[at-l] A Request for Information

[ellen at clinic.net (Bob C.)]

Red

 I suspect Bryson's book sold because he re-enforced the popular view that AT
 hikers are a nice, but somewhat quirky group, that few sensible people would
 emulate.

 However, in response to your suggestion that I submit some AT impressions, the
 following appeared in a tiny magazine a few years ago. I think I was paid $75,
 but I really don't remember.

North to Maine
Tales of a 2,000 Mile Summer

By Bob Cummings

By all logic, the Appalachian Trail shouldn't exist. If one thing should have been obvious 65 years ago, a country racked by the greatest economic depression the world had ever seen, could never find enough volunteers to build a nearly 2,200-mile footpath, mostly on private property, through the most heavily populated states between Georgia and Maine. And even if built, surely the chances of the trail still existing nearly seven decades later, were virtually nil.

But miracles happen. The trail exists, bisecting most of the wildest country remaining in Eastern United States, traversing the bony backbone of the Appalachian Mountains, the eroded remains of peaks that once stood higher than Everest. And all except 20 miles or so are now publicly owned.

Congress promised to purchase the trail 30 years ago, and did acquire great sections, including most of Maine, through the 80s. But then the funding stopped abruptly and only last fall did Congress finally appropriate the money needed to complete public acquisition, now scheduled to be complete by the year 2000.

The trail is many things to many people. Physically, it's a 2,000-mile-long National Park, supervised by just one ranger. For the volunteers, who substitute for rangers and paid trail crews to keep the litter picked up, shelters built and repaired, and the foot path cleared of brush and blowdowns, the trail is virtually a way of life. The several hundred volunteers who keep the Maine section of the trail open typically devote 60 hours a year each to the trail. The Maine Appalachian Trail Club is part of the 4,000 volunteers, nationally, who clear blowdowns, brush and thistles while battling black flies and mosquitoes ? and sometimes angry hornets ? part of the greatest volunteer recreational project in history.

The trail is heavily used. Each year at least four million day hikers use the trail  at least for for a summer's walk.  And each year some two thousand more dedicated hikers attempt what is universally called a "thru-hike," of which a 100, maybe 200, will actually reach the trail's end on Katahdin.

Together they form a community of people, all with a shared dream of walking through these wilds for months on end from a wooded mountain in Georgia, north through spring, summer and early fall, to a barren and often icy summit in Maine, enjoying the beauties of nature, and sharing concerns, blisters, adventures, sore toes, sprained knees, and the wonders of a wild country. 

The trail is two 20-year-olds jogging to catch Solo Sal, a 62-year-old retired school teacher who had left her tent poles behind. It's an 80-year-old-retired grocer in North Carolina offering a hiker from Maine "a ride to the top of the hill." 

Some hike alone, others with friends, lovers, relatives -- or strangers met a few moments, or a few days earlier on the trail. All share a common experience, a common adventure. All join in each others successes and tribulations, share meals when supplies run low, and lament the mishaps and illnesses. Trail registers are filled with words of encouragement for those left behind.

Like the hay mowers on Robert Frost's New England hill farms, the people who hike the trail, hike together, "whether together or apart."

For some, the trail is 40,000 white blazes on trees, rocks and fence posts; and an estimated five million footsteps, a stunt to be achieved. For wiser folks, the trail is a haven of spectacular mountain vistas, wild forests, and great beds of wildflowers -- trillium, delicate mountain bluets, wild iris, pink lady slippers, trail side mayflowers, startling bright blaze orange azaleas, and brilliantly white flowering dogwood to be savored on weekend walks and six month long expeditions. 

We walk through national parks and forests; walk past hill farms and woodlots, and occasionally down main streets of quiet mountain towns.

The trail is brisk cold days of early spring, March snows, chilly April rains, the heat of summer and the beauty of a New England autumn. It's walks above the clouds, through the clouds -- and occasionally into cloudbursts. 

The trail is a giant black snake, imitating a rattler, rustling dry oak leaves as a hiker eases by; and its two bear cubs scurrying up twin saplings, while the old sow disappears into the brush -- only to be heard scuffling in the distance, circling to protect her babies.

The trail is the sound of a partridge seeking a mate, drumming its wings and sounding like a malfunctioning chainsaw to one puzzled hiker. It's the cry of a pileated woodpecker, its red crest flashing through an ancient and decaying forest, the faint gobbles of a wild turkey on a brisk spring morn, and the slow circling of a hawk, seeking its supper. And it's a tiny, gray bird flying through the feet of a startled hiker from a trail side nest, filled with the mouths of hungry nestlings. 

The trail is also the hulks of four 60-year-old cars rusting away in an ancient farm pasture, now part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

And it's ice in a cooking pot one chilly spring morning in Georgia, and the yodeling of a coyote heard from a remote mountain shelter.

WHEN I'M IN A SERIOUS MOOD, I tell myself that I walked the trail for many of the same reasons that Henry Thoreau went to Walden Pond. "I wished to live deliberately, to front life's essentials so that when it came time to die, I would not discover that I had never really lived." There's an element of truth in these musings, but in less somber moments I have to admit that I can't really explain why I chose to walk a couple of thousand miles, a couple of summers ago. Suddenly hiking "the trail" just became an urgent need.

I was no stranger to backpacking. I'd wandered the hills of Maine and New Hampshire for nearly six decades. A couple of years earlier, I had walked the 280-mile Maine section of the trail with my then nine-year-old grandchild. 

Early one spring, I headed south for Georgia. My goal was simple -- to walk home to Maine. As in Henry's days, a lot of people expressed interest in such strange adventures. They ask why I went, what I ate, how much did my pack weigh and occasionally why I had wasted six months. 

