The
Appalachian National Scenic Trail is a 2,168 mile
footpath running from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount
Katahdin in
Maine. The trail was conceived in 1921 by a regional planner
from Massachusetts named Benton MacKaye. MacKaye designed the
trail as a retreat from the stresses of urban life and also to
protect the Appalachian Mountain Range from the encroachment
of civilization. Through the combined work of volunteer clubs,
the National Park Service, the Forest Service, states, and the
Civilian Conservation Corps under the direction of the Appalachian
Trail Conference (ATC), the trail was constructed, marked, and
opened by 1951. In 1968, the National Trails System Act was passed,
approving funding to purchase the lands around the trail, widening
the trail corridor and making it one continuous national park.
The trail is marked from Georgia to Maine with two-by-six inch
white blazes (paint marks) on trees or rocks by the path, a symbol
borrowed from the previously established Vermont Long Trail.
In 1996 estimates showed that around
4,000,000 people hike some part of the trail each year. Out of those
millions,
about
2,000
attempt to follow the white blazes the entire length of the trail,
and roughly one in ten finish. Most of these "thru-hikers" or
end-to-enders hike the trail northbound, starting in Georgia in
late March or April with the goal of finishing before Baxter State
Park in Maine closes in mid October due to the hazardous weather.
Many of these hikers meet and spend time with each other, and over
the months a community forms among the groups and individuals,
moving at different speeds along the trail, leaving messages in
shelter registers, passing each other repeatedly, and sometimes
hiking together for a while. For every thru-hiker, life on the
trail starkly contrasts with their way of life prior to the trail,
and over the five to seven months necessary to complete it, many
changes occur in each hiker.
In 1993 I was in a map shop in Atlanta
and picked up a book called The Appalachian Trail Backpacker by
Victoria and
Frank
Logue.
I
hadn't done any backpacking before, but upon reading it I felt
like hiking the Appalachian Trail was something I had to do. Looking
at my college class schedule, I decided that 1995 would be a good
year for me to hike the trail and then held that goal in my mind
as a top priority. Whenever anything was offered or mentioned that
overlapped 1995, I would turn it down. Preserving an empty calendar
was highly beneficial. Aside from growing used to the fact that
I was going to spend six months hiking, it freed up the time necessary
to complete the Trail, which is one of the most difficult hurdles
for most people.
Until 1994, my preparation consisted
of a little more reading, talking about the trail, and trying but
failing
to
find
friends
who wanted to accompany me. In the summer of '94 I began saving
money and buying equipment. Since I had never been backpacking
I had to rely on a mixture of the few books I had read and the
advice of friendly salespeople to come to conclusions about brands
and variations in gear. There were several equipment lists in the
appendices of books like The Appalachian Trail Backpacker and Christopher
Whalen's The Appalachian Trail Workbook for Planning Thru-hikes.
The information in these books plus some common travel sense provided
enough to get me started.
The
Pack
I
carried an external frame pack as opposed to an internal frame
pack. On an external, the pack is strapped to a rectangular, often
aluminum frame which provides the structure. The pack is then divided
into several pouches over the width of the frame. On an internal,
the structure is built into the pack, and the narrower design allows
fewer pouches. The main section of an internal is usually one large,
tube-like pouch. I chose an external because they are much cheaper,
regardless of the brand. The benefits I discovered were in being
able to organize my gear among the many pouches and in being able
to access any piece of my gear without pulling out loads of other
equipment. I could also let air pass between the pack and my back
by loosening the straps at the shoulders and letting it sit back
on my hips, or lean it against a tree, or prop it up with my walking
stick. The times I wished I had an internal were in negotiating
tight spaces. The bulk of an external was tough when scrambling
through precarious rocks, between tight spaces, or when trying
to fit packs in a car while getting a ride.
Strapped to the top where the frame
makes an "L" shape
to hold up the pack, I carried my tent, ground cloth, and sleeping
pad. The tent was a one-and-a-half man Walrus "Swift." It
is a long, narrow tent that affords little room for anything besides
sleeping, but that's what it’s for. I bought it because it was
the lightest tent I found that I could stretch all the way out
in when I lie down (I'm six foot, two inches tall). The only thing
that could have been better about the tent would be to make it
free standing, meaning it would stand alone without the tension
of the stakes in the ground. This problem only came up when we
set up tents where the ground was too hard or too soft for stakes
(a rare occurrence). The ground cloth was a piece of plastic tarp
I would lay down before setting up the tent to protect the tent
floor from harm. The sleeping pad was a self-inflating, full-length,
medium-weight Thermarest pad. Its purpose was to keep a layer of
air between me and the ground, which would otherwise suck the heat
right out of a sleeping hiker. The pads come in a shorter three-quarter
length version also, but I wanted to keep my feet on the pad as
well, and I never regretted that extra weight.
