bizzar people encounter/safty on thru hikes..real experiences that where unsafe!

[Trailbender]

I carry a gun for the same reason that I keep a first aid kit and fire extinguisher in my car. I don't carry when I hike though.

As for when to use a gun? That one isn't hard at all. When they present a weapon in a threatening manner, or you feel your life is in danger. As for the slippery slope argument, that is the same garbage liberals have been spewing for years. "Assault weapons ban", "if people get carry permits, it will be like the wild west", everything they have predicted hasn't happened. They have been wrong about everything related to guns that they have ever said. The question is, why do people still listen to this crap?

[DBRIGGS9]

I carry a gun for the same reason that I keep a first aid kit and fire extinguisher in my car. I don't carry when I hike though.

As for when to use a gun? That one isn't hard at all. When they present a weapon in a threatening manner, or you feel your life is in danger. As for the slippery slope argument, that is the same garbage liberals have been spewing for years. "Assault weapons ban", "if people get carry permits, it will be like the wild west", everything they have predicted hasn't happened. They have been wrong about everything related to guns that they have ever said. The question is, why do people still listen to this crap?

Different strokes for different folks. You carry a gun in case you encounter a situation so incredibly dangerous that you need to use, or at least make known that you have a gun. I don't carry a gun for the same reasons why I don't carry a parachute on airplanes, wear chain mail suits when I swim in the ocean, or coat myself in rubber during thunderstorms.

[StorminMormon]

I was looking at books at a backpacking store a few weeks ago, and by pure coincidence I flipped to a page that discussed safety on the trail. The specific issue of whether a gun was "necessary" or not was addressed and it was the author(s) opinion that having a gun on the trail was completely pointless. I can't quote it from memory, but his statement was something to the effect of..."I have talked to hikers that have carried, and hikers that have not carried (but owned guns) and none of them said they ever felt like they needed their gun".

That's fine - I wonder what the few dozen hikers each year that go missing (for whatever reason) would have said about carrying a gun? How about the gentlemen who passed away last week because of a Mountain Goat attack? I don't carry a gun out of fear, I carry a gun because it makes sense to me. I have ABSOLUTELY no plans of shooting anyone who doesn't represent an immediate lethal threat to me. 5 people may seem like an insignificant number to some folks, but to my wife, my 3 kids, my brothers and sisters, my parents...1 is 1 too many, if that 1 is me.

After all that. I have a permit. It's my right. I carry. Do what you want. I honestly don't care.

[DBRIGGS9]

Do what you want. I honestly don't care.

Amen, StorminMormon.

[jersey joe]

I've posted this before but...On my 2002 thru hike I ran into a guy and his brother who were hiking and camping up the hill from the shelter. This guy brandished a large ramboesque knife on his belt. They were obviously into drugs/alcohol and got very rowdy, built a bonfire, and hurled large rocks at the shelter for a while while screaming obscenities. There were about four of us in the shelter and we seriously considered packing up and hiking on a few miles to get away from this guy. After a while, I guess they wore themselves out because the noise and the rocks stopped. We all slept with our hiking poles at our sides and I think felt better with what might be called "safety in numbers".

[weary]

Have you ever slept in a shelter?

Many times. Have you ever packed up a wet tent after a night of rain? After a week of rain?

[Spogatz]

How many thru hikers have been robbed while on the trail? Murder is the extreme but I am sure there are many other crimes committed on the trail.

[Jester2000]

Many times. Have you ever packed up a wet tent after a night of rain? After a week of rain?

Many times.

I thought I would continue your action of answering a question not directed towards me. Have you ever juggled cats? (Note: someone other than weary should answer this)

[restless]

Never juggled cats-do hamsters count?

[Jester2000]

Never juggled cats-do hamsters count?

Someone else is going to have to answer that.

[sherrill]

Yes I have juggled cats.

Sometimes, weary, I just think you don't see my humor.

[FlyPaper]

Sure, the number would still be 5. I didn't say I didn't care that people died on the trail, I just said thats a very small number for a 2100 mile long trail. Its a negligible NUMBER. I bet that number would go up if everybody carried guns.

Hmm. Not that I carry a gun on the trail nor am taking a stance one way or the other, but this question got me thinking about how to compare safety between the trail and the city. This is more based on curiouisity than having an axe to grind (no pun intended).

Clearly, when comparing the likelihood of being murdered one must take into account the fact that a lot more people spend a lot more time in cities than on the trail. If one survives a one hour day hike on the Appalachian Trail that is not a data point that can be directly compared against surviving one year in Baltimore.

It has been claimed that there have been 5 thru-hikers murdered on the AT.

The ATC site claims that there have been 11630 AT "completions" recorded since 1936. I seems likely that the overwhelming majority of these "completions" are thru-hikers. Perhaps there are a few non-recorded completions that can offset the section-hiker "completions", but for the sake of argument, let's say there have been 11630 thru-hikes completed since 1936.

