Why Hike the AT?

Backpacking has appealed to me ever since my first trip with my father when I was 16 years old.  We took a 4-day hike around Mount Hood.  It was an intensely rewarding experience, combining physical challenges, quality time with my father, adventure, and unbelievably beautiful and dramatic scenery.  At the trip’s end, when my body was just beginning to get used to the hardships imposed by the trail, I wondered how it would feel to just keep going.  I continued to hike or backpack throughout the western states during my career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Unfortunately, backpacking grew harder as I got older.  When I was 48, Sarah and I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT), a two week, 165-mile journey around the perimeter of the Tahoe Lake Basin.  We were in the process of deciding that backpacking had become too painful to enjoy, when we began meeting through-hikers (ultra-long-distance hikers) on the part of the route that coincided with the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).  We were astounded to see that most of them carried base weights (total pack weight minus food and water) of around 12 pounds.  We begin to feel foolish as we carried 50+ pounds while people of all ages were breezing by on their way from Mexico to Canada with only 20 pounds.  After some research (i.e. Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardine), we hiked the TRT the next summer employing “ultra-light” techniques.  The experience was so enjoyable, we decided backpacking would be rewarding for many years to come.  The next summer, we tested the ultra-light method on the John Muir Trail, a 250-mile route through the highest section of the Sierras, after which I was totally hooked.  I began to think the Pacific Crest Trail was not an impossible dream.

This year, at age 51, it seemed like a switch flipped in my brain.  I had this urgent feeling that it was now or never, that if I continued my career for the standard 30 years, I would be too old to through-hike.  So I quit on February 12, 2011 after 23.5 years of service.  Sarah, bless her heart, encouraged me, insisting she was content to continue teaching until we could start collecting our pensions.  The idea was that I would through-hike generally from April through September and she would join me during her spring and summer vacations.  With April fast approaching, I decided the AT was the best choice for our first through-hike because it is easier to plan for than the PCT.  Hiking the PCT would entail mailing about 25 packages of food to various post offices along the route in order to re-supply.  The AT, on the other hand, passes near enough towns, that pre-mailing packages is not necessary if one is willing to risk subsisting on whatever is on the grocery store shelves.  The AT is also a bit shorter than the PCT, and has a longer weather window.  In other words, I won’t be as much of a “mile slave” when Sarah joins me during the summer.   I must point out, however, that the AT is reputed to be more difficult than the PCT in some aspects: it is generally more rugged in terms of the trail surface (tread) and in elevation changes.  The AT is also very rainy.