Looking for women who completed a thru hike and love to tell their fabulous stories!

[Zipper]

Hey everyone!

I'm Zipper (AT 09) and this is the second year I'm hosting Wild and White Blazing, a set of "virtual campfires" (conference calls) for women planning a thru hike. We had an incredible first year in 2012-13 with 18 amazing "celebrity faculty" of all ages who shared their thru hiking stories with 20 women planning or dreaming of their thru. I hope to have even more incredible women hikers share their stories this year, and I can't wait to help a new group of women planning a hike who join this cool course that starts in November.

I'm so excited that this year we have Wild and White Blazing participants who successfully thru hiked in 2013 returning as faculty to share their stories, tips and expertise. The whole thing is coming full circle - just like I'd imagined!

If you have a wonderful story about your thru, whether you were NOBO, SOBO, flipflopping, with a group, with a dog, with your sweetheart, all alone, or any other way, I'd love to involve you in this incredible group! What I'm most looking for are women who had a positive experience and want to share that with others. I'm looking for women who want to inspire and support other women. I am not about telling anyone how to hike her hike, or prescribing a certain "way" to thru hike. I'm also not interested in sharing war stories or making it sound too hard to accomplish (the whole "uphill both ways in the snow" kind of thing). I am interested in honest, uplifting, generally happy takes on thru hiking. Of course we still share what was hard, and we'll also share how we overcame our struggles and prevailed. I'm especially interested in women who completed a thru in the past one to three years, because conditions and gear change year to year and I love having faculty with up-to-date info.

Wild and White Blazing is a community of women that is diverse in all ways - age, location, hiking style, profession, etc. And we support a diverse group of women who are planning their hikes.

If you're interested in joining in as faculty, please contact me at [email protected]. I do my best to compensate my faculty with some cool goodies, perks and freebies which I'll tell you more about if you are interested in joining.

You can also read a bit more about Wild and White blazing by clicking here: http://livingwildandprecious.com/wil...white-blazing/
And we have an informational Q&A call coming up this Thursday evening, so if you'd like to be part of that, get in touch soon so I can pass that info on to you!

Even though I completed my hike four years ago, I still remember every moment like it was yesterday, and I love to talk about the trail and cheer others on as they plan their hikes! I'm imagining you might feel the same. If so, please get in touch so you can be part of Wild and White Blazing!

Cheers!
Zipper
VA-ME VA-GA '09

[Dawn]

I participated last year and this was great! I'll be on the informational call tonight!

[max patch]

Doyle and Tarlin have 25 complete hikes of the AT between them.

One of them sells advice.

One of them gives advice for free.

I think that says something.

[Zipper]

Dear sweet max patch,

I will leave it up to the women who visit this forum to decide what to think, what to invest, whether to participate as faculty and whether I am like Warren Doyle, Jack Tarlin, or neither. I'm confident in what I offer, and I believe it's a great value.

But this is one of the reasons I get frustrated with White Blaze and created a safe space for women without the sniping that is rampant all over the place on these forums. Half the time when I read a thread here I feel like I need to go take a shower because there's so much mud slinging. Or negativity. Or I have to scroll through pages of inside jokes and ridiculous behavior before I can get to the content.

I love White Blaze and the premise of it, I pay to support it, and there's a ton of wonderful information here, but there's a lot of childish and downright rude behavior on these forums as well. When I was planning my thru hike, I scoured this forum but was too scared to post for fear that my questions might spark one of those strings of jokes or be responded to harshly and rudely. After completing my thru, I joined and I contribute here when I feel I have something useful or helpful. But to be honest, I tend to stay away for precisely the reasons I outlined above.

I don't believe you and I have met. So you don't know me. Or what I do, what I don't do, and what I offer for free that you aren't aware of.

That is all.
Best wishes to you!

[Zipper]

Oh, and here's the link to my entire AT journal.

http://carlasat.wordpress.com/

I wrote nearly every day and there's a wealth of info here and photos and much more. I have posted this somewhere else on this forum last year (on the thread about womens' AT blogs maybe?), but here it is again for those who would like to know me better or get some ideas, help or advice from my personal journey on the AT.
Cheers!
Zipper

[Robin2013AT]

When I was preparing to thru last year (solo, 52 yo female) everyone would ask me what I was most afraid of. My biggest fear was the AT would be full of people as mean as they are on Whiteblaze where I often went for research. Since at that time I thought most of the most verbal members had actually thruhiked I worried that the AT trail community was like this too. It almost changed my mind altogether. I had no desire to be beaten down for 6 months. Well as I know now the trail is actually full of kind, helpful and wonderful people and frankly those WB bigwigs that I met along the way North are really just big pussycats in person. I truly wish there was a kinder place to share information. I too would never post a question due to the mean responses to real questions. I think you have a great thing going setting a forum up outside WhiteBlaze. Please let me know if I can help. My thru was the best and most fun thing I have ever done in my life.

[Zipper]

Robin! I will message you! Would love to connect!

And ladies, there are kinder forums out there. Many on Facebook. Look into Trail Dames (need to be a Trail Dames member, but that's super-reasonable and amazing), Women Hikers of the World (free), and I'm sure there are others. There are also Yahoo groups - perhaps someone can weigh in about those places on the web for women to gather and discuss hiking that are completely free.

Again, I do appreciate White Blaze. Like you, I relied on it extensively when planning my thru, and I support it as a donating member. And I love how many people here truly enjoy offering great advice. And I also understand that some use this space to have fun and tell jokes. But I'm sad when those jokes are at the expense of someone who has come here simply looking for some help.

The main idea of Wild and White Blazing, the program I created, isn't a forum, though we have a great one - it's the live call aspect. We get on the phone and we share and discuss, live and in real time. The magic of technology allows us to gather from all ends of the planet - we had WWB participants all the way from Germany last year! And for those who are far from the trail and can't make some of the wonderful in-person workshops offered by organizations like ALDHA, this is a great way to have real, genuine, supportive and safe conversations with women who have thru hiked.

We had our Q&A call last night (recorded so it's available to those who couldn't be there or who are just finding out about WWB) and it was so wonderful to hear both faculty and participants talk about what they loved about Wild and White Blazing and how it helped them. It's not a gigantic group, so people really get to know each other. We follow the thru hikes of the participants and cheer them on. Women from the group find each other on the trail. Those who aren't hiking this season help the ones that are, with rides, a place to stay, and more! And all of this formed organically just as a result of the calls and the forum.

I don't have a monopoly on this kind of magic - it happens in many ways for those planning a hike. I just have one place via the Wild and White Blazing calls and program, and I'm so grateful to be the person who organizes that space and ensures it's overall safe and pleasant and supportive. And I'm grateful that it allows me to stay connected to the trail and to help others have a wonderful experience.

Cheers!
Zipper