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We used to summer in andover, Maine,
and the trail used to run right by, so I spent
my whole childhood walking up and down the trail,
fishing and...
One day, I asked my father where this trail went
and he's like, "this trail goes all the way to Georgia."
And I'm like, "you're kidding."
"Yep, if you go that way
"you'll go to Georgia, if you go that way,
"you go to mount katahdin."
And ever since then it was always in the back
of my mind that I've gotta hike this trail.
April 10th, 2014,
amicalola lodge.
Down here in northern Georgia.
Sleeping bag at the very bottom.
Big jacket and my rain jacket.
And rain pants, don't need those yet.
Hopefully, won't need them too much.
Though I'm sure I will.
- Oh man, that's a jinx. - And,
let's see, food.
Strap on my tent.
See some bulge in some spots.
All right.
Amicalola state park,
start of the approach trail, weighing the pack.
Weight is...
Looks like about 44, 43.
And so my journey of nearly 2200 miles began
with these steps towards the appalachian trail.
For the next six months,
I followed the trail through 14 states.
My ultimate destination, Maine's mount katahdin.
To reach the trail's official start point
on springer mountain, I first climbed the approach trail
in amicalola falls state park.
The park derives its name from a cherokee word
meaning tumbling waters.
I looked online to see what people thought
of the approach trail.
Seems some people thought it was really hard
and some people thought it was a piece of cake.
I guess it depends on
how in shape you are.
I reached the top of springer
already wondering what I'd gotten myself into.
My goal to hike the entire appalachian trail
now seemed like a crazy, impossible dream.
But the story of this trail is of an impossible dream
that came true.
The appalachian trail, as an idea,
came from a guy named Benton mackaye.
Benton mackaye was born in 1879
in stamford, Connecticut.
Even though a young mackaye once wrote,
he would later attend Harvard university.
After graduating in 1905 with a master's in forestry,
mackaye went on to teach at Harvard
and to work for the government as a regional planner.
In 1915, he married suffragist and peace advocate
Jessie Hardy stubbs, known as Betty.
But it seems the difficult life of an activist
took a severe toll on Betty's mental health.
In 1921, she suffered her final nervous breakdown.
To help his wife recover,
mackaye planned a trip to the countryside.
While the couple prepared to depart
from grand central station,
Betty fled and jumped to her death
into New York's east river.
Mackaye was heartbroken.
Encouraged by friends, he distracted himself from grief
by putting his idea for an appalachian trail on paper.
His proposal was published October of that year.
Mackaye's original idea for the project included
the footpath, shelter camps for hikers to stay at
and two types of communities where people could live,
community groups, camps where people could stay
for recreation, recuperation and study
and food and farm camps which would provide employment
for those wanting to work off the land.
His concept for the trail was to build
a long-distance hiking trail
that would allow people to do long hikes
but also would connect rural communities
along the trail path.
So not many people realize that the second part
of what I just said, was part of his vision.
He wrote,
One such menace was rapid urbanization.
The high value of land in the city
leads to crowded skyscrapers
and people are compelled to live in crowded quarters
while opportunities for recreation and healthful living
are limited.
In the early 20th century,
America's urban population was surpassing
the rural population for the first time in history
and what were once regional cities
were transforming into sprawling metropolitan areas.
Mackaye knew that metropolitan growth
could lead to cultural homogenization
and stifle the sharing of ideas.
He clearly wanted this trail to be away from cities
and away from civilization, which of course
was a lot easier to do in 1920, 1921 when he was
thinking about this and writing about this
than it would be today.
Soon after its publication,
mackaye's proposal caught the eye
of several prominent outdoor organizations.
And that's how the appalachian trail conservancy
was created. It was a meeting in Washington, D.C.
Of trail leaders from a variety of places,
particularly new england and the Washington, D.C. area.
They created the appalachian trail conference
which was our original name.
Under this new organization,
the first sections of dedicated trail were built in 1924.
While some of its most important characters
would be introduced later,
the story of the appalachian trail had begun.
There's some really actually very beautiful parts
of Georgia
that
were awesome
and I was imagining how much better looking they would be
in two or three weeks.
- When spring was there? - I was like, aw,
it's so gray right now, I'm sure this is a great view
when there's, you know, actually looks like
there's trees on it.
When there's a color besides brown?
- Yeah! - Most northbound thru-hikers
start in march and early April.
Georgia was tough just because it was cold and wet
and there was always the danger of hypothermia.
Our last night in Georgia it actually,
there was like a show cover when we woke up
so our tent had a little bit of show on it.
And taking down the tent at that point in the morning
when it's like 16 degrees or something like that,
you can't feel your fingers.
One place of relief from the cold is neel gap,
home of the mountain crossings outfitter and hostel.
Mount crossings is an outdoor store,
it's located directly on the appalachian trail
just under 31 miles from springer mountain,
which is the Southern terminus of the trail.
It's the first outdoors store that hikers come to.
Neel gap is one of the southernmost points
where hikers can resupply food and equipment.
The majority of resupplies are done in trail towns.
I thru-hiked back in 2000,
no one had cell phones back then so, you know,
people like calling the day before they hit town
to make reservations in hotels is really weird.
There's a lot more shuttle services in and out of town
so there's less hitchhiking it seems like.
He's like, "I'll give you guys a hitch back
"as long as you guys aren't gonna hurt me."
I'm like, "we're hiking the appalachian trail,
"I don't think any of us have the energy to hurt you."
The trail towns are very hiker friendly.
Mostly.
Have you had any favorite trail towns?
I think hiawassee might have been my favorite,
maybe just because it was the first one I went into.
As long-distance hiking has become more
and more popular, a cottage industry of hostels
has grown along the trail.
For many years, hiawassee was home
to the blueberry patch hostel
which provided a place to stay and eat
for no more than an optional donation.
But all good things must come to an end
and after many years, the owhers decided to close
the blueberry patch hostel for good in 2015.
A few days after leaving Georgia
and crossing into north Carolina,
I had another great breakfast
when I hit deep gap on easter Sunday.
The easter feast volunteers know what hikers want.
Their omelets are appropriately sized
for people who spend their days walking over mountains.
Now we're gonna hand this to you but it takes
two hands, you gotta hold your plate with two hands.
The at easter feast is put on
by thru-hiker Jerry Parker with the assistance
of his daughter, Megan, a thru-hiker herself.
Mr. Parker immortalized his 1979 hike
with the beer drinker and ice cream eater's guide to the at,
the first-ever thru-hiker guidebook.
I had just an old f-150 Ford pickup truck and I
initially went by myself and sat on the tailgate
and I fed people, either we cooked eggs
or we cooked hotdogs.
I conscripted Megan at, she thinks it was the age of 12,
she's 28 now.
I conscripted her to help me
and then my sister, who is the cook over there,
she joined us not too many years after.
- Maybe a year or two? - A year or two after that.
- Not long. - And so from the three of us,
we've just sort of grown exponentially.
In addition to omelets,
the easter feast volunteers
freely provide sandwiches, homemade desserts and more.
It was the best trail magic I received during my hike.
Trail magic is really anything you do
that's nice for the appalachian trail hikers,
anyone going through, if they need food or shelter,
water or a ride or a band-aid,
anything you do to help someone along the trail
is considered trail magic. Right.
And the people that do that are called trail angels.
- Trail magic. - Trail magic is like
the greatest thing that happens in a day.
I think that really makes the trail what it is,
it's not just hiking repetitively every single day,
it's just random acts of kindness like, you know,
a beer or gatorade, some bag of chips,
some people just leave water.
- Yeah. - Some people, you know,
they give you a ride unexpectedly when you didn't even,
weren't even banking on a ride into town or you need one,
like, all right, cool, I'll take it.
We were in... = Franklin.
Franklin and this couple just picked us up
and took us to their house and fed us dinner
and we thought that was the most amazing thing.
They let us kayaking on their...
Yeah, they gave us... = on their lake house.
- Yeah. - With their dog.
Then fed us breakfast and dinner.
And then, two days later, or three days later,
it happened again at the noc.
Like this other couple just... Picked us up,
took us out to dinner, gave us a tour of asheville
then drove us back. It was great.
I think we've had more nights in a bed
than in a shelter. - No, no.
I didn't expect the community aspect of it out here,
I expected kind of a backcountry, solitary kind of thing,
that kind of experience.
