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  1. #1
    Hiker Wannabe
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    Default Statistics from trailjournals.com Class of 2014 - Better late than never?

    So, at the end of the 2014 AT hiking season I got a wild hair and decided to calculate thru-hiker statistics from the class of 2014 at trailjournals.com. I was mostly interested to see how the thru-hiking completion rate compared to ATC's (and get another data point with a bunch of data) as well as how many made it from Harpers to Katahdin. I was also interested in why hikers ended up quitting. It ended up taking waaaay longer than I thought and I ended up having to go back and basically go through it all again (more than once) as I didn't plan out all the data I needed to capture (as my scope began to creep) at the onset. I got some cool (to me) data on start dates, end dates, average miles per day, etc, but the actual thru-hiker completion rate was a bit muddy so I lost momentum and never finished it.
    As far as the methodology, I recorded their name, age (sometimes estimated), sex, direction (only included NOBO), start date, end date, reason for quitting (if any), if they were on the ATC registry, and if they claimed a thru-hike, I put them in a category on how confirmable the finish was.

    The messy part was not all people who claimed a thru-hike actually journaled the entire way. Some stopped but I could find them summiting Katahdin on their social media (how creepy of me ), others claimed a thru-hike via the ATC registry or on their unfinished journal but I couldn't find any 'proof' that the did so.
    I ended up making 3 categories.
    Trackable meant they journaled the entire way.
    Partial meant their journal stopped short, but they had social media of them finishing.
    Untrackable meant their journal stopped short of the finish and I couldn't find any evidence of them making it there.

    With that being said, here comes the data.

    Starting Date Histogram of all hikers. Pretty nice bell curve.



    Starting Date Chart comparing thru-hikers vs non-thru hikers. Not a whole lot of difference.



    Completion date histogram of all thru-hikers. Pretty spread out.


    Next up is the stoppage statistics. Raw numbers are:


    Unknown is the #1 reason. Basically where the journal stops and the trail goes cold so to speak. Pretty difficult to put your failure out for all others to see.
    Mental is #2. I may have thrown a few in here that others wouldn't such as "too cold" and "exhausted" during the first week or two of hiking.
    General injury are entries that don't easily fit into another category or involve multiple issues. Examples include "broken ribs, broken arm, head injury w/stiches, hip/knee/ankle combo, etc"
    Other has several "partners injured" with 2 quitting due to Lyme disease.


    Worth noting, only 1 of the 293 hikers (including SOBO, and flip-flops) didn't finish due to weather, and that person was out of commission for 8 weeks due to broken toes. They started NOBO on 3/26 and ended up flip-flopping.


    Some delicious pie charts:




    Here's a dense set of data on Trackable thru-hikers showing average/median miles per day, average/median total days to thru-hike, and average/median start/finish date.



    Here's the same data for people who didn't finish.


    And finally, the thru-hiker completion data.
    The data set includes the following:


    With ATC estimating 2500 hikers starting NOBO, this is ~10% of the entire population.


    If you assume worst case, where the 22 people who didn't record an actual entry on trail but had a journal entry stating they were going to hike (we'll call them DNS) all started and failed and all Partial/Untrackable hikers didn't actually thru-hike, you get a 26% completion percentage.
    I'd say the 26% number is lower than actual.
    For reference, ATC calculated a 28% completion percentage for 2014 (the 26% on their website is a typo).
    If you throw out the DNS hikers and only count Trackable hikers, you get a 29% completion rate.
    If you throw out DNS and count Trackable + Partial hikers, you get a 33% completion rate.
    If you throw out DNS and count Trackable + Partial + Untrackable, you get 38% completion rate.
    The completion rates are a little higher than ATC, but I'd posit users of TJ are probably a more prepared subset of the population compared to your average thru-hiker.

    The data definitely diverges when you look at how many made it to Harpers Ferry and how many made it from Harpers to Katahdin. ATC data says 51% of hikers made it to Harpers Ferry and 51% of those people ended up making it to Katahdin.
    Depending on what set of hikers you use, 42%-51% make it to Harpers Ferry and 67-74% make if from Harpers Ferry to Katahdin.

    That's what I gots.

    Edit: 3/19. First 3 pictures died.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by JeremyB; 03-19-2019 at 12:16.

  2. #2
    Registered User
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    10-29-2014
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    Default

    Really interesting data Jeremy! Thank you for sharing. I'm sure that took a lot of time.

  3. #3

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    This is really illuminating. I have often wondered about the percentage breakdowns of the various reasons for discontinuing a thru-hike attempt. It looks like between 55 and 60% of those giving an explanation cited injuries to themselves or hiking partners as their main reason for stopping.

    You are to be commended for all the work you put into this. I always appreciate seeing quantitative data like this rather than anecdotal guesstimates.
    Life Member: ATC, ALDHA, Superior Hiking Trail Association

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by map man View Post
    This is really illuminating. I have often wondered about the percentage breakdowns of the various reasons for discontinuing a thru-hike attempt. It looks like between 55 and 60% of those giving an explanation cited injuries to themselves or hiking partners as their main reason for stopping.

    You are to be commended for all the work you put into this. I always appreciate seeing quantitative data like this rather than anecdotal guesstimates.
    I have a feeling people will be honest about some reasons for quitting, but maybe less so about others. Sometimes when theres multiple things going on, easy to publicly blame the one most out of your control, instead of themself. People dont like to admit they are weak, wrong, made bad decision, etc. Gotta protect that ego.
    Last edited by MuddyWaters; 03-18-2019 at 22:00.

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