by Elsa Johnson and John Cross

What were the highest and lowest temperatures on your trip?

Highest was in July in New York — around Great Barrington, I think was the town. It got up into the nineties, approaching one hundred. It was high enough that the Conservancy sent out notices to all hikers to stay inside for the next few days. Hikers were have heat stroke. It was a hard section to have that happen. It was right when a lot of hikers and myself were facing sticker shock, because once you got to New York, all the hotel prices skyrocketed. That was one of the times when I had to spend the night at a hotel. I was exhausted. I needed to rest, and it was two hundred dollars a night, and it wasn’t even that nice a hotel — on top of the fact that so many hikers were trying to get off the trail that all the hotels were taken. The heat affected me, but I was able to manage through it. Some hikers, it bore down on them and slowed them down dramatically.

And the lowest temperature?

That was at the beginning of the trail, and the end of the trail. The beginning was the coldest day, when I was hiking with my friend. We were going up into the Smokey Mountains. Fontana Dam is there. It’s a cool spot because it’s the tallest dam east of the Rockies. We were in a kind of limbo because there were a lot of storms moving through. We thought — we’ll have one bad day and then it will be pretty clear. You do have to be careful because you’re going so high up, if you have any thunderstorms, you can get into a precarious situation. A lot of hikers did, but we lucked out with our timing. This was our first day, as we were going up the mountain.  It started snowing, and by the time we got up to our shelter, the shelters were full. So we tented out overnight. Luckily they had a Ridge Runner. That is someone who is paid to hike along and check on people and talk about best practices, specifically Leave No Trace.

The Smoky Mountains have an interesting system. People who are doing section hikes have to reserve the shelters they’re going into, while thru-hikers have a general pass – it’s a little cheaper and you’re able to go for a longer period of time, while the section-hikers have maybe three days, at most for that section. They have to reserve specific spots. Thru-hikers always go in the shelter. But if the shelter is full, and you’re in that shelter, and a section hiker shows up, you, the thru-hiker, have to go out of the shelter and tent up. Section hikers are not allowed to tent. Again, you can find yourself in a precarious situation, especially if it’s cold or raining, when everyone wants to be in the shelter. That was when it dipped into the low thirties, mid-twenties. It was cold enough that, sleeping in my tent, the only thing that kept me warm were hand-warmers. A twenty degree sleeping bag just means you’ll survive at twenty degrees, not that you’re going to be comfortable. I was frigidly cold and the only way I was able to sleep was by holding the hand-warmer to my chest and letting my heart circulate the warmth to the rest of my body. I had all of my clothing on — two pairs of clothes – and anything else, like two warm hats, gloves. I had all that on. I was bundled up, so I was able to sleep. The following morning when we got up there was snow on top of the tent. Taking down the tent was extremely cold. My hands were extremely cold. My friend had a form of hypothermia,  a condition where if your extremities get too cold you get nauseous. She had to go sit in the shelter for a while. She was worried she was coming down with something, but the Ridge Runner, who’d spent the night there to help out hikers, informed us what was going on. This was at the first shelter in the Smoky Mountains. That was the coldest night. It was absolutely miserable. But we lucked out.

There are certain places in the Smokys, like at New Found Gap, where a road intersects the trail. There is a heated public bathroom there. When it snows, the rangers send word that you have to get off the mountain — only the rangers are allowed to drive up that road. It’s dangerous. Hikers can’t get off the mountain, so they have to sleep on the floor of the bathroom. There was one hiker who got her trail name, Queen of Thrones, because she was trapped there for a couple days. Another important factor in a situation like that is, if you need to get food for the next section of trail, you are going to have to wait there, because you can’t do the next section without food. There was an instance where a group of around twelve hikers got stuck there and needed to resupply, but they couldn’t move because of the snow, and they all got sick because they were sleeping on the floor of the bathroom.

Were you mostly alone?

Yes

Was that true of most of the hikers?

