I’ve never hiked the Appalacian Trail but I have read many Bill Bryson books. He’s managed to convince me never to visit Australian (except for Uluru) and to make sure I keep very far away from the AT.
I’ve taken day hikes along the AT in Northeastern TN & Southwestern VA. One of my favorite spots for that was Whitetop Mountain in VA but I’ve been on many stretches of the trail on Holston & Roan Mountains in TN as well.
I grew up in that area an still miss those day hikes along the tree covered ridges.
If I was 40 years younger I’d most certainly have a go at walking the AT, the scenery Bryson paints in his book plus the pics posted by jackelope convince me it would be a wonderful thing to do.
As for Australia: Nossir :eek: seems that every which way you turn some critter is waiting to either eat you or make life very painful
I think A Walk in the Woods is his best and most substantial book to date. The other travelogues got a bit formulaic, and with Down Under I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was doing Australia because it was one of the remaining easy places that he hadn’t done yet.
His non-travel books are good fun but have been marred for me by people on this board pointing out the myriad factual errors he makes.
My parents have a friend whose daughter hiked the entire thing in one go. She was reading A Walk in the Woods as she went, and would occasionally email “he’s a bullshitter” or “cheat!” about Bryson.
That said, I loved the book myself.
A friend of mine through-hiked the trail, and I was one of her support people, mainly sending packages of food and mail to pre-arranged drops. She did a couple years of research and serious training (like loading up a backpack with encyclopedias and walking up and down the stairs of the Washington Monument several times a day) in preparation. Even though she was well-prepared and in excellent condition, it tested her commitment and willpower. She, also, felt that Bryson’s book, while amusing, had nothing to do with walking the actual trail.
The AT was one of the first long-distance trails in the US, and that makes it unique and important, both in the history of hiking and also conservation, in valuing wilderness. Get your sense of history in order, Lamar, before you go dissing it.
The Pacific Crest Trail is even longer (2,600 miles), has greater extremes of climate and elevation, and more spectacular scenery.
The Trans-Canada Trail will be really impressive once it’s done, though I would not care to walk across the vast prairies. Anyone walked parts of it?
Just think about it for a few minutes.
To be able to hike a distance of 2000+ miles in ONE country is truly amazing.
Here in the UK we (obviously) have nothing remotely like the AT, we have the Pennines/Peak District/Lake District and a few more, heck you could walk all of our trails and still not cover the distance of the AT.
You Americans are so bloody lucky to have the AT, we should never have let you win in 1783, it would then be all ours
Maybe you missed the part where I said that I’ve hiked it. It is what East Coast cityfolk think wilderness is like - trees and rocks and hills, but never more than a half hour from a 7-11.
And if you did hike it and had a sense of its history, you’d realize that it wasn’t mapped to go from convenience store to convenience store to ease the nerves of East Coast Cityfolk, but it does happen to go through a part of the country much more crowded and settled that the West. I hiked the stretch from the Hudson to the Delaware and was impressed with how quiet it could be considering where it was going through – ie, the suburbs of New York and New Jersey. New Jersey is not going to be Colorado no matter how you plan your walk. And yes, when you’re hiking through the part in Harriman State Park, you have to jog across a 4-lane highway – but in the middle you’re still actually 7 or 8 hours from a 7-11, no mean feat so close to New York City. I don’t think very many people think of the AT as “wilderness,” though – too much of it is along roads and across highways. It does make it possible to do a 2000-mile walk without having someone helicopter you supplies.
I have also hiked in Western Colorado and the wilds of California, and I’ve noticed that you meet very few people once you’re half an hour from the parking lot. Maybe those folks who never leave their RVs are all from New Jersey.
I did notice that almost every through-hiker is either of college or retirement age. Not many people can take 5 months off to hike.
First, A Walk in the Woods has little or nothing to do with actual thru-hiking the AT. It’s a fun book, but it’s full of inaccuracies, outright wrong stuff, intentionally misleading representations, and clearly made up situations. I’ve spend a lot of time on the AT, built several sections of the trail, and do regular maintenance and no one who has ever thru-hiked has anything good to say about the book.
Now, with that out the way, the AT is a journey not a destination. I’ve hiked plenty of sections of the trail in New England and there are sections that pass through small towns, more rural and agricultural areas, and some pretty isolated wilderness areas (such as the 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine). It’s a collection of things that you gather along the way. The mobile thru-hiker community is a thing to behold, as it’s located in space and time in a very tangible way. Hikers pass through a spot in waves, with communications going up and down the chain. It’s often a life changing event for people, others have done the trail end-to-end as many as 8 times.
Personally, that’s not why I hike. I’d much rather do a long hike out west such as the Pacific Crest Trail or Continental Divide Trail, but the fact is that I don’t have the mental makeup to be a ultra long-distance hiker. I know lots of folks who have done so and most are fairly young but others are middle aged and a few retired. For most of them it was a big goal years in the making.
One aspect of the hike is that people who live along the trail, former thru-hikers, and just kind hearted folks engage in “trail magic”. I’ve hiked up to the southern Presidentials with a cooler full of beer and ice cream to hand out to thru-hikers on a hot summer day. I’ve given lifts to hitching hikers to get back to the trailhead or off to the supermarket for resupplies. It’s a lot of fun on both sides of the magic.
You just haven’t gotten far enough north. The 100-mile wilderness is not exactly a half an hour from a 7-11.
