AT’s through-hikers walk the walk Talk with walker best info source

At some point in the life of every hiker, the question will arise, “I wonder if I could hike the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine?” When it does, it will be impossible to shake. You’re really asking if you’ve got what it takes to put on a backpack, sacrifice five to six months of time (when you probably should be doing something else), and hike 2,178 miles.

The challenge is enormous. There are countless mountains in the 5,000-foot range in elevation, and a couple are over 6,000. There are violent early spring storms, tornadoes, and late spring snowstorms. Basically, there’s everything you can imagine in terms of living outside for a very long time, through three seasons. Then, there’s the walking. It has been estimated that you’ll hike five million steps and climb the vertical equivalent of Mount Everest eight times by through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, the AT.

All that information and much more is widely available for anyone who wants to read about the hike. There are planning guides, maps of the entire route, and published first-person accounts of other peoples’ adventures on the trail. It seems like every year one of the major outdoor magazines, Outside, Backpacker or National Geographic Adventure, runs a feature on the AT experience.

But all that is just words. If you really want to know what it takes to hike the hike, you need to talk to someone who has done it. There are 278 miles of the trail in Maine, so if you time it right, you just might find a through-hiker to talk to you. Most northbounders start in Georgia between early March to into May. Southbounders start on Katahdin from early June into the first week in August. If you want to find a hiker to answer that question of what it takes, along the AT in Maine is a great place to start.

Last weekend near the Kennebec River, I found a couple of hikers who were willing to share their experiences. The first one I met was heading south from Katahdin. Roughly only 300-400 hikers go southbound, or “sobo” in hiker talk. By comparison, 2,000 to 3,000 leave Georgia every spring. Only 10 to 20 percent claim to finish every year from either direction.

This southbounder was only 14 days into his hike and had covered around 140 miles, with one day off in Monson, when we met. We chatted a while at a resupply point at a general store in The Forks. He filled his pack with extra food to get himself to Stratton and his next resupply in the form of a planned mail drop. He told me his name, Nathan Ruth, from Ohio. He didn’t have a trail name yet and was still deciding on what he should call himself while he’s on the trail. Most hikers choose a new name for the hike.

“I started on lucky Friday the 13th of July,” he said when I asked him for his start date. He’s allowing time enough for a six-month hike. I asked why he went sobo, since the majority of hikers don’t. “Just because I was still in school finishing my master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. I couldn’t start this late from the south.”

I asked how the weather had been. “It rained at least once seven out of my first 10 days.” I asked about wildlife sightings. “I was coming around a corner near the boundary of Baxter State Park and a bull moose was coming right at me. He was reacting to a fisherman behind him. He saw me, then turned into the forest and disappeared. I didn’t get a picture. I was torn between getting a picture and ducking behind a tree. Five or six days later I did get pictures of a cow and a bull in a pond.”

We talked a while more, he told me that it has been a great hike so far, that he hadn’t been in Maine before and then he headed off down the trail. Later that day a “nobo,” trail name, “Retro,” showed up at the outfitters. He was a logger from Oregon, he said, and got his trail name from the external frame pack he was carrying. Most through-hikers now use internal frames for comfort. He’s still among the early arrivals, since most won’t be arriving from Georgia until mid-August through the first week in October. September is probably the biggest month for arriving hikers from Georgia.

He started March 1, he said. “We had two feet of snow in the Smokies, before the month was over.” I asked how he was camping. “My favorite way to camp is in my hammock just outside town, get into town, do laundry resupply, then get back on the trail to avoid taking zero days.” Meaning, days when he doesn’t hike any miles.

Hikers are notorious for eating huge quantities of food when they get to town. Their bodies are always operating with a caloric deficit, since it’s impossible to carry the 5,000 calories that they’ll burn every day. To make up for it, they load up when they get to town. I asked if he had any food adventures. “Well, there was this ‘all you can eat’ special at a place in North Adams, Massachusetts. After I ate 10 plates of food, the owner brought the check. I guess I was done,” he said.

Finally, I asked him what he thought it takes to hike all that distance. He thought a minute, then said, “It takes the ability to go beyond yourself. You need to take obstacles like weather and steep climbs and deal with them, even though you’re not sure if you can.” After talking a while more, mostly about the trail, and remarkably not much else, we parted, with him hiking north.

If the question of what it takes still seems unresolved after talking with a through-hiker, you shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, the ultimate answer may be that you’ll never know if you can walk the walk until you load up a backpack and take that first step yourself. Then again, it may not be until you take the last one.

There are plenty of opportunities to talk with hikers coming north along Maine’s AT. There are basically five towns that offer hiker services such as resupply, mail drops, and lodging. Hikers can be seen in the next few weeks in Andover, Rangeley, Stratton, Caratunk and Monson. Just find the people who look like they’ve been in the same clothes for six months and are carrying everything they need on their backs. Most love to tell you about their trip. But if someone puts you off, don’t be too upset. They’ve probably been asked the same questions dozens of times, starting with, “Are you a through-hiker?”