That kind of depends on people’s personalities. What happens on the trail is you gain a ‘tramily’, a trail family. My friend and I hiked a little under half the trail together. We found we had different hiking styles and were starting to argue about things, so we split up at that point. But other trail families were really starting to congeal by that point. I’m thirty five. I wasn’t there to meet new friends. I had a lot of great friends at home. I wasn’t looking to bond with a bunch of people. It kind of depends on what you’re trying to get out of the trail. A lot of the people who were in their early twenties, they were still in that high-school/college age mentality of looking to find kinship and friends, make new ones on the trail, party – stuff like that.  But toward the end of the trail I did have a fun scenario on the Hundred Mile Wilderness. It’s essentially a hundred miles of trail with no side trails in between. You can’t get off, so you had to provision that amount of food for that time span. Everybody’s nervous about that section, but it’s really not that bad a section to go through because, overall, it was a gentler section. I happened to get on pace with tramily of about twelve people, and they were really very nice people, but it made it hard for me because if you lined yourself up with that family, you knew twelve spots in the shelter and camp site were going to be taken. I was kind of juggling back and forth with them. That was the last leg of the hike. You do the Hundred mile Wilderness and then you’re about ready to go to Mt. Katahdin, which is the very end of the trip, and it was nice to hang out with people. I was trying to find a balance. Some of the people in that tramily were people I’d met at the very beginning of the trail. It just happened that we lined up, that we saw each other again at the end. 

What is your take away from this trip? …The important thing?

I’d say the one thing I really liked about the trail was the sense of minimalism, having everything you need in your backpack, not having a home. You kind of get a sense of survivalism. Up to that point I’d always had a home to go back to – of course, don’t get me wrong, I always had a home to go back to while on the trail – but it did play into that factor, of feeling “oh hey, I have everything I need here.” The sense of independence you get doing it — that was very nice. Another aspect that is also a favorite part is the idea of getting yourself out of your element, of breaking yourself out of going to a nine to five job, away from sitting in front of a computer every day, of getting a different perspective on life. There are definitely a lot of people who hike the trail, and it changes their whole perspective.

Did You?

No. And that’s where I would highly recommend, if you’re thinking about doing the trail, and you’re younger – just out of high school or college – those are the peak times to hike the trail, because those are your formative years when you’re deciding what you’re going to do as an adult. For them, it really does inform their perspective. But for me, it reaffirmed how good things were at home, that I really enjoyed the way I was going. I had been just miserable at my job, and once my job was gone I was perfectly happy! And these past months when I’ve been staying home and looking around for a job, I’m still happy. It’s reaffirming for me. Whereas, for some, it changes their whole life. They go into the van life. They just want to live in a van for a while, become nomadic. They get drawn to the appeal of these trails. It’s not very expensive to hike the trail. You can do it for as little as three thousand, or as much as ten, depending on what luxuries you want, what food you want to eat, those little factors. I’d say it was the cheapest I’ve ever been, hiking the trail. You’re getting your enjoyment out of walking. Which is free.

Ah Ha moments?

Sure — ( l  o  n  g    p  a  u  s  e ) — I thought I might find some sort of extra spiritual connection, or something about myself, but really, it just affirmed how happy I am at home and with what I have. It did push me into thinking “I just can’t wait to get towards retirement, where I don’t have to work anymore!” (laughing). OK. I know my goal! One of the things I was thinking about throughout the trail was: What do I really enjoy doing? Am I on the right career path? Should I change at all? I was doing system administration. Currently I’m trying to get into database administration.  It’s not quite the same field, but it’s in a similar vein. I think I’ll enjoy that a lot better, even if I get paid less. What I’m thinking about is – you can have a high stress job, and get paid a lot, and retire early, but will you have your health if you do that?  Or do you want a lower stress job that might not pay as much, but you’ll be happier over time? That was the balance I was thinking about on the trail. That was partially why I did the trail. I wanted to take the time to do that thinking. It was very informative for me, because until hiking the trail, the last time I’d taken more than a month off from work was in high school. It was very different to not be working.

Did you take pictures?