The main section of the pack was
divided into a top and a bottom pouch, and the top pouch had a small
mesh
separator
that
formed
an extra internal pouch. The mesh pouch held small, loose gear
and paper goods. I had my wallet; the book I was currently reading;
my journal; the Data Book (Chazin 1994)—a mile-by-mile breakdown
of the trail including reliable water sources, shelters, roads,
etc.; the Thru-hiker's Handbook (Bruce 1995)—a more descriptive
guide which we mainly used for planning town activities and which
I didn't pick up until I had been hiking for a while; a couple
of pens; my pocket knife; maps of the area I was in; my headlamp;
my sun glasses; and by the end, my mask and a set of juggling balls.
The paper items were in large Ziploc bags. The books grew lighter
as we progressed on the trail since we would tear out the pages
describing areas behind us to help start campfires.
The main top pouch held my stove,
cooking gear, and food. I carried a Coleman Feather 400 stove which
is bulky,
but
only because
the
fuel container is attached to the bottom. It also gave me more
control over the size of the flame than the more common Whisperlite
stoves, allowing me to simmer dishes. It sat on the left in a small
padded sack. Next to the stove were my pot and its lid which also
served as my plate, though I often ate straight from the pot. Inside
the pot were my pot handle for the pot or the lid; my spoon—the
only necessary piece of silverware, carried in my pocket when in
towns for ice cream; my lighter, which also lived in my pocket
sometimes; a sponge; and biodegradable liquid soap. The rest of
the top pouch was entirely for food (plus multi-vitamins and extra
Ziploc bags), all kept in a large stuff-sac I picked up in Hot
Springs, NC. Food was the heaviest thing in the pack and the most
fluctuating in weight as it was eaten over periods of three to
ten days between towns.
The bottom pouch was for clothes.
The clothes I carried changed more than any other equipment. I usually
had about
three
pairs
of heavily padded socks; two pairs of sock liners; a pair of polypro
(a synthetic material which is warm and dries very fast) long johns;
two pairs of spandex bike shorts necessary for me to avoid chaffing,
a terrible hiking problem; one pair of shorts; one polypro shirt
with the long sleeves cut off; one with them left on; a heavy polar
fleece pullover that also acted as my pillow and was substituted
for a lighter one in the summer; gloves; several bandannas used
for towels, cleaning, tying things, head covering, and bandages;
rain pants; a Gore-Tex rain jacket; my pack rain-cover; and a pair
of short gaiters that kept rain and debris out of my boots. There
was also a clean cotton T-shirt and boxer shorts in a Ziploc bag
for clean days off in town. Normally I wore my boots, socks, liner
socks, gaiters, bike shorts, shorts, the short sleeve polypro shirt,
my hiking stick (which shortened by about six inches over the months
but never broke), and a hat later replaced by a bandanna. Only
when we were stopped or it was very cold did anything else get
worn. In the hot summer I sent my rain gear back home and carried
an ultra-light jacket in its place, then switched back at the end
of Vermont before heading into the high altitudes of the White
Mountains.
Under the pack in another "L"-shaped
nook in the frame, my sleeping bag was strapped in its waterproof
stuff-sac
which
I bought in Damascus, VA. Before that I had used a normal stuff-sac
with garbage bags inside it for waterproofing. The sleeping bag
was rated at 20 degrees, meaning you would be comfortable at temperatures
as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. When it was colder, I wore my
clothes inside the bag.
The right-side pouch had emergency
and repair items: a stove repair kit, a sewing kit, patches for
every
kind
of gear,
duct tape
that
I never needed but was glad to have because other people always
needed it, extra batteries, an extra lighter, extra fuel (the tank
on the stove was a bit small to rely on solely), and my first aid
kit. My first aid kit was larger than most, and I almost never
needed it, but my fellow hikers did, and even the items I never
used, I was glad to have. I had antibiotics, gauze, medical tape,
Tylenol, Band-Aids, large bandages, sterile wipes, antibiotic ointment,
tweezers, a razor blade, a safety pin, second skin for burns and
serious blisters, and moleskin that I thankfully never needed but
passed around frequently for blisters.
