Georgia to Maine

I suppose this will make it “official”, or at least utterly embarrassing if it doesn’t actually happen, but whatever. I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail this coming Spring and Summer. I plan to leave Amicalola Falls State Park and hike up to Springer Mountain and the start of the Trail on March 16th, give or take a day or two.

With any luck, 2,168 miles later, I’ll climb Mt. Katadhin in Baxter State Park in Maine sometime in the second half of July. I will walk an average of close to 20 miles a day, taking a day off once a week or so to resupply, eat non-dehydrated food and clean myself more thoroughly than I can in the woods.

I will carry everything I need (or at least everything I need for a week at a time) with me. It weighs less than 15 pounds, not counting food and water. Food will weigh about 2 pounds per day, and I will carry two liters of water (4.4 pounds for the conversion-challenged). All told, on the heaviest days of my trip, I will be carrying 33 pounds of gear. That isn’t much, the average hiker on the AT carries between 40 and 50 pounds.

I have been spending a lot of time over the last several months planning for this hike. Many people attempt a through-hike of the AT (or the other two long trails in the US, the PCT and the CDT). Only 10-30% actually make it in any given year. My chances are exactly as good as I make them.

I am making a good bit of my hiking gear myself, both to familiarize myself with it on a much more intimate level than I can with commercial gear, and because most “hiking” gear is actually “mountaineering” gear and way overbuilt for backpacking. When every ounce matters (watch the ounces and the pounds will watch themselves) and the goal is to carry the least amount of gear that will get me there safely (watch the grams and the ounces will watch themselves), it behooves me to build, sew and construct as much lightweight gear as I can.

Between now and March, I will be sewing the remainder of my hiking wardrobe, hiking as much as I can, and hitting the stair-master and elliptical when I can’t make it to the mountains (it’s somewhat challenging to condition myself for hiking long distances in the mountains when I live in the flattest place on Earth). On the list for warm up hikes are the Bartram Trail, the Benton MacKaye Trail, the Duncan Ridge Trail, and maybe the Pinhoti Trail. If you’d like to hike any of these, or go hiking somewhere else, please do contact me, because I’d love to!

Now that my plans are beginning to solidify, I hope to chronicle the build up to the hike here, and maybe even post an update here and there from the trail, when I happen across somewhere with an internet cafe on an off day. At the very least I will be able to post the details of my DIY projects and general outfitting stuff.