I've been overwhelmed with the
generosity people have out here.
Oh gatorade, wonderful, thanks a lot.
With so many what I call alumni out there,
there's so much more trail magic 'cause you have
15,000 people that have thru-hiked.
And when I did it, I was only the 884th person
ever to thru-hike in the first 50, 60 years.
And Megan was 898th just to get to Harpers ferry.
There's so many people out there that have hiked the trail
or have connections with it,
we're all gathered at every road crossing from here,
from Georgia to Maine,
we're just trying to help somebody out.
Oh, let me help you!
And that really didn't exist, you know, when I was there.
It's pretty much a utopia out here,
as far as people go.
One imagines Benton mackaye
would be happy to hear the term "utopia"
spoken with regards to the trail.
He was fond of the word. In a 1927 speech, he said,
But as much as he believed in it, mackaye rarely went out
to scout, map and build the trail himself.
In 1926, judge g. Arthur Perkins
was appointed to fill a new england vacancy in the atc.
Perkins rallied new volunteers
to the floundering trail project.
The most important was a 27-year-old maritime lawyer
named myron Avery.
Soon after being introduced to the project,
Avery pushed for a new Washington, D.C. meeting
to rework the appalachian trail conference's purpose.
The new goal was to,
The focus was now on creating a footpath,
building the new communities that mackaye hoped
would connect to the trail was no longer a priority.
Avery became atc chairman in 1931.
With his signature measuring wheel,
he led many of the expeditions to scout
and cut the appalachian trail footpath.
It was Avery who introduced the white blazes
that are still the signature markers of the at today.
He specifically required that blazes should be,
I think he had a passion for excellence.
He had a strong commitment to hiking and outdoor recreation
and the appalachian trail was unique,
it was the first long-distance hiking trail in the world,
you know, of this length.
And so I think he had a vision for
how do you make this trail sustainable
and he pushed and pushed and pushed
and often made people angry because,
you know, it was kind of myron's way or no way.
I mean, he said here's the vision, let's go do it.
He didn't ask for a lot of ideas from other people.
One trail club supervisor said of Avery,
The friendly town of Franklin, north Carolina
encourages hikers to stop by the brew pub
inside the local outfitter
and add their trail names to the wall.
Whether personally chosen or bestowed by others,
most hikers go by their trail names
in lieu of their real ones.
I included my own recently-bestowed trail name, no pants.
I got caught in a torrential downpour, soaking my clothes.
At the nearest shelter, I hung the wet articles to dry
but continued on, accidentally leaving one item behind.
Fortunately, another group of hikers found my pants
and arrived at the next shelter looking for someone with
no pants.
My pants were returned and I now had my trail name.
I'm forest.
I'm flojack.
And...
Mother earth gave us our trail names.
Mm-hmm.
My trail name is bee sting.
Did you get a bee sting early on?
I got stung about six times up in Maine in one day.
My trail name is indy.
My trail name is frank.
My trail name is Mac daddy.
After looking at several trail names,
my wife and I conferred
with respect to the name resolute.
The dictionary definition of resolute is to pursue
and keep pursuing an admirable purpose or cause
and I had started having heart trouble almost two years ago
and took about a year and a half to get through
the treatment for that.
So felt like that resolute
described coming back from a heart condition.
And then an irony of my story is I found out
the stint that they used
in my heart for my microvascular disease
is called the resolute stint.
I did not know that until after I'd chosen,
already chosen the name resolute.
- What's your trail name? - I don't have a trail name.
I think they're kind of silly and I don't really feel like
having one.
I don't like dislike trail names but
I just feel too ambivalent to start calling myself
by something like that.
So you go by your regular name?
Yep, my name's Tobias and that's what I'm doing.
And myself and I have two other friends
and none of us have trail names and we're,
the longer the trail goes along, we become fewer and fewer,
the nameless, but it works.
North of Franklin is Fontana dam
and great smoky mountains national park.
Here the trail follows about 71 miles of ridgeline
over some of the highest peaks in the eastern United States.
So I was really looking forward to the smokies.
Like really looking forward to them.
And every day people are bashing on them and like
there's gonna be snow, there's all these rules so
I'm looking forward to the smokies but
we'll see if they actually are as good
as I think they're gonna be.
One of the rules unique to the great smokies
is the backcountry permit requirement.
Since 2013, the park has become the only part of the at
that hikers must pay to enter.
Great smoky mountains is, as I understand it,
the most-used park in the country
so you can understand why there are certain restrictions
on people if there's so many people using it.
But as a hiker you want some freedom
and with the restrictions you pretty much must
spend your night at the shelter.
If the shelter is not filled,
then you must fill in to get it full
before you camp outside.
And then, you know, you have the section hikers
who come through and they have that whole reservation thing.
So, you know, they can roll into the camp really late
and then be like we have reservations
and, you know, thru-hikers have to get out
and set up tent outside which happened like twice.
With its towering peaks,
the popularity of the smokies is no mystery.
Clingmans dome is the roof of the appalachian trail.
At 6,643 feet above sea level,
it is the highest peak in the smokies,
the highest peak in Tennessee
and the highest peak on the trail.
On clear days, visibility from the top
of the observation tower reaches 100 miles.
I was a little bit shocked at clingmans dome,
I was like what the fuck?
Who put that thing of star trek on top of that mountain?
It looks like a ufo something.
It was a little bit annoying but,
I mean, okay, that's okay.
I hated the smokies.
Not particularly the smokies,
the weather. The weather in the smokies.
Yeah, I mean, the smokies are nice.
- Stayed wet for nine days. - We packed 34 people,
34 or 35 people in a shelter in the smokies
when it's only supposed to be 15 people.
- 12 or something. - 'Cause it was pouring rain
and we didn't want people to get cold and rainy out there.
Just shoved 'em all in there.
Though this wasn't my experience,
the upper elevations here usually see between 55
and 85 inches of rain a year,
enough to be classified as temperate rainforests.
It's just awful when everything you own is wet
and when your shoes are wet, your feet hurt even worse
and you slip on stuff, it's not fun.
You hike the appalachian river.
Yeah.
The most difficult thing is, I would say,
trying to like break down camp in the rain.
You know, being hungry and not being able to cook
and just ugh.
It can be difficult but
soon as you put the pack on and start hiking, man,
it's just, I don't know, just get into the zone
and just keep going.
And eventually it gets better.
I think 1t rained at least 30 days
out of my first 30 days.
So it was just constant swampy feet
and our feet were just gnarly and
it was mud and rain, it was nasty but super fun.
The funny thing is now, any time it's a rainy day,
I just feel like I'm supposed to be out hiking.
= it had rained on us for about
the entire second half of one day and all the next day
and we got to a shelter, the shelter was kind of leaky
and everything I owned was wet
but we kind of rigged up my tarp to stop the wind
and the rain from getting in
and I just took out my pad and my sleeping bag
and laid down and I was in this little bubble of warmth
in like a very, very, very hostile world.
And it was very like, very physical moment.
Like I was really happy with the state that my body was in.
If that makes sense. - Yeah.
I've rarely appreciated being warm so much.
And that was cool, I really liked that.
And I fell asleep like a baby.
To escape the bad weather,
catching a ride at newfound gap
is the way to the nearest town.
When we went through the smokies we had
six and a half days or rain. Yeah.
And one day and two hours in the morning of sunshine.
So gatlinburg was a respite.
I hope you enjoy your visit to gatlinburg.
- Shatlinburg. - Shatlinburg,
that's what we've named it.
It was a huge contrast between that and the trail,
it was like a trail town crossed with like
a boardwalk at a beach or something
with an amusement park mixed in, it was weird.
It was so overwhelming.
Scary, sit-down theater attraction
what do you call that alcohol that they put in jars?
- Moonshine. - Moonshine?
- Moonshine! - I got really, really,
really drunk, like really drunk.
Yeah, there was a lot of moonshine.
In gatlinburg we had people taking our picture
while we were hitchhiking. Yeah.
Like they'd just pull up on the corner
and taking pictures of us with their iPhones or whatever.
They look at you like you're like a bear or something.
Happy to get back on the trail
after being there? - Oh yeah.
- Yeah. - Absolutely,
couldn't get back on the trail soon enough.
