be discovered by two Hoosier hikers passing by, Tony and me, wandering about that shiny stuff over there in the scruff brush prior to becoming instant millionaires. Robin Leach interviewing us later saying, "They discovered caviar treasure on a desert hiking trip, I don't know why."
So, being the modern day man that I aim to be, I loaded up my email program and sent off a request for answers to my most pressing questions to this Karen woman. You know, I figured her being a famous hiker and all it might'n be a week or more before I'd heard back with answers. Busy and such with hiking and writing books and all.
She answered me right away. Same day as a matter of fact. Can you believe it? What a stroke of luck. This whole darn Internet thing is downright amazing. It's gonna be big. You find some expert and they give you the skinny right away. You can't even get that at the downtown library.
Well to be honest, when I got the answers from her, this Karen woman, they weren't quite the answers I was expecting. She started talkin' about the overwhelming heat and the lack of water and how much water weighed and such. How the sand from the desert gets into everything and when you grit your teeth you really are grittin' teeth. Didn't mention a thing about Mai Tais or Long Island Iced Teas.
Hey, did you know how much water weighs? Woo boy, what a load that would be. She started talkin' about some kind of water amount in liters and well, at the time I had to get out a measuring stick and convert it to Farenheit to get some semblance of what in the world she was talkin' about.
Eight liters of water. That would be, let's see, carry the two…somewheres around a whoppin' sixteen pounds Farenheit. Just for the water part of the equation.
See, Tony and I had this fish scale – digital mind you – we don't fool around when it comes to catching world class fish like we do -- showed us just how much our backpacks were gonna weigh without the water. I did a test run around the neighborhood, Frank next door sittin' with his hound dog on his front patio wondering what in thee world I was doing traipsing up and down the sidewalk wearing that backpack.
Maybe this wasn't going to be such a laid back trip after all. Just an inkling of it mind you. Well, bein' if this Karen woman was right about how far it was between when we were gonna find water and when we were gonna be needin' it."
Datto
Nothing says that you have to hike the WHOLE AT again. Hike the spots that you want to see again--or go back and hike those spots where (on your previous hike) weather, schedules, or other things kept you from enjoying them the way you would have liked. Blue blaze. Skip the boring and not-so-interesting sections. Focus--not on hiking the whole AT--but on enjoying the heck out of the sections you would revisit
However, if you liked hiking the AT--imagine how enjoyable hiking someplace totally new could be (now that you have long-distance hiking experience under you belt).
Hiking the PCT in 2008 I ran into a fellow thru-hiker a couple of times who had hiked it (the PCT) the year before, 2007. Said he had thought to hike the CDT in 2008 but as the time to start got close he realized he didn't have time to plan it out, so he decided to just hike the PCT a second time (side note: he and I camped together on the CDT in 2011 --- I was hiking south, he was hiking north and he just came up to my tent after I had already pitched it. Thru-hiking can be a small-world ...).
Anyway, I asked him about his experience at thru-hiking the same trail two years in a row. He told me it was completely different. Different people, different weather at spots along the way, different animal encounters, he wasn't at all jaded about seeing it all again the very next year.
I don't think that would be my cup of tea, but it clearly works for at least some people.
I personally incline the way 10-k and prain4u suggest --- there are so many trails yet that I haven't set foot on. I could consider some repeat hiking after I've further whittled down the list of places I've never been. Yet another aspect of HYOH !
To me, there is so much to do, to see and experience that I would not be inclined to hike any trail I have done before. (The exceptions are section hiking the CDT and maybe a fall hike of the LT. )
But, that is me. Something to be said for revisiting some place you know and cherish, too. :)
stumpknocker
04-07-2013, 15:50
My thru hike in 2011 was a wonderful experience the likes of which I will never forget. Since then I have toyed with the idea of trying the PCT but somehow the desert and early entrance into the High Sierras don't set well with me. So Im thinking what's wrong with doing the AT again???!? Oh its bound to be easier since Ive done it but would I get the same high from it??? Of those of you out there that have thru hiked more than once how would you compare the 2 journeys and the feeling you took home from each of them. Is something lost in the repeat thru hike??!? Im curious.
Knowing me, I might hike it again. :)
I don't think it's any easier....at least not physically. Might be easier knowing about resupplies, but that changes all the time too.
I was too rigid on my first AT hike. I carried my pack the whole way, including up Katahdin, and I walked north the whole way...but that's how I had it in my mind to walk it. It was still a good walk and I made lots of friends and made lots of memories.
I had the most fun on my last thru on the AT. I played more on that one, took time for a bike ride and took time to walk the Long Trail while I was doing that walk.
I like doing trails more than once. There has not been one thru hike on the AT for me that was even remotely like any of the other ones.
I am just a few hundred miles from finishing up my first section hike of the AT. That to me has been much harder than thru hiking that trail.
I also mixed up directions on the AT with some sobo, some nobo and some flips. Sobo ranks as my absolute favorite way to hike the AT. I don't believe I'll ever start a sobo in May, June or July again though. An August start has too much to offer along the entire AT for me as a sobo.
I just finished the FNST for the third time and will most likely walk it another time or two.
I'm hoping to finish up my multi-year section hike of the CDT this year and can't wait to start walking that one again...I've already been thinking about that.
So now you have another person's opinion to ponder. :-?