I’m reading a novel now set in the mid-19th century, in which the narrator causually describes a walk he takes from Boston to upstate NY near the Canadian border. Took him five days, walking from sunrise to sunset.
It boggles my mind. I think I’ve walked from Coney Island to Manhatan, and from Harlem to the Village, and I’m sure when I did some hiking as a boy I covered longer distances some days, maybe 20, 25 miles, but I can’t imagine walking hundreds or thousands of miles as people seem to have done in those days.
About 200 miles when I was in the Boy Scouts. It was on a trail that stretched from just south of Mt. Rainier to the Columbia River. It took 5 days, 16 of us started and only10 finished. I still remember being chastised at the start for wearing my Chuck Taylor Converse tennis shoes instead of the heavy hiking boots everyone else was wearing. At the end of the hike I was one of the very few that completed the hike without any foot problems.
When I was 14, I went on an Outward Bound trip that had about 11 days or so of hiking in it (broken into three or four chunks). I probably did a 25 mile stretch or thereabouts. Since then, I’ve done a few 1-day, 10-mile walks.
Seventeen mile hike with another ten after the car broke down; the last four miles was in bottomless sand. That was easily the most exhausted I’ve ever been. It’s gone into Chaco lore as “The Death March”
Nothing to compare to you guys, but I walked home from work once, in Seattle, when it snowed. Smith Tower to Beacon Hill. Mapquest gives the driving distance as 3.27 miles, but it sure seemed a lot farther than that on foot, in the snow. Uphill, both ways, etc.
25 miles in a large formation of Jarhead Lieutenants in just under eight hours, loaded down with combat gear in a MCCRES (Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation System) test. Hilly terrain. 40 or so pounds of stuff, increased to a lot more when it was your turn to carry to mortar base plate.
Boston to Champlain, NY (at the convergence of Canadian, NY and Vermont) is 268 miles by car, which probably follows generally the roads of that time. Crossing the mountains would slow down someone walking, but if you figure 50 miles a day walking outside the mountains (four days) and 30 in the mountains for one day makes for 230 miles walked. If he started in the Boston suburbs, that would knock off a coupla miles.
Longest in a single day was when I was a ranger for the boy scouts in Philmont and hiked the entire Tooth ridge. Must have been 20+ miles. Made it back to the mess hall in time for dinner.
Recently, I was on a road trip this summer where, through a series of poorly-made “what’s-around-the-next-bend” decisions, I ended up hiking 18 miles at high elevation, and not all on the trail. If I hadn’t run into a couple of hikers that I met that morning, I would have parked it for the night somewhere in the wilderness of the Grand Tetons. (I was dead tired; I’m not in the shape to be doing those kinds of hikes.)
I also question the author of the book you’re reading. Using Google Earth, the smallest reasonable distance I get is 216 miles. That means roughly 44 miles per day, in a straight line. Let’s call it 45 miles per day. Assuming your protagonist walks in June, right around the summer solstice, does very little else, he would need to walk at 3 miles per hour. That’s actually a really good clip to keep up over hill and dale for 15 hours in a day. I know you said that it’s a novel, but that pushes the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief. Why couldn’t that author say 7 days? That’s still 30 miles per day over hill and dale, and is still quite an accomplishment.
Twenty miles for charity. I’m certain it was called “Walk for Mankind”, but not so certain the charity. I thought it was the March of Dimes, but a cursory Google search nets no relevant results. Anyway, 20 miles is probably the most I’ve ever walked in one day.
My grandfather walked/hitchiked from North Dakota to Southern Minnesota when he lost all his money during the depression. I hitchiked across a lot of Vermont once, which involved a lot of walking in pretty cold weather.
Many years ago when visiting a friend in the Seattle area, we walked from the ferry dock (he lived on Bainbridge Isl.) up to the locks near Ballard, then about halfway back towards downtown before finally getting on a bus. It took us most of the day, and it was actually hot and sunny that day, so it was quite an exhausting hike. I don’t know what the total distance was, but nowadays we refer to it as the “Ballard Death March”.
His goal wasn’t quite the Canadian border, just the northerm adirondacks, so it may have been possible. It’s based on historical docments, and there may even document that he left Boston on Tuesday and arrived in North Elba on Sunday night.
I’ve done the Walk for Mankind, which was a March of Dimes benefit. The longest I’ve walked in a single day is 27 miles in Yosemite. I’ve also done a three day trip in Yosemite, but I’m not sure of the total mileage. I used to regularly do 12-14 mile walks in San Francisco. I once did a much longer one, over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito, but I ended up so exhausted that I could barely walk for the next week.