The left-side pouch held my water
filter, nylon cord, toilet paper in a Ziploc bag, small plastic
trowel,
tooth
brush,
dental
floss,
compass, whistle, and mirror for signaling rescue aircraft and
fixing hair. This was the least full pouch, so overflow from elsewhere
was likely to go in that pouch.
The mesh pouches below the side pouches
held my one-quart water bottles (called Nalgenes because this is
the
most common brand).
The mesh pouches were low enough to be reached without taking the
pack off and were the ideal size for Nalgenes. I carried a third
Nalgene in the front on the hip belt of my pack. There was also
a small, waterproof watch attached to the right shoulder strap
of the pack.
In Erwin, TN I bought a pair of rafting
sandals to wear around camp when my feet were ready to be out of
my boots.
There was no
room for them in the pack, and they dangled for awhile from a strap
on the back but ended up stuffed under the tent and sleeping pad.
In New Hampshire I bought an extra knapsack for day hikes and extra
gear. The school-type pack strapped to my sleeping pad and tent
roll, keeping the weight up high and out of the way of the pouches.
When we had to carry ten days of food through the Hundred Mile
Wilderness, even the knapsack was filled with food.
The pack weight changed considerably
over the course of the hike. How much food was in it, how much water
I was
carrying,
what
clothes
were in it, and what clothes I was wearing all affected the weight.
When I weighed it in Virginia, it was 65 pounds. It was probably
75 pounds going into the Hundred Mile Wilderness, and about 40
going into towns in the summer, when I was out of food and carried
fewer clothes. For the most part, my gear was the same when I finished
as when I began, if a bit worn. In truth, there are a few essentials,
but how people handled most of their gear choices was a matter
of taste and necessity. Just about any style/brand/model of any
equipment will do the trick. I could carry more since I weighed
more, but most people had to be more selective. The rule of thumb
is to not carry more than a third of your own weight. At 225 pounds,
this rule allows me about 75 pounds of pack weight, but restricts
most people to 40-60 pounds. Actually a more accurate formula taking
into account a less than perfect athlete is (ideal weight/3) minus
the amount you are overweight since you are already carrying that
additional weight. So actually I should stick to about 65 pounds,
though on the trail, achieving your ideal weight isn't difficult.
After assembling my gear I went on
an overnight hike to make sure the gear worked and that I knew how
to use it
and to
see if
I was
forgetting anything. I ordered the maps and guide books that I
couldn't find in stores from the Appalachian Trail Conference,
though they didn't arrive until after I had left. I bought several
foods in bulk including candy bars, nuts, and macaroni and cheese
to be sent in packages to post offices before I reached them. These
packages of food, mail, and gear supplements were called "mail
drops". In planning these mail drops I could also give friends
and family places and dates to mail letters to me. I only planned
the first six weeks of these before leaving, though, saving the
rest of the planning for when I had a better feeling of how fast
I moved and how much food I needed. My mother volunteered to send
me the packages, and by the end she had sent a great deal more
than what I had pre-purchased. She also bought a dehydrator to
specially prepare foods so that they could be carried and cooked
easily on the trail. (Thanks, Mom!) In truth, if I had had to eat
the food I pre-bought for six months, I might have lost my mind.
Variety in meals is invaluable. My father also gave me his phone
card, offering to pick up the bill and asking that I call when
I could. (Thanks, Dad!) Obviously it never hurts to have a great
support team.
That was it. I had my gear. I had
a plan. All that was left was to hike 2,168 miles. People say different
things
about
physical
preparation. I think the only thing that would have prepared me
for long-distance hiking was long- distance hiking. One way or
another, if you stick to it, you'll get into perfect shape for
hiking; it’s just a matter of how painful the process will be.
I'm a long-time practitioner of the martial arts, and the conditioning
of my body (especially my feet) and mind gave me a definite advantage,
but they weren't necessary. In the end, the most important ingredients
for completing the trail I found once I was out there, and all
the preparation in the world would not have carried me through
without them.
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