I’m currently reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and a truly fascinating and funny book it is., for that matter all of his books are.
It got me to wondering if any of you Americans have walked any or part of the AT, if so how was it?
I’ve hiked about 60 miles of it within Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.
Basically, it’s mostly ridgetop, treed-in hiking, which is lovely, but interesting features like waterfalls and scenic views are usually off on side trails.
It’s amazing, though, that, you can hike on the most popular trail in one of the most visited national parks in the country, yet still find quiet and solitude.
There’s no way in hell I could manage a thru-hike, though…
The Appalachian Trail runs through PA near Harrisburg and I have hiked part of it. There are some very pretty vistas throughout. In places it is can be a little challenging unless you are in better shape than I was (am.)
One of my college roomates and I read that book while we were still in college and decided that we were going to thru-hike the AT.
It’s been like 7 or 8 years and we’ve yet to decide on starting date. 
“A journey of a thousand miles* begins with a single step.” 
- Or even 2,174 of them.
I’ve walked many sections of it in New England – mostly day hikes. It’s like pretty much every hiking trail except that they take particular care to go up every mountain on the way and do it by the steepest, straightest path 
I enjoy the hikes, but one forested path looks a whole lot like another, so I’m not tempted to walk long sections of the thing.
I hiked about a 50 mile stretch of it from Harper’s Ferry, WV north into Pennsylvania over a week. It was very pretty, and while strenuous, not impossible, even for a bunch of 13 - 16 year-olds and their dads in various levels of fitness. One thing I do remember is that no matter where we were, we could always hear highway traffic at night.
Mrs. Mercotan and I walked a paltry few miles of it in the Shenandoahs back in the 80’s. And a similar distance down in the Smokies. It was lovely.
There is a few mile section of the AT in the Hudson River valley of NY that I hiked many times as a kid, it was relatively close to where we lived so it served as a standard hiking trip throughout Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.
I’m not sure of the exact location but if I studied some maps for awhile I could probably figure it out. I remember it being reasonably interesting scenery and without any terribly steep parts.
It has to have been at least 30 years since I saw it, it would be interesting to go back again now.
Have you read any of his other books.
“Down Under” I can recommend very highly, also “Notes from a small Island”.
Well from the looks of it no-one has yet attemted to walk the whole of the AT and here’s me full of admiration for the American pioneering spirit 
Don’t tell me it’s misplaced
No, but then again most of the types you’ll meet online aren’t the types to go off dissappearing in the woods for months at a time either.
The Appalachian Trail is over 2000 miles long (3200 km). That could easily take a year to hike full-time. We don’t get that kind of vacation time like you do in England.
A member of our church, a woman in her 50’s, finished it last year. Like most people that try it, she couldn’t do it all at once. She traveled to sections over a period of years and kept going until she had hiked the entire route. I would love to hike it some day but it is hard to fit that type of thing into a semi-normal lifestyle.
Just a minute, I thought all Americans were extremely wealthy and the word “Vacation” only applied to illegal immigrants on holiday from other less fortunate countries
I don’t get the appeal of the Appalachian Trail. I’ve hiked parts of it, and every state in the country has similar, if not nicer, hiking trails. I can find 50 better hiking trails within an hour of my house in Colorado than any average section of the AT.
As said before, hearing highway traffic along most of it isn’t very exciting to anyone who lives away from the east coast.
It’s one of the most overrated destinations in the U.S.
The idea itself is pretty cool. It is nice to dream that you can hike and camp along the entire Eastern seaboard of the U.S. if you can muster up the time and motivation.
Hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is the same as doing a triathlon or running marathons. There is no real-world point to it and much of it may suck but it is still an impressive goal.
I don’t think that anyone has ever claimed that the Appalachian Trail has the absolute, best hiking and scenery in the U.S. The East Coast is pretty in spots but it doesn’t have the drama of the West, Alaska, or Hawaii.
I am not sure about you but I prefer a world in which there is a very long hiking trail down the East Coast for people that want that kind of challenge and also easily accessible, simple day hikes for people that live in otherwise less nature friendly areas.
I’ve done the AT from its start at Springer Mountain in Georgia up to where it passes Fontana Dam and enters the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. I’ve also done a couple of chunks within the park but not the entire segment.
A guy in our hiking club thru-hiked the entire trail a few years ago. It takes about 5-6 months to fully thru-hike it.
And I agree that the AT is hardly the best trail around though it probably is the best known one. Its appeal though is its distance; we are talking about a single, continuously maintained and traveled 2,175 mile trail. Simply knowing that, if you had the time and inclination, you could walk all the way from Georgia to Maine on it is its appeal.
Finally, don’t assume that A Walk in the Woods has too much to do with what walking the trail is actually about. Bryson uses it as a framing device, but (IMHO anyway) has always been more interested in either making a joke or trying to skew things to support whatever opinion he is trying to push at the moment than he is in actually trying to present things accurately.
Well, the only reason the AT came into existance is because of non-Americans like Petarch, who was the first to climb a mountain for the view, and Wordsworth, who went walking for its own enjoyment.
We were just the first to really look into ways of making a fast buck off this stuff
I think this is better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
When I lived in Atlanta, a favorite getaway was to head up to Woody Gap, near the southern end of the trail, and go hiking. If I only had a day, I’d pack a lunch, walk in a few hours, find some place to eat it, then walk back. If I had more time, I’d take a tent (or a lightweight hammock if it was pretty warm) and sleep overnight.
My favorite spot was Preaching Rock, which I could almost always count on having to myself. Photos: 1 2 3.
Nice! I have to admit that one of my main mental diversions is planning the hike along the Appalachian Trail all by myself. I buy backpacker magazines and figure out the best gear for the less weight. I even looked up hand-cranked generators yesterday to figure out how to recharge a cell phone. The odd part to this is that I have no intention of going at least not for years. I have a wife and two young daughters. I just like the idea that the Appalachian Trail is there for people that want to use it for a 2000 mile walk or a day hike. We do go camping in New Hampshire however so my research isn’t completely a waste.