[at-l] thru-hike budget , maps, etc.

[spiriteagle99@hotmail.com (Jim and/or Ginny Owen)]

First - to Karen Hills and Erin Burke - and the other hundred or more 
newcomers to at-l over the last month or so, welcome to the campfire.  Pull 
up a log, grab a smashmallow - and ask whatever questions you want or need 
answers to, contribute if you want - or just lurk if that's your style.  
This is generally a hiker-friendly place and, like a shelter on a rainy 
night, there's always room for a few more participants.  If you stay for a 
while, you'll find that there's a wide variety of knowledge, opinions, 
techniques and attitudes here. Certainly enough to help with whatever you 
need to plan a thruhike.  There are at least several dozen thruhikers on 
at-l - including some "repeat offenders" and some that have thruhiked more 
than one long trail.  There are also a LOT of very experienced section 
hikers whose advice is as valuable as that of many of the thruhikers.  But 
none of us can answer questions that aren't asked, so don't be shy.  The 
worst that can happen is that you won't find the answers you're looking for 
- but the answers you get will likely be "real" answers that actually work 
as opposed to the "easy" answers.

Now, to get to the point here - one of the perennial questions about 
thruhiking is "How much does it cost?"  And the answers sometimes shock 
people.  Datto's $4900 beats the $3300 that my AT thruhike cost (but then my 
AT hike was in 1992 - inflation, y'know?).  And those numbers are kinda 
off-putting for some people.  But that's usually because they aren't really 
thinking, just reacting.

A good friend once said that thruhiking is the most fun you can have for the 
longest time for the least amount of money.  And he's right.  If you think 
about it, where else can you do what you want to do for 6 months for less 
than $5000?  A cruise will generally cost you $2000 or more - for a week.  
How about driving around the USA?  You'd spend at least half that $5000 on 
gas alone - and that wouldn't leave lot for lodging, food, sightseeing, ice 
cream, etc.  Even living at home is more expensive than thruhiking - how 
much does it cost you to live where you're living now?  Even if you live 
with your parents - it ain't cheap (at least not for them!!)  And most of us 
don't live with parents, so it's expensive to just survive.

What I'm saying here is what I've said over and over again for the last 6 
years - thruhiking is a once-in-a-lifetime proposition for most people. If 
you cheap-out on it, you run the risk of not finishing, of ending up broke 
and off the Trail - in Pennsylvania or Vermont - or Maine - and not being 
able to finish.

Yeah, we know people who have "done the Trail" on $800.  And we know what it 
cost them.  Some of them have reputations as bums, scroungers, con-men, 
dumpster-divers, leeches, hustlers, hiker-box raiders - and worse.  Most of 
them aren't well-liked.  And their "hike" is a constant search for food and 
services - for survival.  That's not what any of my hikes have been about.  
And I suspect that it's not what most prospective thruhikers want their 
treks to be about either.

We've known the "high-end" thruhikers, too - the ones who called taxis to 
pick them up at trailheads so they could stay in motels, who ate at 
restaurants that I don't go to even when I'm not on the Trail, who spent 
$10,000 or more for their thruhikes.  Not quite my style because that's not 
what I'm out there for either.

The message here is simple - if you can't afford the trip, then wait till 
you can.  It'll be a better hike - and you'll be a better person for it.  
And you'll increase the probability that you'll finish your thruhike as 
well.  Keep in mind that only about 10% of those who start will actually 
finish the Trail as a thruhike - and that a large percentage of those who 
don't finish go home because they run out of money.  One of the things I 
wrote several years ago as part of the Thruhiker Papers was:

>"There are those who can't or won't hike until they've retired or until the 
>kids are grown or they have enough money to do it comfortably. For those 
>people, the fulfilment of those conditions are as much a part of their hike 
>as the actual walking from Springer to Katahdin. It took me 36 years to 
>take the first northbound steps of a thruhike. And that 36 years is as much 
>a part of my thruhike as the 6 months on the Trail."  
>(http://trailwise.circumtech.com/thruhikingpapers)

Some of y'all will understand this - and some won't.  No matter - you'll 
each do what you want to do - and that's as it should be.  And you'll each 
pay the price (and/or reap the rewards) for the decisions you make.  And 
that's as it should be, too.

Walk softly,
Jim



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