My hike through the great smoky mountains
was made especially memorable
by the time of year I was there.
So I just came there when spring arrived.
That was awesome.
There's nothing like spring in the smokies.
These mountains are old,
relatively undisturbed
and the climate is favorable.
So as a result you have a diverse and spectacular
display of wildflowers.
You never know what you're going to find around each bend.
My favorite flower, I think, is the white fringed phacelia,
endemic to the Southern appalachians,
so found nowhere else in the world and yet within its range,
it's a small flower, yet somewhat fragrant.
And so when you pass by, the air has a hint
of the sweet smell of phacelia.
There's nothing like spring in the smokies.
For about a week and a half,
we were around the north Carolina-Tennessee border
just bopping back and forth.
North of the smokies,
the north Carolina-Tennessee section of trail
is known for its vast balds, such as Max patch.
That whole walk through Max patch,
I mean, even if you're just gonna day hike it or
section hike that part, that's just awesome.
We cowboy camped up on Max patch.
- Oh yeah. - That was really cool.
That was really cool.
There were a bunch of stars out.
Being able to lay out under the stars
and watch the sunset on one side
and the moon rise on the other
and then being able to wake up and watch the moon set
on one side and the sunrise on the other was just amazing.
Camping on Max patch has to be the highlight
of the trip so far.
The towns have been really great.
Everyone is really, in most towns, are really supportive
and you can tell they love that the hikers come through.
And like hot Springs was amazing,
I can see how people get stuck there.
Have there been any highlights
as far as towns go, maybe hot Springs or Damascus?
- Hot Springs. - Hot Springs.
Like full stop, hot Springs was the greatest town ever.
Hot Springs has everything hikers need.
Food resupply, an outfitter, bars and restaurants
are located directly on the trail
as it runs down main street.
It's not like there's that much stuff,
it's just all hiker friendly.
It was just everything was designed
perfectly for a hiker.
Everything was close together and,
you know, I just, I really enjoyed that place.
Well, people talk about how the big benefit is the trail
but to me, part of the trail is the zero and the nero days.
Going into the towns, to me, is part of the experience
and part of the memories.
We've run into people who just got like sucked in
and couldn't leave, they were there for like nine days
or something absurd.
I think I kinda got sucked into the hot Springs bubble
ish, you know, I spent too much time there
and started getting like oh, I might move here.
But then getting out of it I'm like, no,
that would be stupid, there's like one street.
The way I look at it is when you start the trail,
you're just a normal person, but then you grow this
like thick layer of like just toughness and wild
and you just become an animal.
And then when you go and see your friends and family
or spend too much time in town,
the other side of you kind of takes back over.
So after a short while in hot Springs,
it was time to be on my way,
north towards the roan highlands.
Roan highlands were incredible.
Yeah, all those balds.
Right after roan mountain, Jane bald
and hump mountain were just like amazing climbs.
And I saw snow up there. Really?
Yeah.
On may third or something, it was crazy.
Come on, come on, come on!
Every may, the trail days festival
is held in Damascus, Virginia,
just north of the Tennessee border.
As in hot Springs, the appalachian trail runs right through
the middle of Damascus, making the town
an ideal home for the festival.
I got a new pack.
Go Gregory. - For free!
- Yay! - For free,
she got it for free. - Oh, nice.
Yeah, so that was rad.
The parade was awesome,
seeing everyone whooping and hollering.
Woo!
And all the people of Damascus come out to watch us
and spray us with water guns and all that kind of stuff.
It was just kind of fun to see all the years
of people that were there.
Trail days brings together hikers
both past and present.
I mean, everybody knew everybody, pretty much.
- It was cool. - Everybody was like-
hey, what's up?
It was cool 'cause like I saw like everybody
who I'd met on the trail before,
we were kind of spread out at this point,
they're all here together. So,
everybody's around, you know, just a great community
and, yeah, just one big party.
Skinny as a fucking rail, man.
They're eating themselves at that point.
That's right.
Trail days was...
A lot of people enjoyed themselves.
It was a little bit of a debauchery.
It would've been my scene
if I were a little bit younger.
Yeah.
Cause it was a lot of people just like
super messed up on a lot of different stuff.
There was nothing even going on, it was just like
a lot of tents in a field.
But we stayed in the quieter part of tent city
so there was like this big baseball field
all the way to the left and then there's this big fire pit
and that's where the drum circle is
and that's where it gets crazy.
But I'm super impressed with the people
in the drum circle, like the fourth night,
you know, they're just like, they're still dancing.
I mean, I think it was Thursday night,
one of my friends, ninja face was on the drums
and his hand was just swollen up after.
Oh wow.
That's how intense he was going at it.
Wow.
The bonfire drum circle definitely exhibits
one kind of very excited energy
that people have for being out here but
I think that it would be cool if they could capture
that community vibe that you get when you're seeing people
and meeting people in that more like
relaxed kind of setting instead of, you know..
For six hours around a raging bonfire.
But that's reminiscent of our society too, you know?
We put a lot of emphasis on like yeah, rage!
But nice like, hey, let's, you know,
sit and talk to this person.
So did you guys go to trail days?
Or miss that?
We skipped it.
We ended up getting there a few days early
but when we rolled into town there were like
already police officers hustling people.
And then it just kind of seemed like it was a giant party
and we had been in Damascus for a couple of days
so it was just like time to leave.
Yeah.
But then like right after that you go to
the Grayson highlands so we got to enjoy it
like basically by ourselves.
One of my favorite places in the whole country
I only found out about because I walked through it.
Grayson highlands has got these bald mountain tops
with rocky outcroppings.
When I went through, the rhododendrons were blooming
so there's bright purple flowers.
And there's just, you know, wild ponies.
We're sweaty all day so we're totally covered in salt
all the time and we had this one pony
that just kept licking us.
I'm walking along, before we get to the ponies
there was a day hiker just coming down the hill
and she's like, "don't ever trust a pony."
We're just like what?
She goes, "don't ever, don't you turn your back
"on those ponies.”
She was so serious.
So we're kind of laughing about that,
we get up there, we're hanging out at the shelter
and, you know, the ponies come along
and we turned our backs on the ponies
and they start to make off with like,
you know, a sweaty pair of socks.
So she was right, never turn your back on a pony.
I was really like I will stay here,
I will not go back home.
Fuck Germany, fuck everything.
I'll just stay here, build a hut somewhere.
Go fishing trout in a stream and
have some horses and go horse riding.
But not every part of the trail experience
is so idyllic.
The total experience has been pretty incredible.
You know, it's just, it's definitely the hardest thing
I've ever done.
I mean, I don't know anyone who's done a thru-hike
that hasn't been in pain at some point, you know?
There are no pain-free thru-hikes.
Yeah, various injuries.
Knees, ankles.
Left knee right now, right knee earlier.
I had some sort of illness for a while
where I was throwing up a lot.
Lasted like two weeks but
other than that, you got some blisters,
some foot things going on now. Yeah, foot things,
blisters, hot spots that open up right now which bother me.
I mean, I don't know if you've had
that many type of blisters but it hurts.
Every step you take... Every step.
It hurts.
Little tendonitis in the ankles,
little shin splits here,
it's a little sore here.
I think it's because you keep walking every day.
Well, yeah.
I lost a few toenails then my back got infected
from pack rash and I just waited through it
for a week and then went to the free medics
at trail days. - So bad.
It was so gross. And it turned out
being like an infected boil.
And then they just had to pop it and Lance it.
And gave me some antibiotics
and I just had to take them for a week.
I sprained my ankle coming out of the smokies
and had to take some time off.
And then as soon as my ankle healed
I got an upper respiratory infection.
But both of those times, actually, like
having to
do what my body was telling me to do
and not what my brain was telling me to do, you know?
My body is telling me not to hike
and my brain was saying your friends are moving on,
you know, you've got miles to go, you've got, you know?
Having that like internal struggle of like
doing what you're supposed to do
and doing what you want to do,
it was actually, it was really, really hard for me
to see people like move on without me.
But..
My friends are right here.
One of the most common illnesses
among hikers is the norovirus.
Though it usually only lasts for about 48 hours,
the resulting nausea, vomiting and diarrhea
make hiking difficult.
Noro is spread through contact with fecal matter
and is most common in sections of the trail
without privies.