A thru-hike consists of about 6 months living life "on the trail". That is 1/2 of a year. The population of a city such as Baltimore is based on people living there a whole year. Some move in and some move out, but the per capita murder rates are based on the average population of a city, not the number of distinct visitors or visits to the city. Since a thru-hike is 1/2 a year, we must double the per capita murder rate in order to compare "apples to apples" with large cities.

When talking about per capita murder rates, it is important to consider those who were "thru-hiking" at one point but did not finish. Obviously someone who was murdered while thru-hiking is not going to complete their
thru-hike. It is impossible to know if they would have completed their thru-hike had they not been murdered. So it is important when comparing
per capita rates of thru-hikers to city dwellers to consider the whole population of those that consider themselves to be "thru-hiking" whether or
not they would go on to finish their thru-hike.

According to the ATC web site, approximately 25% of those that start thru-hiking finish in a given year. This is based on the last 8 years. I imagine the percentage was lower before that. But for the sake of argument, we'll say 4 times as many start as finish.

Of those that start, almost 1/2 have quit within around 3 weeks. Another 25% quit later. If someone quits a thru-hike 3 weeks into the hike, that is not the same as spending a year on the trail, and hence is not proper to compare as an "apples to apples" comparison to someone living in the city for 1 year. It would take 17 people starting a thru-hike and quiting in 3 weeks to equal one person living for a whole year in a city in order to make a valid comparison to establish the relationship between per capita murder rates.

Since those that quit within 3 weeks spend almost no time "thru-hiking", for the sake of argument, we can pretend these people never were thru-hiking, and to more than offset that pretend the 25% that quit after 3 weeks to have completed the thru-hike. That means, we have 11630 x 2 thru-hike completions since 1936, each of them spending 1/2 a year on the trail.

That is like having 11630 people live for 1 year on the trail resulting in 5 murders. The murder rate per capita of the AT as a city would be 0.43 per thousand which is not as safe as Baltimore, but safer than New Orleans.

Note: I made a number of simplifying assumptions, but I believe most of these assumptions err on the side of making the trail seem safer than it really is.
Also, I am counting day hikers and section hikers as if they were part of a different "city" entirely. Since this thread mentioned murders, but not muggings, rapes, etc., all I am looking at is murders.

Based on this, I don't think you can really say that the trail is substantially safer than an ordinary city.

[Luddite]

How many thru hikers have been robbed while on the trail? Murder is the extreme but I am sure there are many other crimes committed on the trail.

I'm not sure how many people have been robbed but it seems like the people who have had stuff stolen from them weren't around to prevent it.

[Jester2000]

Separating out thru-hikers murdered and thru-hikers as a trail population when considering safety on the trail is, I think, kind of nonsensical. It would be like saying, "I'm going to look at the murder rate in Philadelphia, but I'm only going to look at murders of people who were 5'8" and left handed, and compare that to the number of 5'8" left handed people in the city. From that I'm going to determine whether the city of Philadelphia has a high murder rate."

Absent a meaningful distinction (meaning that the reason people were killed had something to do with the fact that they were thru-hikers), I don't understand why this matters.

I suppose if one really wanted to, one could factor time on the trail in hours, and one could then account for every person on the trail, whether they be day hikers, weekenders, section hikers, or thrus. If, that is, you could really figure out how many people actually use the trail -- a number than can really only be roughly estimated. And you could figure out the murder rate per hour in a city, which would be the easy part of all of this.

And in the end, you still wouldn't really have a handle on your individual safety in any given moment on the trail.

[FlyPaper]

Since the claim was made the 5 thru-hikers had been murdered, it seem absolutely essential to measure that against only population of thru-hikers. If the claim had been that 5 "hikers" had been murdered, then it would not make sense to seperate out thru-hikers and non-thru-hikers.

Naturally, the safety of the trail is not wholy summed up in counting only thru-hikers, but we'd need to know the total number of all murders on the trail to begin to crunch numbers that count non-thru-hikers too.

Separating out thru-hikers murdered and thru-hikers as a trail population when considering safety on the trail is, I think, kind of nonsensical. It would be like saying, "I'm going to look at the murder rate in Philadelphia, but I'm only going to look at murders of people who were 5'8" and left handed, and compare that to the number of 5'8" left handed people in the city. From that I'm going to determine whether the city of Philadelphia has a high murder rate."

Absent a meaningful distinction (meaning that the reason people were killed had something to do with the fact that they were thru-hikers), I don't understand why this matters.

I suppose if one really wanted to, one could factor time on the trail in hours, and one could then account for every person on the trail, whether they be day hikers, weekenders, section hikers, or thrus. If, that is, you could really figure out how many people actually use the trail -- a number than can really only be roughly estimated. And you could figure out the murder rate per hour in a city, which would be the easy part of all of this.

And in the end, you still wouldn't really have a handle on your individual safety in any given moment on the trail.

[Trailbender]

Different strokes for different folks. You carry a gun in case you encounter a situation so incredibly dangerous that you need to use, or at least make known that you have a gun. I don't carry a gun for the same reasons why I don't carry a parachute on airplanes, wear chain mail suits when I swim in the ocean, or coat myself in rubber during thunderstorms.