Oh, lots!  It’s important, once you’re off the trail, you can get depressed when you’re not seeing new sights every day, and not working out twelve hours a day (laugh) – which I’ve staved off so far. I was lucky to have a lot to come back to, my wife was at home, a house, my cats, and my family – all those things that I really missed. Those were the things that midway through the trail got me really depressed. I’m finding, more and more, that I’m really happy when I’m home; happy with what I have. Where, the young high school and college graduates, with only what they have on their backs , they are coming back to “what do I want to do?”, “where do I want to go?’  — to a whole new world.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

by Elsa Johnson and John Cross

A friend of ours — young by our standard, but not his own — spent last summer hiking the Appalachian Trail. We thought our readers might enjoy this conversation with him about his experience. The lead-in question was:

So — How many pairs of shoes did you go through?

I went through four pairs of shoes. The trail is around 2,200 miles, so I went through a pair of shoes every 500 miles.

Clothes?

No – just some holes.

Why did you do this?

Originally I was looking for a way to channel something outside of work that wasn’t my day to day, and I’d always been into hiking; it was a way to disconnect. I’m a technology person. I wanted  —  wilderness. That was important, to have something that was completely separate from technology.  I was stressed out from technology. I started realizing how there’s kind of a gear-head culture around hiking, where you’re trying to get your gear as light as possible, and it specifically pertains to these thru-hikes. That’s what got me thinking about the Appalachian Trail. I had two friends who’d hiked the trail – a section, not the whole thing – so I started thinking about the trail and what gear should I purchase and how could I get it light? There are these luxury items that you don’t really need, but want to have with you, like a large battery pack. It’s not really necessary and mine was heavy at 12 ounces, but it adds a lot of convenience, like always being able to charge your phone. Then I just got the Big Rosy Glasses about the trail. I liked that it was a long linear hike, a point A to point B destination. I wanted to do something that broke up the monotony of what I had been doing, working thirteen years right out of college. I wanted to change that up, make sure I was not missing out on something — not just work until my 50’s or 60’s, and then think “oh shoot, I lost that opportunity.”    

Why do people start in the south and hike north?

What I hear is it’s a little bit easier that way. Hiking the whole trail depends on timing. If you want to start in the spring, then you want to start in the south. But if you are only available to start midsummer, then you will want to go southbound. What enticed me was that supposedly it eases you into the harder part – you’re getting what they call your trail legs. By the time you have your trail legs, you’re getting into harder terrain.

How long did getting your trail legs take?

(laughing) It depends on the person. It took me about two months before I was hiking at a good pace. The other thing to balance out was calories, how much food one can carry, because carrying food is heavy. You want to be sure you keep your energy up and nutrients correct because that can cause issues as well. I eased into the trail. At the beginning I was doing 8 to 12 miles a day. Then every few weeks I’d go a little further, or it was an easy day.

What’s the longest mileage you covered?

Twenty seven and one half miles. That was in the Shenandoahs in the northern end of Virginia; they are known for being relatively flat and easy, so that was the section where I was pounding the miles. I found out after the Shenandoahs that I was very calorie deficient. At that point I was prepping for what’s called the half-gallon challenge, where you eat a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting. I discovered that instead of getting burnt-out and a stomach ache I was getting a sugar rush, and I’d hike a lot further when I put in all those ‘empty’ calories.

Where did you start?

That was in Amicalola Falls, Georgia. That’s the approach trail in and it is about 9 miles. Then you get to Springer Mountain and that’s the official start of the Appalachian Trail.

What struck you about the early stages of the trail?

The biggest thing that struck me early on was how crowded it was. There were a lot of people on the trail. Back home people were thinking “oh – John’s alone in the wilderness. Anything can happen. It’s scary, and he’s stuck there.” I think the least amount of people I saw in a day was three, and typically more like ten to fifteen. At the beginning, at every camp that we stopped at there had to be twenty plus people. There were day hikers, section hikers, and thru-hikers. It was to the point where we were concerned we’d find good spots to camp out. You can also do what’s called stealth camping, which is, in certain parts, you can camp off the trail. But we wanted to stick to the shelters. They have conveniences, like bear boxes to put your food in, instead of just hanging it up. Yes, bears may be attracted to the shelters because there are so many people leaving things, but also there are so many people that a bear wouldn’t mess around.