When hiking the appalachian trail,
finding a convenient bathroom is not always possible.
Have you had any injuries or any parts that have been
a little bit tough to get through?
I crapped my pants.
Coming out of hot Springs, I just ate too much greasy food
and I was about 10 miles from hot Springs and basically
the trail was cut into a hill
and so it was straight down, trail, straight down
and I just had to crap and I couldn't,
like there's no way to get off and so like
you just hold it as much as you can
and just hope and pray that there would be a campsite soon
and eventually there was but it was not soon enough.
And so, you know, there's no one to clean up after you,
you have to clean up your own shit.
Out here, what can you do?
You can't throw them away, you have to wash it,
you have to clean up after yourself.
And so it was just sitting there being like
I'm miserable and I wish I could quit
but I am 10 miles from anything
and have to clean up after myself.
So you clean up after yourself and
go to bed early.
People on the trail know how to take care of themselves
and know how to like solve problems
and are flexible and like,
it's like little things like just don't really get to people
on the trail because there's been so many other
bigger problems that everyone has had to deal with.
I mean, there's a lot of...
You know, repetition and monotony on the trail as well
so I mean, it's just, kind of have to embrace it.
- Yeah. - All.
For a lot of thru-hikers,
our tolerance for monotony is especially tested
in the 550 mile trek through Virginia.
Here, many become afflicted with the Virginia blues.
There was trail days and then the Grayson highlands
right after that and it was just like, oh god,
I don't know how the Virginia blues exist.
But after like a month of being here,
I got 'em pretty hard.
Virginia blues, it's a real thing.
It does exist.
You know, I think a lot of people start to get a little bit
bored in Virginia and that contributes a lot to it.
It's summertime, a lot of people are used to going
on vacations, going to the beach,
so you're thinking about all the other places
that you'd rather be.
Virginia is so big that such a long stretch
of the at runs through Virginia
so it gets kind of boring because you don't have
the state lines, sometimes the state lines
are like milestones and you think you're getting to places
but in Virginia I thought I'm stuck here forever.
But Virginia isn't all green tunnel,
the trail crosses the James river
by way of the James river foot bridge,
named appropriately for hiking advocate
and 1987 thru-hiker, William t. Foot.
Further to the north lie the keffer oak,
the largest blazed tree on the appalachian trail,
and the rock monoliths dragon's tooth..
And mcafee knob, the most-photographed spot on the at.
It's just like everyone tells you Virginia's flat
and Virginia's definitely not flat.
Like at all.
I mean, you don't go up in super high elevations
but you still go up and down and up and down every day.
Yeah, I heard a lot that it was gonna be flat
coming into here, Virginia was definitely not flat at all.
So that rumor definitely is persisting.
It should be time to put it to bed for good.
Virginia had a reputation of being easy
so I thought, okay, here's my 25 mile days.
There weren't nearly as many of 'em as I expected
plus some of them there's rocks.
And I just expected a cake walk,
I was disillusioned by that.
But that being said, I like the trail towns of Virginia,
I thought Virginia was pretty.
I enjoyed Virginia.
For me, Virginia was where my hike
began to feel less like a vacation
and more, for better and worse,
like a new lifestyle.
It's nice not having contact with
all the news and hearing about everything
that's going on in the world.
One of the things about the trail
that I really enjoyed is just the simplicity,
you know pretty much what you're doing every day,
you're getting up and hiking,
have a good idea of where you're going.
You might stop short, but you've got
this one trail to follow.
I think it's nice to have a break from the rat race.
You're with nature, with mother earth
and have only your body to listen to,
nothing forcing messages at you,
only things that are living.
Thus every day is so beautiful.
It's life.
If there is a flat section of Virginia,
it's through shenandoah national park
near the northern end of the state.
It was really, really flat compared to
what we've been doing recently so
we could just like bust a lot of miles
to the next restaurant.
And that was pretty much what kept me going
through the shenandoah.
The shenandoahs is pretty pampering,
all the camp stores and everything.
Coffee, sandwich, snacks.
It's nice.
The waysides, that was great, they had great burgers,
you know, sodas.
I ate as much as I could through shenandoah.
A lot of places to eat which was really nice.
Yeah, that was the best part.
The wildlife was pretty crazy, the deer coming up to you.
Even with all the park-protected animals,
the existence of skyline drive
makes shenandoah less of a wilderness experience
than other parts of the trail.
The at crosses this road frequently.
When skyline drive was initially being proposed,
it was a source of great controversy,
controversy that led to a permanent falling out
between Benton mackaye and myron Avery.
After a while they had a very sharp split
because mackaye was a dreamer
and was like let's protect this trail everywhere
and Avery was the okay, let's get this done.
They wound up splitting over the proposed skyline drive
in what was already shenandoah national park.
Through a depression-era new deal program
called the civilian conservation corps, or ccc,
the federal government had assisted in building
the appalachian trail.
To oppose skyline drive
would risk losing the federal government as an ally.
Mackaye opposed that road, Avery said it was okay.
The road was following, gonna follow the route where
the appalachian trail had actually been put
and they had to move the trail
in order to accommodate the road.
In a later interview, mackaye said,
The last known correspondence between Avery and mackaye
depicts them amidst the argument over skyline drive.
When mackaye wrote to criticize Avery's support of the road,
Avery wrote back,
Given their different personalities and approaches,
the falling out between the man of ideas
and the man of action may have been inevitable.
And yet the combination of ideas and action
each man provided did something extraordinary.
And on August 14th, 1937,
a ccc team completed the final stretch
of the appalachian trail.
The dream had become reality.
Technically, a thru-hike involves walking every white blazed
part of the trail but many hikers opt to mix things up.
I got to aqua Blaze the shenandoahs
and that was a really cool experience.
In hiker speak,
aqua blazing is when a section of trail
is bypassed on water.
Blue blazing is when hikers bypass part of the at
on a different trail.
And bypassing part of the trail in a vehicle
is called yellow blazing. Yellow blazing-
- it's when you follow the yellow lines in the road.
Following the yellow lines in the road, it's basically,
in some people's minds cheating.
Other people's, it's hike your own hike.
Hitchhiking is still hiking.
And then there's pink blazing.
Pink blazing is when you find that you're attracted
to someone and you change the course of your hike
to match theirs.
In a passionate way.
And sometimes make a fool of yourself.
The hard thing about pink blazing is it's like,
well are they following you, are you following them,
or are you just hiking around each other?
But it's not that serendipitous, like, oh,
it just so happens that we're all at the same shelter
again for night seven in a row!
Like at some point, you know someone's following someone.
I think it started out where we were following them,
like we're never gonna hike more than 15 miles
in the smokies and then we were doing like three 18s
to keep up with them.
And then by the end they were following us and we're like...
They were doing like 12 mile days
and chilling. - To stay with us.
Whether it's friendships or like people you hike with,
I think it's way less solo hikers now
and like people who have started hiking together
and they're either like real couples or friendships.
I don't know any straight woman out here who's like...
Completely by themselves.
- Completely by themselves. - Yeah.
Even if she wants to be.
No.
- No, like, but seriously! - Maybe.
Maybe you don't wanna be, I don't know.
- I don't know, yeah. - Be interesting.
Makes it a lot harder to pink Blaze.
Tell me about it!
I'm chomping at the bit, I'm ready to get out of Virginia
and start knocking out the states again.
You know, you go through,
West Virginia's only like four miles.
North of Virginia,
the trail moves into Harpers ferry, West Virginia,
the site of abolitionist John brown's 1859 raid.
Brown attempted to raid the town's arsenal
in order to start an armed revolution and end slavery.
He was thwarted and hanged.
But in terms of hikers,
the most significant place in Harpers ferry
is the office of the appalachian trail conservancy.
Since its founding in 1925,
the atc has been the leading organization
in building and maintaining the trail.
From 1925 to 1937 we helped build the trail.
For the next 30 years we came up with a sustainable plan
for using our trail club affiliated partners
and our own abilities to put trail crews on the trail
to actually manage, maintain,
rehab, relocate the trail
and we've got, I think, a great system for that now.
The atc also keeps a photo archive
of the hikers that pass through.
All right, looks like you've hiked 1,000 some miles.
The trail through Harpers ferry
goes past Jefferson rock.