I haven’t gotten any further south than Pennsylvania (and I don’t go out for too long at any one go - about one week’s worth of walking in a bit is enough for me, and I haven’t even done that in years). Finagle’s point about the way it’s laid out is very apt. In many places, the trail runs from ridge to ridge, instead of along one ridge at a time. (These are PUD’s - Pointless Ups and Downs.) That said, the idea is to get to the top of many Moutains in the Appalachians, by hiking a Trail, so… get going!
The terrain varies quite a bit. Western Mass is relatively flat (but there are still many ups and downs). Some of the trail in New Hampshire reminded the namers of New Zealand. I have a fondness for hiking the White Mountains, but I have been hiking less and less along the AT in recent years.
I’ll be doing a Georgia-to-Maine thru-hike in 2008. As we get closer, I may do a “ask the AT hiker” thread. Despite that, I don’t have much new to add to this.
– No, the AT isn’t really “wilderness,” except in a few spots. Nonetheless, Lamar’s “never more than a half hour from a 7-11” is bullshit, unless you mean by helicopter. Getting to a 7-11 or equivalent from any given point in the trail would be a matter of walking to the nearest road crossing and then walking or hitching a ride into a town maybe 2-10 miles away. For experienced backwoods hikers, this is cake. For average people, the idea of “it’s two miles uphill over the mountain, then three down to the road crossing at the gap, then just hitch into town” is rather more daunting.
– A thru-hike generally takes about 5-6 months to complete. I’ve secured a 6.5 month leave of absence from my work, and may well end up taking a little longer (generally “they” recommend you allow yourself a while after finishing to reacclimate to your job, etc.)
– It is not, except in a very few spots, an especially arduous hike. People in their 70s, people over 300 pounds (at the start), and a blind guy have done it. It is primarily a test of determination and perseverence, not overall fitness.
– As others have said, while Bryson’s book is very entertaining (at least at the start; IMO the midsection where he’s driving around is crap), it is veeery embellished, if not outright fabricated. There are many in the AT community who were on the same patch of trail at the same time he was who insist that his buddy Katz was pure fiction. Some have very-strong anti-Bryson feelings, in part because of the effect it had on the trail. Note these statistics, focusing on the “Northbound” table:
In 2000 and after, there was a huge surge in people trying to thru-hike the trail that is just now starting to abate. As the completion rate suggests, many of these people did not know what they were in for, were not prepared, etc.
The persistient rumors of a movie adaptation are alternately cheered (may lead to more $ and help in conservation) or feared.
Hardly a great outdoorswoman, I felt the pull of The Trail on a visit to the lovely town of Harper’s Ferry. If I lived in the area, I could well imagine a few day hikes of selected bits of the Trail. On the weekends I didn’t devote to becoming a Civil War Buff, that is. (Although Harper’s Ferry is a fine mix of beautiful scenery & layers of history.)
Hiking the whole Trail is an excellent goal for those who have the time & inclination. But I, personally, found the possibility of civilized encounters with nature more attractive.
Here in the Houston area, we’ve got miles & miles of coastal prairie. The Hill Country can be pretty–if you can avoid Flood Season & Hotter Than Hell Season. Then, there’s Big Bend–for real wildness. (Some visiting European students I knew drove to Big Bend over a holiday. They admired the Park. But the drive there bowled them over. Just–miles & miles of driving!)
Nothing really to add, but don’t forget that the International Appalachian Trail (IAT) continues on into Canada. You can read about it in Monique Dykstra’s Alone in the Appalachians: A City Girl’s Trek from Maine to the Gaspé. It was a mildly interesting read, but too short, and she’s not really much of a hiker.
I drove down to Big Bend from Colorado on my way to Austin to see a girl I was hot for. I did it so the trip wouldn’t be a total waste in case the girl thing didn’t work out. Good thing I went to Big Bend (take-home line: “What are you doing here?”). I think it took like ten hours to drive to Austin from there.
I had a teenage fantasy of hiking the AT from end to end and it still hasn’t entirely faded. I hiked some sections in Shennandoah NP and 20 miles on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware Water Gap and 20 miles on the New Jersey side. I guess there’s just something comforting about a trail that for most practical purposes never ends.
Oh yeah, how was it.
The Pennsylvania side was very rocky. It was bliss to walk ten yards on nothing but dirt. The NJ side wasn’t as bad. That’s how I remember it from around 30 years ago, anyway. When I was a teenager out of the house for a couple days with my friends was an adventure. As an adult it’s a struggle to squirrel away a few hours for a little hike, so it might seem less of an adventure, but a nice escape nonetheless.
I know a woman who did I-don’t-know-how-many-miles’-worth of it several years ago. She was gone for months & months. On her own, not as part of a group (although she made many friends and walked with a variety of groups). Her experience was transcendent.
Somebody published an article about her afterwards (local paper? local magazine?). I remember it made me cry. It’s not online, though.
Her mom shipped lots of boxes of toilet paper, wound extra tight. Apparently having a support team is crucial.
Folks generally don’t do the trail in groups - people hike at different paces, need days off at different times, and just get tired of each other. Couples manage to stay together but other then that it’s very rare. People hook up (in many ways) for sections or longer, but the community is very flowing.
I just thought it was interesting that hiking the Trail is something that’s safe for a woman to do on her own.
Hiking in general is a very safe activity for women. Regardless of the general impression of hillbillies and wackos, most people with ill intent are rarely willing to go miles into the woods.