If I was expecting to need a gun, I would have a rifle, not a handgun. I have a lot of training, in both hand to hand, and firearms. I know there are a lot of good people out there, but there are also a lot of evil scumbags. I am not going to rely on the kindness of a crackhead when he is robbing me.

[Pedaling Fool]

I'm kind of confused about the "5 thru-hikers murdered" aspect of this discussion. I don't know how many thru-hikers have been killed (may of been 5 -- I don't know), nor do I know how many people (regardless of status i.e. day, weekend, section...hiker) have been killed on the AT. However I do know that others, besides thru-hikers have been killed on the AT.

[Pedaling Fool]

BTW, without looking at the numbers I'd say that the AT is not the most dangerous place to be, but it is also not as safe as some would have you believe.

[Pedaling Fool]

I'm kind of confused about the "5 thru-hikers murdered" aspect of this discussion. I don't know how many thru-hikers have been killed (may of been 5 -- I don't know), nor do I know how many people (regardless of status i.e. day, weekend, section...hiker) have been killed on the AT. However I do know that others, besides thru-hikers have been killed on the AT.

Then again I guess it depends on how far the person is off the AT, like those two girls in SNP, I've heard some argue that they don't count, to me that's an extreme technicality.
Here's one list, but I'm not saying it's conclusive http://www.southeasternoutdoors.com/...l-murders.html


Appalachian Trail Murders


The Appalachian Trail, like most parks and hiking areas in America is relatively safe. With over 3 million hikers visiting various sections of the trail per year, there have only been 9 murders along the trail since 1974, and according to the ATC an average of about 1 rape every 3 years. One unusual aspect about the Appalachian Trail murders is that three incidents have been double murders. In two of those cases one of the victims was male.

• Georgia - May 1974, Joel Polsom, 26, of Hartsville, South Carolina was murdered and his female companion kidnapped by the killer at the Low Gap Trail Shelter in White County Georgia, which is in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Michigan fugitive Ralph Fox was later captured
• Tennessee - April 1975, Thru-hiker Janice Balza, 22, of Madison, Wisconsin was killed by a hatchet at Vandeventer shelter in northeast Tennessee. Hiker/tree surgeon Paul Bigley, 51, was convicted of her murder and died in prison .
• Virginia - May 1981, Susan Ramsay murdered while hiking along the AT with Robert Mountford Jr. Murderer Randall Smith was paroled after only 15 years for this double murder. After his release Smith tried to kill to two more people in the same area.
• Virginia - May 1981, Robert Mountford Jr. (and Susan Ramsay) were murdered while hiking along the AT. Murderer Randall Smith who was paroled after only 15 years and years later returned to the same area and tried to kill two more people.
• Pennsylvania - May 12, 1988, Rebecca Wight was shot dead and her partner, Claudia Brenner, was seriously wounded.
• Pennsylvania - September 12, 1990, Molly LaRue, 25, of Shaker Heights, Ohio and her fiancé from Tennessee were killed at the Thelma Marks Shelter on the AT south of Duncannon, Pa
• Pennsylvania - September 12, 1990, Geoffrey Hood, 26, of Signal Mountain, Tennessee was shot to death as he slept in the Thelma Marks Shelter on the A.T. south of Duncannon, Pa
• Shenandoah National Park, Virginia - May 28, 1996, Julianne Williams, 24, (and Lollie Winans) were bound and had their throats cut while hiking and camping near Bridle Trail and the Appalachian Trail. There bodies were found less than 1/4 mile from the road. This crime remains unsolved.
• Shenandoah National Park, Virginia - May 28, 1996, Lollie Winans, 26 (and Julianne Williams) were bound and had their throats cut while hiking and camping near Bridle Trail and the Appalachian Trail. This crime remains unsolved.

Random thoughts about the murders that have happened along the Appalachian Trail.

• Of the 9 murders listed above

Female or solo hikers should not go into an empty shelter and unpack all your gear for the evening. Wait to see who else shows up. If you feel uncomfortable, leave and set up camp somewhere else.

[rickb]

Absent a meaningful distinction (meaning that the reason people were killed had something to do with the fact that they were thru-hikers), I don't understand why this matters.

Good point.

For starters:

1) Thru hikers spend a great deal more time on the Trail than other populations

2) It may be more common for common for a thru hiker couple to shelter with an unknown male and/or think shelters are inherently safe

3) A significant number of thru hikers (south bounders) still hike at times when the trail is not crowded

4) Some thu hikers may come across as "different" in the mind of their killer (different accent, sensibilities or lifestyle)

5) Thru hikers spend a great deal more time on the Trail than other populations (Oh, I listed that one already)

In the end, some population will always be more at risk than others. This bears thinking about. If you want to continue with the Philadelphia example, consider that a 24 Hour convenience store clerk faces more of a risk of getting shot than a person putting the wiz on a cheese steak at Geno's. That's just the way it is.