Its namesake, Thomas Jefferson,
would say of the view from the rock,
"this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”
North of Harpers ferry,
the trail runs along the c&o canal into Maryland.
Maryland is home to several state parks,
including the war correspondents memorial arch
in gathland state park
and Washington monument state park.
Completed in 1827, this Washington monument
predates the one in D.C. by 61 years.
People think that Maryland is easy.
Maryland is not easy.
None of this trail I've been on so far is easy.
The sad truth is that most of the people
that start a long hike,
an expedition length backing trip,
the sad truth is that most of them,
for one reason or another, do not complete it.
I definitely thought about quitting.
I'm not going to quit but, you know,
anybody that says that there's no way
that they would ever think about quitting a trail,
that's just not true.
Like you're gonna think about quitting at some point,
it's just a matter of how you deal with it.
Some days are really hard, it was kinda like eh,
I didn't see too many people today.
You know, I've gone enough miles to start thinking about
like, eh, it's enough miles for me.
You know, maybe I'll go home.
I don't know what it is that makes you just keep going
but it's maybe stubbornness, stupidity, I don't know.
I sometimes found that listening to music,
podcasts or audio books helped.
I listen to a lot of books.
Right now I'm listening to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
And that kinda gets me in my head
so I'm just trucking along
and not really thinking about stuff.
Reaching milestones like the at mid-point
can be another strong motivator.
I really was like hustling to get this halfway point
'cause I feel like it's a milestone,
it's like you've made it that far.
So it gives you a little juice, hopefully,
to continue on, you know?
Near the mid-point
is the appalachian trail museum.
And you kind of like look at the history
and it gave me like a second wind,
or like more motivation I guess you could say.
The museum has exhibits on the trail
and its most famous thru-hikers.
The first thru-hiker was a guy named Earl shaffer.
He was a veteran of world war il.
Before the war, shaffer and his friend,
Walter winemiller, dreamed of hiking the trail together.
But Walter was killed at lwo jima
and shaffer wrote,
In 1948, after reading an article about the trail,
shaffer decided to revisit his old dream
and walk the army out of his system,
both mentally and physically.
In his memoir, walking with spring, shaffer,
who used the trail name crazy one,
describes a challenging journey.
At that time the trail was not easy to follow
in many places, it was not that well marked.
Three years after the war ended, the volunteers,
level of volunteerism that was available
during the war was minimal, so he had to hunt for the trail.
I mean, it wasn't like today where you follow
one white Blaze after another.
J far yonder lies a long, high, lonesome trail >
while he was making his way north,
the appalachian trailway news published an article,
co-written by myron Avery, explaining why a thru-hike
would be virtually impossible.
When shaffer finished, he was thoroughly cross examined
by trail officials to prove that he had truly walked
the entire trail.
Shaffer would go on to complete two more thru-hikes,
a north-to-south hike in 1965
and another northbound hike in 1998,
when he was 79 years old.
J and point the way to heaven's vestibule j
j far yonder lies a long, high lonesome trail >
by then, large sections of trail
had been rerouted away from flat roads
and over more hills and mountains.
Shaffer felt that this made the trail too difficult.
He ended his last thru-hike saying,
Between his hikes, shaffer stayed involved
with the trail community, including serving for five years
as atc corresponding secretary.
He died of cancer in 2002.
In Benton mackaye's original appalachian trail proposal,
he argued for the mental health benefits
of being in nature.
Since then, various psychological studies
have supported his notions.
As Earl shaffer walked the trail to find peace
after suffering trauma and loss,
others have followed in his footsteps.
I got medically retired out for PTSD out of the army
and...
There's like the warrior walk out here,
I've seen a couple of other army dudes out here,
veterans and shit like that, just trying to calm down.
I guess maybe you might calm down a little bit
and see things a little brighter
after you get smacked down by mother nature
like every day for a few months, it might help you,
I'm not sure but
it's something to do, right, you know?
For 18 years I've been a corrections chaplain in Ohio,
you know, married with five kids and
I'd just always looked at it, despite my desire,
and thought how does anybody ever do that?
You know?
How do you resign from life
for five or six months and just go out and
pursue that?
Then, eight months ago last...
September 21, my wife died. I'm sorry to hear that.
You know, and that,
it just changes everything so
it went from something I felt like I wanted to do
to something I felt like I needed to do.
I actually, I had been pretty depressed for a while
before coming out here and always known of the trail
as kind of like an option of something I could do.
I wanted something big to do
and typically when I'm upset I go on a long walk.
So I decided to go on a really long walk.
So now I'm here.
Inspired by shaffer's 1948 hike,
long-distance backpacking began to slowly gain popularity.
The numbers of thru-hikers picked up very slowly.
The next person to do it was a guy named gene espy in 1952.
In 1955, 67-year-old Emma "grandma" gatewood
became the first woman to thru-hike the trail.
Wearing tennis shoes and carrying a bag rather than
a backpack and sleeping on a lot of people's front porches,
not seeking publicity but she got a lot of publicity.
She became a national figure.
I think that she gets probably more credit
than anyone else for popularizing the idea
of hiking the whole appalachian trail.
By the end of the 1960s,
less than 100 people had hiked the entire appalachian trail.
Over 700 people hiked in the 1970s alone.
Since then, the number of thru-hikers each decade
more and more people are finding reasons to thru-hike.
So why'd you guys wanna do the trail?
That's a tough question.
I guess the main reason is I've never,
I've started a lot of things in my life
but I've never really completed something.
And I figured this would be a pretty good thing
to start and finish.
The idea of hiking the appalachian trail terrified me
so naturally I had to do it.
Well, I didn't really have a whole lot of other things
to do, really.
I graduated college about a year ago
and I was an english major so jobs weren't exactly
thrown my way or anything like that.
I just like to hike.
I know everybody's got like a really big back story
sometimes but I just like to hike.
Regardless of their reasons
for starting the trail,
many hikers agree on their least favorite section.
Pa was by far my least favorite state
right now, I guess at this point.
Every rock in northern Pennsylvania is a point.
And all of 'em are like that close together
and they're like embedded into the ground so...
- And they move. - No flat place to step,
it's all just spikes on the bottoms of your feet all day.
I wanted to quit pretty much
the whole way through Pennsylvania.
My feet still hurt from the rocks.
I destroyed multiple pairs of inserts.
You're just worried about rolling your ankle
the whole time and there's not really much of a view
and the view you get is just farmland.
But the people were nice,
we had some really good trail magic.
In fact, most of the trail
in Southern Pennsylvania is through flat farmland.
- The last 50-ish miles? - Yeah.
70 miles or so, that's rocksylvania.
The beginning of it I didn't feel like was too bad actually.
- It wasn't terrible. - And it was
super well maintained, I thought.
About 80 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line
is the town of duncannon, home to the Doyle hostel
and to the cabin, the only strip bar
located directly on the at.
North of duncannon is the worst of the rocks.
The way the northbounders would talk about it
was like, you know, Pennsylvania was the worst!
At some point your sort of just expected to see
northbounders impaled on the rocks
when you went through it just 'cause it was so bad,
apparently, but I mean,
we were like, oh, this is it?
Oh, okay.
If I had any fun with the rocks of Pennsylvania
it was during the climb up the zinc superfund site,
the location of a former zinc smelting operation
that left the side of blue mountain defoliated.
Climbing the superfund site,
I felt as if I was living through a true adventure.
My life is a video game.
Like I get to be out here in the world
and I'm walking it.
You know, it's like a different adventure every day.
The site is located just outside
the town of palmerton.
When I hiked in 2014,
palmerton was a popular hiker rest stop.
But that was soon to change.
There are people out here that are like serious hikers,
people that are just enjoying it,
but then there's partiers.
Like there's people that you run into
that are just out to drink, you know,
hang out, smoke, not get up and hike 'til 11 or 12
then, you know, not put in serious miles.
But that's whatever you wanna do, you know?
To each their own, but, yeah.
I'm not out here to party.
Like there's a big party culture on the trail.
Occasionally, that party culture
becomes a problem.
For 40 years, palmerton allowed hikers to stay for free
in the town hall basement.
In 2015, the town ended that service
because of hiker behavior.
A lot of places unfortunately, like in New York
and closer to new england where there had been
camping available at stores and stuff like that,
like behind garden centers and whatever,
but it was all closed to us.