Did you see bears?

Yes. About nine.  My first bear experience was scary. I think it was in North Carolina. I’d just set up my tent. I’d sat down in my tent and was ‘exploding’ my backpack, taking everything out and getting arranged for the night, when I heard this person-sized thing coming up behind my tent. I knew there were no people behind me – so I slipped out and stood up, and there was an adolescent bear staring at me. We both got spooked. He went about ten feet away, and stopped, and stared at me. At that point I’m like “what do I do?” I took out my backpack and food and left my tent completely zipped open, and walked away from him. He sat there awhile. We tried to make loud noises to get him to go away. Eventually he sauntered off.

You had a friend with you?

Yes. I wasn’t entirely alone. That was the thing about being in a camp with so many people. That bear was a little nerve-wracking. We went around the camp and told all the people to hang up their bags on bear cables – that’s a rope system that’s provided. Some people still didn’t hang up their food, but it was so early on that people were just getting used to being in the wilderness, and hiking, and a lot of people were still sleeping with their food, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do, because bears are going to be curious about you. Luckily, that night we had no disturbance, but I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t move my tent. It was one of those things; once I ran into that first bear I realized that I had to accept that there are going to be bears in the wilderness, and I had to get word to them, and be on the alert. Luckily I had no bad encounters with bears, but that definitely was a near encounter. When I’d get the most anxious was when we’d go into popular areas that day hikers or weekend hikers used, who would not be as mindful about storing their food properly. If they lost their food they didn’t care, and that was when bears would get habituated and start to associate people with food. I know they did have to kill one bear while I was hiking the trail. The story goes that the bear had gotten to the point where a hiker had put down his pack and went off-trail to go to the bathroom, and when he was coming back to his pack on the trail the bear rushed it and tore it open, ate all the food he could, and then puked up all the food on the hiker’s backpack. At that point your backpack is your home. It has your tent and everything in it — and at that point you know that bear is going to be a problem.  Or sometimes you’d hear from people going to or from certain locations that there were bears in the nighttime, slowly getting habituated. That was what I was scared of.

Did you see any other potentially dangerous wildlife?

I saw a lynx. I’d stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom, and as I was walking back to the trail I saw, about 20 feet ahead, the back end of a lynx walking away. It was stalking me, most likely, because I was the only thing that was there. I was on high alert, because with cats you can’t back off if they attack you. But really, there was no danger. The trail itself was the dangerous part.

The little section in the Tennessee Balds that my husband and I hiked, in the Smokies in 2018, was like trying to hike up a waterless waterfall — the steep pitches were so rocky and uneven. Is most of the trail like that?

Yes. But it depends. Going from the southern to the northern end, it gets harder the further north you go. The southern end — this is the rosy glasses part – really wasn’t that bad, overall. Sometimes you had to get used to parts that you were hiking up, and sometimes it was really wet. I think my wettest day was in Pennsylvania when the trail became a stream, because it was raining so hard. Pennsylvania is known as the rocky state. That was where I got most depressed on the trail. There are so many rocks on the ground that are a little bit bigger than fist size, all along the trail — It’s a section where a lot of people twist an ankle, and there aren’t so many spectacular views in that state, either. I didn’t feel like I was working myself forward toward something rewarding. I felt like I was just passing through this brutal trail, and the higher mountains were fewer and farther between than in the earlier states (Georgia/North Carolina/Tennessee/Virginia). They are mostly in the east of the state, where you leave Pennsylvania and enter New York. That’s where you begin to get into the real mountain climbing part of the trail — which I was expecting, but it’s different when you’re there in person. My first taste of that was in Pennsylvania at Lehigh Gap. It was the point where you had to put away your trekking poles (I used trekking poles the whole time; I recommend them). It was just hand over hand climbing up these big boulders up the side of the mountain, and you have your backpack pulling on your back, and then there was one point where you can look back, and it’s like looking down a cliff — very scary. I’m not fond of heights. But I knew that going into it. That was my task that day. I wanted to get off that mountain as quickly as possible, from point A to point B, and just keep going.

Is it as bad going down the other side?

It was, give or take.