Editor’s Note: Several hundred Appalachian Trail hikers finish their trek from Georgia to Maine each fall. In Maine, they face some of the most challenging miles. Associated Press writer Ryan Lenz and photographer Robert F. Bukaty set out to hike the final stretch known as the 100-Mile Wilderness and found that clicking off miles isn’t the only barrier a hiker faces.

Six miles into a chunk of the Appalachian Trail called the 100-Mile Wilderness, I was wiggling like a worm to escape a waist-deep slurry of gritty, black soil sucking me deeper with each scream.

Logs placed over sloppy pits to help hikers had disappeared, replaced by footprints leading through the thick bog. Getting dirty was better than getting lost, I thought, following each print carefully.

The next moment, the ground let loose into a quicksand grip of mud.

Stripped to my boxers later that day, the wet pants hanging from my pack slapped a cadence on my bug-bitten legs. Just seven hours into my first day and it had become a bare-all battle. Me against Mother Nature.

Welcome to the 100-Mile Wilderness, a stretch of Appalachian Trail that weaves from Monson, Maine, through forests, over mountains and across rapids. It’s a challenge even for seasoned hikers and one of the final barriers for through-hikers covering the entire 2,170 miles from Georgia to trail’s end atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin.

Distant and dreaded, the 100-Mile Wilderness is a bear to escape once in its grasp, and outdoor newbies need not venture far for a test. The section’s forbidding moniker and the legends of the wilderness are enough to raise alarm.

Then there’s a sign at the start warning hikers: “Do not underestimate the difficulty of this section.” It’s a hard one to miss.

A group of four hikers stood gazing at the weathered sign. Some bounced with excitement, while I cowered and played tough. The forest swallowed the trail within 20 feet. Those who start have no choice but to finish or turn back.

The Appalachian Trail Conference estimates that only several hundred hikers will finish the trail this fall in Maine, winnowed from about 1,600 who left last spring from Spring Mountain in Georgia, the trail’s southernmost point.

My plan was to follow those rag-tag hikers who braved the miles into Maine, and chronicle that effort as they pushed down the final stretch.

The reality of that plan, however, was that a plunge in the mud was only my first taste of the trail’s peril. For days afterward, those soggy cotton pants taunted me with each muddy slap that I couldn’t finish the trek.

Hikers equipped with Gore Tex and trekking poles pass lumps like me with ease. It’s a tunnel vision and a determination they’ve perfected over hundreds of miles. With a nod, they pass and are gone.

While striking vistas beckon and rivers flowing through gorges toward perfect waterfalls demand at least a moment of pause, through-hikers move over roller-coaster ups and downs with bionic grace too fast to enjoy the scenery they leave behind.

The plan was to cover 12 miles a day, a modest amount for through-hikers but an undoubtedly large amount for an out-of-shape farmboy from Iowa.

My hiking boots filled with water during thigh-deep stream crossings, and they burped with each step afterward. Several inclines left me a sprawl of limbs after a grunting tumble. And being wet from sweat and a deluge of rain left me chafed in places I didn’t know existed.

“There’s something about the wilderness. It’s a section of the trail where you’re definitely on your own,” said Don Shorely, 70, who called himself “The Abominably Slow Man” and returned to the trail this month after cancer treatment.

There’s something about the wilderness, indeed. Without a doubt, it was designed to separate veteran outdoorsmen from rube wanderers.

Having never been a successful Boy Scout, my preparation consisted of three trips to L.L. Bean and a hike into the snowfields of Mount Rainier in Washington state. It was preparation enough, I thought, for a long walk.

“But even when the profile makes it look fairly flat, it’s not just a walk in the woods,” Laurie Potteigger, an Appalachian Trail Conference spokeswoman, told me after my return. “Roots and mud and rocks definitely slow you down.”

Day One on the trail ended with my pants flapping in the wind and my silent prayer that they’d be dry by morning. They weren’t. So on Day Two, I continued onward in boxer shorts. Rains soaked my pants again later that day anyway.

By sunset, it was painful to know that we had covered only 15 miles. Other hikers rejoiced in days cut short by the rain and swapped tales into the night, while I struggled in a soaked sleeping bag for a little shut-eye.

“Man, these hogs are squealing,” Jeff Shedd, a 44-year-old jet mechanic from Tulsa, Okla., said as he rubbed his legs. The last to arrive in the lean-to, he hurled his bag into the shelter to escape the weather.

Carrying 58 pounds in his pack – a slew of unnecessary baggage including a one-pound bag of M&Ms, a dictionary, campfire popcorn, a jar of peanut butter, and a French coffee press – the rain only intensified his misery.

But determined to finish the wilderness, Shedd said it’s better to go slow.

“If you get into some real doo-doo, it’d be hard to get someone in here to get you out,” he said, stripping off his wet shirt.

Unable to sleep and lying next to fellow outdoorsmen, my thoughts focused more on sheets of rain than Thoreau’s noble “tonic of wilderness.” But it was hard to think at all. My mental wanderings were cut short in revolt.

The stench of unshaven, unclean, unkempt hikers was incredible.

The following morning, 48 hours after we started, photographer Robert F. Bukaty and I decided to raise the white flag and turn around. The rain had made the trail slippery and turned streams into rapids.

Because of the danger posed by the streams, the only way out was to bushwhack through the woods toward a safer place to cross. Through thorn patches and brush piles, over miles of flooded logging roads and down gravel roads, we trudged another 15 miles looking for a way out.

The faces we saw during our escape were other hikers also cursing Mother Nature. Word spread of two missing or stranded hikers, one from Chicago and the other from Indianapolis. Not us. No hayseed Hoosiers lost in the woods here.

We learned later that 61/2 inches of rain had fallen during the night. It was a good decision to leave. Discretion is the better part of valor.

Some say the appeal of the wilderness is a return to nature, a getaway from the hustle. For others it’s a test of mettle. Standing on the roadside in my boxers with a thumb in the air, I knew I had failed the test.

The rescuer who returned us to civilization was not a game warden or a mountain man. It was a teenage girl bumping along a logging road in a red Chevy Blazer. Her eyes were wide as she saw us limping along.

We were lucky she stopped. She said she normally didn’t give rides to hikers – especially those hiking in their drawers.