The northbounders ruined it all for us.
- Or, you know, whoever. - People ruined it.
- Yeah, yeah. - Other hikers.
- Being irresponsible. - Laundromats were like,
no, some guy got naked here, you can't clean
your clothes here anymore. Yeah.
In waynesboro, Virginia, there was like a free ymca shower
and a free park where we could camp at
and some hikers got drunk like a few nights
before I got there and ended up like burning a tent down and
left like trash everywhere that people had to clean up.
I don't really get how people get so entitled.
Like we're just walking in the woods,
we can't come out and then, you know,
expect people to just give us things and
expect to be able to just get trashed
and make as much noise and party everywhere.
Like some people really think that.
It seems like I've heard more stories this year about
bad hikers and it's really disheartening because
they're giving the other ones a bad name
and for the most part people are really helpful,
really friendly, abide by the rules.
And it's just sad that some hostels are having a hard time
with a bad egg or two.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
New Jersey was great
'cause you get out of Pennsylvania and it's just instantly
like way better.
While it has its share of views,
New Jersey is one of the lowest states on the east coast.
Its highest point of elevation,
the appropriately-named high point,
is only about 1,800 feet above sea level.
The trail here runs close to civilization
but wild animal sightings are common.
Oh my gosh!
New Jersey has definitely got some serious bear activity.
Black bears, the only bears found near
the appalachian trail.
Unlike the grizzlies found in the western United States,
black bears are rarely aggressive.
Bears will poke around here and there
but most of the time they're afraid of you
more than you are them and you kinda yell and they'll run.
I've had a couple encounters where
they don't really wanna back off,
they get accustomed to people, our food.
There were these kinda comical
posters about a problem bear in the area.
So we sorta laughed at them, somebody had a sharpie marker
and drew a pair of glasses on one of the illustrations
so we were kinda laughing about it.
We get to the shelter, we take all the proper precautions,
we hung our bags up on cables.
In the middle of the night we hear this like ting ting
ting ting weird sound.
So immediately I think that mice are getting into our packs.
So I wake up and I turned my headlamp on.
I'm like, "guys, guys, I think the mice
"are getting into our packs!"
And from the other side of the shelter,
another hiker turns his headlamp on
and he's got a view outside of the shelter
and he just goes, "that's a big mouse!"
And it turns out there was a rather large black bear
just tugging on the cables.
And it had figured out that if it tugged hard enough
it would break the crimp in the cable.
So all the sudden our food falls to the ground.
It grabs our food bag, we go into bear mode
so we're like taking our pots and pans and just
yelling at it trying to scare it off.
The bear didn't care, it ended up laying down in front of us
and eating our food.
So we got some camp fuel and we lit the fire.
And it still didn't care,
it ate all of our food by firelight.
So we waited there, kinda terrified all night
and there was another guy sleeping in a tent
and we were able to get him up to the shelter
just 'cause there's safety in numbers.
And the rest of the night we hear the bear
pulling on the bear cables where his stuff is hung.
And then in the morning as the sun's coming up,
we can see the bear still pulling on the cables,
it sees that we're watching it and it just gives up
'cause it can't get the food down.
And then it thrashed his tent.
It just tore it apart.
So basically we made Spears and we tied our
leatherman knives to the ends of sticks and stuff
and then we all hiked out, you know, close together.
In the woods, you're never completely alone.
Snakes, I've seen so many snakes.
- Snakes. - Yeah.
I've seen an overabundance of the
black rat snakes all over the place,
like most of them have been over four feet,
I think the biggest one I saw was like six feet.
The black rat snake may look intimidating,
however they are not venomous.
Rattlesnakes and copperheads are.
I was about four miles out from camp,
nobody was behind me, and I hike in chacos
and I looked down and there was a copperhead at my feet
and it like strikes at my foot
and I like just was inches away from getting
bit by this copperhead.
I was on a lake with my camera
taking a picture and suddenly a guy said,
"please don't move."
I didn't move, I had my camera like that,
I looked between my legs and was a copper rattlesnake
between my legs.
I stopped breathing, you know?
When it was three feet away, I breathed,
I turn back, there were three other ready to strike.
I was in a den rattlesnake, and I didn't see it coming!
Maybe it's not hard to imagine
why some people think of the woods
as a place where danger lurks around every corner.
The most shocking comment I got was like,
"aren't you gonna bring a gun?
"It's so unsafe out here."
I'm like no, that's, a. That's like 10 pounds
that I don't wanna carry. Yeah, I have a little
Swiss army knife. And b. That's just like
adding more risk of it going off.
- Yeah. - And the whole thing
about the trail is you wanna bring people together.
Yeah.
I saw one guy with a gun and I was like...
Yeah.
I have an American friend that kept on telling me
to get a gun for the bears.
But I didn't take it seriously.
We have bigger snakes in Australia.
- Yeah. - They're more poisonous but,
lyme disease, I was scared,
I'm scared of that. Yeah, we're worried.
I still am scared of lyme disease.
Transmitted through tick bite,
lyme disease is an infection whose symptoms include:
Lyme disease can be prevented with bug spray
and treated with antibiotics
but it has forced many a thru-hiker
temporarily off the trail.
I got one deer tick bite
so we'll see if that turns into lyme,
otherwise we'll be fine.
All of my female friends were like bring a gun,
bring mace, like don't trust humans.
Fortunately, violence committed by humans
is incredibly rare.
There have been less than 15 murders or attempted murders
reported along the appalachian trail since its inception.
By comparison, the FBI estimates there were over 15,000
murders committed across the United States in 2015 alone.
In normal life, you accept all these different
like potential causes of death.
You know, like you drive your car all the time.
Same thing when you get on the trail,
it's like you accept the fact that a bear could,
you could have some sort of encounter with a bear
or you could get struck by lightning
or you could get squashed by a tree but you just,
you accept the risks and you don't constantly
live with them in the front of your mind.
It's just a different way of living, you know?
If there's scary things, there's scary things.
Animal sightings are all but guaranteed
in New York where the trail passes
right through the bear mountain zoo.
Also located directly on the trail
is a train that goes straight into New York City.
I went to New York City for a day
but I got the hell out of there as soon as I got in there.
I took the train in, I took the bus out.
Kinda like I'm ready to get back in the woods
type thing? - Too expensive.
Can't ask anybody anything, let's get outta here.
People go much more out of their way on the trail
to be nice to you, just random strangers,
which is not something you really get,
I think, in day-to-day life.
But it is a really big part of the trail.
You meet all these perfectly nice strangers
that will give you a place to stay and give you food
and you trust them within just meeting them
and that doesn't really happen in the real world.
You don't take time to have conversations
and to get to know someone as quickly as you do on the trail
because you don't have those distractions around you.
The good in people comes out, I think.
I think most people are naturally good but
in the city it's kind of hard to be good,
I think, sometimes, honestly.
Like if I was in D.C. and someone offered me a bananas
and oatmeal cream pies, I'd probably walk away.
Call the cops, like, hey.
But on the trail it's a whole different life.
As it's closeness to the city implies,
the trail in New York is often near civilization.
I was annoyed by the constant sound of cars
as I was hiking through New York.
It seemed like I was always near a freeway
and I think that detracted from the wilderness experience.
You rather preferred sleeping in the like
complete silence in the middle of the woods
than somewhere where you can hear the highway.
Though it's not always easy,
the atc works to preserve the wilderness around the trail.
We were very involved in having a proposed
huge casino development in Southern New York
which would've been directly below
and very visible from the trail,
having that project rejected by the state of New York,
which did approve some new casino sites.
This one was probably the best-financed proposal
and it had the most opposition
and a large piece of that was because it would've
really degraded the appalachian trail view shed.
Most thru-hikers travel through Connecticut's
51 miles during the hottest months of the year.
Connecticut, for me, was actually
the least favorable state that I was in
and partly that was due to the weather,
it was hot and humid when I went through Connecticut.
The mosquitoes were bad.
Connecticut sucked.
Yeah, there were no... Connecticut was the worst.
There were no views, it was just pointless up and downs.
- Puds all day. - The entire way.
- And the people hated us. - Nobody wanted us there.
North of Connecticut,
the 90 miles of trail in Massachusetts
offer a similar experience.
Where you were like in the lowlands
and walking through swamps and you couldn't stop,
it was awful.
Yeah I woke up with my face, my upper lip
out past my nose one morning from a spider bite.
In, that was in Massachusetts. Pine swamp shelter.
- Pine swamp shelter. - I'll never forget it.
That was in Massachusetts, you said?
- I think so. - Pine swamp was Connecticut.
- Oh was it? - Oh wow, Connecticut.
Another reason to not like Connecticut.
Just another strike for Connecticut.
Massachusetts, I probably would cut that state out
altogether, I don't know if it's just when I was there
or what but the mosquitoes were just horrendous
and I almost quit.
After coming all of that way.
The highest peak in Massachusetts
is mount greylock.
At 3,400 feet, greylock is one of the tallest mountains
in Southern new england
but it's little more than a hill
compared to the peaks to the north.
The trail in Vermont often reaches around
4,000 feet above sea level.
Mount killington, the state's second-highest peak,
ascends 4,229 feet.
The southernmost 105 miles of appalachian trail
in Vermont are the same as Vermont's long trail,
which stretches from Massachusetts to Canada.
Completed in 1930, the long trail predates the at
by seven years.
Vermont was probably the best so far,
just the mountaintops in Vermont,
it's really true to the green mountain state thing.
They were gorgeous, there were plants I'd never seen,
it was soft at the top.
I think Vermont was the best hiking,
the best trail, you could hike and not worry about
I broke my finger in Vermont.
Vermont, for the most part,
looks like it hasn't been maintained
pretty much ever.
I mean, it looks like they built the boardwalks
40 years ago and that was what happened,
that was it, that's the trail.
Some of 'em are so loose, you know,
you step on one side and the other side comes
completely up, spikes and all!
She steps on one side and I wasn't paying any attention.
And the other end flies up
and it hits me in the shin
and I just toppled over. Face plants.
'Cause we were like moving along
and I was holding my trekking poles in one hand
and I went to try and ditch my trekking poles
before I fell and instead I just got my hand
tangled up in it and when I hit the board...
Ugh.
It like snapped this finger all the way back.
You know, it was like swollen but I checked it for movement
and made sure all the joints bent and I was like,
okay, whatever, it's fine.
'Cause at that point I was like bleeding all over my shin
and it was like already all swollen.
And the next day I woke up
and my finger was... He's like wake up, wake up!
And I'm like what? It was huge.
And he's holding his finger over my face and I'm like
oh god! - It was crazy.
It was like purple and yellow, I mean,
it was twice the size that it normally is.
It was hugely swollen. But, yeah, boardwalks.
It's funny you said you didn't think Vermont
was very well maintained 'cause the guy who came through
before said he thought it was the best maintained state.
I remember it basically as vermud.
Yeah, it was just muddy.
It's probably different for everybody,
you know, depending on what time of year
you go through there, I'm sure.
But I mean, when we went through there, it rained
once a day and most of the boardwalks were under water.
The trail crosses into New Hampshire
through the town of Hanover...
Home of dartmouth college.
It sometimes can get the reputation as being like a
snobbish town 'cause of dartmouth.
But everybody there was just really nice to me.
I had a trail angel that allowed me to stay
at her house for two days.
I actually got two free doughnuts
at the diner there in town.
You can get a free slice of pizza at the ramunto's place.
Just a really nice town for me, I had a good experience.
Hanover, with its numerous trail angels,
is a perfect rest for hikers
before they enter the white mountains.
Nowhere else on the appalachian trail
has the potential for bad weather
like the white mountains of New Hampshire.
Once you got up on some of those peaks,
there's basically a chance of thunderstorm
after 2 P.M. any day, anything can happen really.
So there's a couple of times in the whites
where I was forced off the peak either by lightning or,
you know, raining sideways or hail,
even on like an 80-degree day.
Coming down into the Madison hut
it started sleeting on us.
It was bad, super icy.
I think it took us like a half hour to do 0.2 or something,
something crazy like that.
New Hampshire, the whites, was the most difficult
thing I've ever done, physically and mentally in my life.
We had about seven days of rain and temperatures
in the high 30s and low 40s.
It was tough but I loved it though.
It was just like being in a giant cloud,
that was the whites for me.
Even when the weather is good,
steep and rocky terrain
makes for some of the most difficult hiking on the at.
The whites were very challenging.
It's harder to go long miles in the whites
because of the steep terrain.
But my favorite views were definitely in the whites,
particularly the Southern whites,
I thought were just absolutely gorgeous.
Some of the most impressive views
are seen from franconia Ridge
and from the mountains of the presidential range,
most famously, mount Washington.
At 6,289 feet,
mount Washington is the highest of the white mountains.
In the winter, the peak can see temperatures
as low as -36 degrees fahrenheit
with a windchill of -94, colder than the surface of Mars.
But in the summer, it is a popular tourist destination.
I enjoyed mount Washington
although I felt a bit on display
'cause there's so many tourists
and they're all looking at you sideways.
You get to the top of mount Washington
and you're on top of this amazing mountain
and there's like electronic doors
and like people payinglfor overpriced pizza.
And it was really funny.
To see less commercialized white mountains,
on foot is the only way to travel.
Once you get above treeline it's
so fun and exciting that you don't really even notice
how hard it actually is.
I thought Southern Maine was way harder than the whites.
The most challenging part of the trail is Maine.
And when you're a southbound, the further challenge is
starting with that, it's a baptism by fire.
It's just so brutal, the terrain is so brutal.
I think it took me like an hour and a half
to do the mahoosuc notch.
The mahoosuc notch was like this amazing
jungle gym for hikers.
I loved it, other people hate it.
For me it was just one of the most fun miles
I've ever hiked anywhere.
The most difficult section is mahoosuc notch, you know?
And that year, I learned at monson shelter,
that a blind man did it with the help of two others.
I don't know if you know the mahoosuc notch, you
have big holes and a guy was trusting his fellow,
put your hand there, your feet, if not, you fall.
He's quite crazy, I think.
What I didn't like was mahoosuc's arm afterwards
where you have to go up that massive hill
straight after the notch.
I mean, it's hard but you climb over all these peaks
and you have awesome views.
It's really beautiful and it's quite different
to the rest of the trail, I found.
Those roots and rocks are a bit challenging in the rain
but apart from that, I thought it was stunning
and Maine really does a beautiful pond.
I love the ponds up here.
Some of the most spectacular ponds in Maine
are seen from the peaks of the bigelow mountains
such as Avery peak,
named for the great trail builder himself.
Upon the trail's 1937 completion, myron Avery wrote,
In 1952, myron Avery died at the age of 53.
The task of preserving the trail passed to others
and new challenges presented themselves.
After world war il, and certainly as we pushed on
into the 1960s, the 1970s,
there was a lot of subdivision
of rural lands, farmland, forest land,
places where the at had been for,
in some cases, several decades.
That has resulted inlthe necessity to have a
publicly-owned and permanently-protected footpath.
In 1968, congress passed
the national trails system act.
Upon signing the act into law,
president lyndon Johnson spoke of a desire to,
The appalachian trail and the pacific crest trail
became the first two trails to be designated
for federal protection.
As of 2018, there are 11 national scenic trails
in the United States.
Congress, in 1978, came back and said,
to the national park service, you need to protect this trail
for the use of future generations and you need to do it
by buying land because that's the only way
we can guarantee that protection.
And they said we're gonna give you money
to do a very ambitious land acquisition project.
And that's what the park service
and to some extent the us forest service
and also certain states like Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts and Maryland and New Jersey
have collaborated with the federal government to do
to the point where today
the trail is 2,189 miles long.
Over 99% of that is on public lands
and is permanently protected.
The national park service and the atc
have a special government to nonprofit relationship.
When they made that big decision to accept
government money and allow the government into the trail
they were concerned that,
you know, the government would come in and control things.
And so they signed this agreement, you know, back in 1984.
According to the agreement,
the national park service only handles government functions
that can't be delegated, including those regarding:
The government allows the atc to remain
the primary managers of the trail.
In 2005, the appalachian trail conference
decided to change its name
to the appalachian trail conservancy.
We wanted to be clear thatlour mission went beyond
just the management of the trail
and the maintenance of the trail
but also went to the long-term protection of the trail,
the conservation of the trail.
Atc has had a major role, leading role,
in lobbying congress and a number of administrations
to make protecting the appalachian trail a high priority
and to get the best possible route for the trail.
During Benton mackaye and myron Avery's
argument over skyline drive, Avery rightly noted
that the road was not interfering
with the wilderness trail because the appalachian trail
was never a path through true wilderness.
The one thing about the trail
I probably didn't really understand was
it's just not as remote as you think it's gonna be, for me.
I was really in the mindset of you gotta bring,
you know, a back up for this and well what if you're
out there and this, and the reality of it is,
you know, every five to 10 miles there's a road
that leads a couple miles to some kind of a town or store.
The longest stretch of wilderness on the at
is the 100 mile wilderness in northern Maine.
If you could take one section of the trail
and encapsulate it as the broader experience
of what the trail is like,
I think this is probably the best example
because you've got your, you know, your rock climbs,
you have the roots, the mud,
the fording, it has it all in 100 miles.
The only major fords on the at are in Maine
and multiple rivers cross the trail
in the 100 mile wilderness.
Oh no!
I was gonna say, you made that look so easy
with shoes on.
I shouldn't have let go of the rope
is the thing. - Aw, damn.
- The rocks and the roots. - Yeah.
It's been taking a lot out of me.
I think everybody's shoes are,
like the tread is not as great as it has been.
So everybody's just slipping all over the place.
Walking over 2,000 miles
takes its toll on both equipment and the body
and many thru-hikers go through the wilderness
eager to finish their journey.
I think it could have been done in 50 miles
and skip a lot of the lakes.
The lakes are cool and all but
I feel like at this point people would rather just
go straight through.
By early October, it's time for
northbound hikers to finish or risk the winter weather.
"Man is born to die.
"His works are short lived.
"Buildings crumble, monuments decay and wealth vanishes
"but katahdin, in all its glory,
"forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine."
So wrote governor percival Baxter,
the man who, in 1930, bought mount katahdin
and its surroundings for the state of Maine.
Today, the highest peak of Maine's highest mountain
is named in his honor.
Baxter peak is also the northern terminus
of the appalachian trail.
I hope this works.
Named by the penobscot indigenous people,
katahdin means "the greatest mountain.”
The trail here is strenuous
but every hand-over-hand scramble is worth it.
As early as September,
katahdin's upper reaches can be covered by hoarfrost.
This was the weather when I first climbed the mountain.
The next year, I returned to climb the mountain again,
accompanying my dad for the end of his own thru-hike.
- Woo! - Yeah.
Up on the tablelands.
At the tableland, the terrain levels off
for the northernmost 1.6 miles of the appalachian trail.
Congratulations!
After nearly 2,200 miles,
the journey of many a thru-hiker ends here at Baxter peak.
Yup!
I had never done any kind of long-distance backpacking
before this and most of these other people haven't either
and
just to
push myself when things got hard,
I used to quit everything I've ever done
except for college.
So it was nice to see that I could push myself
to actually finish something for once.
What are you gonna miss about
life on the trail when you go back to
the world? Well, I'm gonna miss
how nice people are, people are so wonderful on the trail.
People out here are awesome.
I mean, you get the variety that have done nothing
with their lives that just choose one day to go out there,
there are college kids procrastinating,
there are also old war vets that are on their third time
hiking this trail and they're all mashed up into this
lovely little group.
I mean there's so many different walks of life
represented here, people that you wouldn't normally
talk to or get a chance to meet or commune with like at all.
And I think that that's the most valuable part
of the whole trail experience.
I think I'm friends with a lot,
a lot more different people
than I would be in the real world,
in terms of like age difference and like,
I don't know, personality type or...
Yeah.
Whatever.
- Political beliefs. - Yeah, die free!
We love him!
Like one of my closest friends on the trail
is this like really intense libertarian,
he's gonna hate me for saying this, bro from New Hampshire.
And it's like,
me and him could not be more different
and we're tight, he's great.
We get on really well.
There's not a lot of fluff, you know?
There's not a lot of extraneous
unimportant societal, you know,
facets that often times I think get in the way of
more genuine human interaction.
Trail magic is another vital part
of the trail community.
This is awesome, a blessing today.
I learned that all the things I was told
when I was a child about strangers are totally wrong.
Always take...
Don't do what your mother tells you.
Yeah, you always accept candy,
always accept rides in white panel vans.
If someone invites you to take a shower at their house,
the answer is yes. - Yes!
After 40 years of work, I got where I almost hated people.
I've had so many nice people that I met on the trail,
so many, it's kinda renewed my faith in people.
That's been a great thing and it's made me,
it's making me a better person.
Over the last couple days in the 100 mile wilderness
I was thinking back and reflecting,
thinking about all the people who are responsible for
making the appalachian trail what it is today.
Of course, Benton mackaye who conceived the idea.
And myron Avery who performed one of the
truly superhuman feats in conservation slash recreation
history with the initial building of the trail.
But all the thousands and thousands of volunteers
who come out every year, year after year,
decade after decade to maintain the trail,
maintain the shelters
and make it what it is today.
And as I finish my thru-hike, I feel a strong calling
to give back to the trail.
Having hiked 2,200 miles almost,
I still have a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm
for the trail and I'm determined to
go and help out, make this trail an even better trail
for the next generation of hikers to come along.
Hikers give back to the at community
by becoming involved with the 31 clubs
that maintain the trail.
98% percent of the work is being done by volunteers
through these clubs.
We couldn't do,
we couldn't do what we do without the clubs.
Not only do they manage the trail on a daily
and weekly basis, but they're our eyes and ears
that are out there on the trail.
They're suggesting where the trail
might need to be relocated.
They're looking at the boundaries,
they're watching for inappropriate uses of the trail.
As trail use increases,
volunteers become more and more important.
Well that certain wear and tear on the trail,
but more importantly, just imagine the impacts
on overnight use.
On, you know, shelter sites,
camp sites, backcountry sanitation,
I mean, all of those are gonna be bigger challenges.
One, two three.
Okay, that's good, now just slide it,
slide it towards...
The future of the appalachian trail
depends on the trail clubs and trail community.
This trail's beautiful, I need to pinch myself.
Things like that can be taken away,
we need to make sure that doesn't happen.
- We have all kinds of threats: Subdivisions,
new towns being developed in valleys next to the trail,
gas pipelines, wind towers, these are things we face
almost daily, so the integrity of the trail
is always at stake and atc, communities
that work closely with the atc,
our trail clubs and other conservation groups,
are united to try to protect this trail
for future generations.
In his plan for a barbarian utopia,
Benton mackaye envisioned it as a means of connecting
a massive community.
But while the modern trail
is not the one mackaye first outlined in 1921,
it is more than just a footpath.
Over the years, a different sort of community
has grown around it.
- Ooh! - Ah!
And it's this community that continues
to make adventures on the appalachian trail possible.
= I had no idea that I could
do something and love something that hurt so much.
Basically every single day
I was just totally excited to be out here.
I loved every moment of it.
But at the same time, everything hurt, I was uncomfortable,
I smelled bad, you know?
In normal life we try to avoid anything that's uncomfortable
or, you know, just unsavory
and so much of the trail is, you've got blisters,
your ankle hurts, your knee hurts.
Your shorts are too sweaty and you've got
some chafing going on.
And, you know, after doing the trail,
I just kind of just dreamed about it.
So partly I learned that
you can get enjoyment out of something that's
not necessarily always pleasurable.
And then the other thing I really learned to enjoy is that
you can always, if you're in a situation
where you have to rely on the kindness of strangers,
you'll be amazed at how often strangers are kind to you.
Just anywhere, it's probably because, you know,
everyone knew in the region there were hikers and
they wanted to chip in and help out thru-hikers but
it was absolutely amazing how often
people were kind and just came at the right moment
or just helped out in the right way.
J far yonder lies a long, high lonesome trail >
j where Laurel glistens under a mountain moon j
j where one may go as though to find the grail >
j to kiss the wind or listen to j
j go and wild meander, mood is strong j
j and may we meet beside the waters cool 2»
j or on some pinnacle to shout the song
j and point the way to heaven's vestibule j
j far yonder lies a long, high lonesome trail >
j where whippoorwills are wailing through the trees
j and where the friendly woodlands never fail j»
j to wake the old and make new memories j
j along the long, high appalachian trail »