"Don't you have anything better to do?"demanded one man in Virginia, when I asked directions back to the trail after a night in town for laundry, a shower and a salad bar. The how questions are easy. This account will answer most of those. The whys are a bit more difficult. But discerning readers may gain a hint or two anyway.

FIRST A BIT OF PERSPECTIVE. Hiking the Appalachian Trail is not particularly rare anymore. The Appalachian Trail Conference, which tries to tabulate such matters guesses that 2,000 people start each spring at Springer Mountain in Georgia and speculates that 200 finish at Katahdin. I say guess and speculate because no one really knows. Hikers tend to be independent folks. A few register their hikes with the trail conference at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia before starting. Others check in as they pass the trail headquarters. And some register with the conference at the end, thus qualifying to sew a $2 patch on their backpacks or hiking jackets, signifying to all who pass that they are "2,000 milers." Many don't bother. Unfortunately, others register, who didn't seriously walk the trail. This is not wilderness. Roads parallel and criss cross the trail almost every place. It's easy to catch rides almost from shelter to shelter. Purist thru hikers, those who insist on passing e!
 very white blaze, call those with less stringent standards yellow blazers, for the stripes that bisect public roads.        

Based on shelter register entries, especially the emotional accounts I read in Maine a few miles before the summit of Katahdin, I guess that maybe 1,000 started the trail in Georgia in the spring of 1993 and about 150 finished on Katahdin. 

Three-sided shelters are located a day's hike apart between Georgia and Maine. Each shelter has a notebook, which hikers use to register their whereabouts and thoughts or to document their hike. Some write in the registers religiously. Others never do. But many of those who ignored the registers during the early days of their hike, changed as they approached Katahdin. The cynics had dropped out weeks and months earlier. No one can walk from Georgia to Maine without feeling a mixture of elation and sadness when that adventure finally ends. Many felt an overpowering need to record these emotions for the hikers that followed. 

However, the precise number of hikers who reach the end in any particular year really doesn't matter. One thing is certain. A lot of people hike the trail each year and the numbers are growing. It wasn't until 1948 that the first hiker, Earl Shaffer, managed to do the trail in one long season. By 1970 only about 50 had accomplished the feat. But the numbers have been growing ever since. The trail conference estimates that more than 3,000 hikers have completed the trail since that first thru hike. Hiking the AT is now its almost routine, if "routine" can really be used to describe a six-month physical, mental and emotional challenge. Incidentally, Earl completed a 50th anniversary hike last summer, completing the trail just two weeks shy of his 80th birthday. It was his third thru hike. 

MY MEANDERings through the Appalachian Mountains set no records. I started at
Amicalola State Park in Georgia, a few miles from Springer Mountain on an April
13th and ended on Katahdin, six months and three days later, on October 16. The
record for a thru-hike was set in 1991 when a hiker supported by a team of
people completed the trek in just 51 days, better than 40 miles a day. The
previous record was 66 days, set 20 years earlier. Speed, however, has an
inverse relationship to what hiking the AT really means for most hikers. Benton
MacKaye, the forester-architect-planner who in the 1920s first proposed a
continuous footpath, thought the record that is most important would be the
slowest through hiker. For only the slow, he thought, could really savor the
trail. Four month hikes are common. A few hikers take eight months or more. But
six months is more typical. I was slightly on the slow side of the middle of the
pack. By MacKaye's standard, I was a bit better than average. And like many
hikers, I don't pretend to have walked every inch of the trail.

Before I left, I told friends that I was going to Georgia and walking home. My goal was to spend six months either on the trail or near the trail. I've spent enough time as a member of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club to know that there is nothing particularly sacred about the location at any particular time. The location changes constantly as new volunteers and trail managers come and go. Most of the time, I followed the current trail. Occasionally, I traversed former locations. Sometimes I followed side trails and roadways, either out of curiosity and a desire to see more of the country, or simply to escape the crowds, or achieve a change of scene. From time to time I found myself yearning to escape the peaks, to return to the valleys for reacquaintance with spring and civilization. Had I not succumbed to that yearning, I never would have seen the ancient cars in the Smokies, or visited with Rusty in Virginia, or spent an evening with the legendary Keith Shaw in Monson. 

All I can attest is that I walked a couple of thousand miles, including treks to and from towns and post offices to get groceries and mail. I finally reached the summit of Katahdin after a scramble through ice-covered rocks and wading through four inches of summit snow.

Do the gaps mean that I'm not a "thru-hiker?" There's no simple answer to that question. The trail is certainly a physical place. It starts in Georgia and at last count ends 2,159 miles later on Katahdin in north central Maine. The exact mileage changes annually. The trail is a product of dedicated volunteers -- volunteers who will never be totally happy with the monument of wildness they have created. The path gets longer or shorter as sections are rerouted in an unending quest to escape encroaching development or to make the trail as perfect as possible.

The Maine Appalachian Trail Club has relocated two-thirds of the trail in Maine since the mid 1970s.  But the trail that matters is more an experience than a place, an experience in wilderness travel, an experience in friendships, an experience in the essential goodness of most people -- certainly of most hikers. Yes the physical trail is great. The scenery is spectacular. The wildlife fascinating. The flowers incredibly diverse and beautiful. But the most vivid memories of most thru hikers are of the hikers you meet on the trail, and the surprising friendliness of the trail towns.

THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL is more a mental and emotional challenge than a physical challenge. Yes, you need to be able to walk for at least short distances before you start. But otherwise, the requisites are desire, time and patience. People of all ages and almost all physical conditions have done the trail successfully.

I met Tux, that's a shortened version of his trail name Tuxedo Junction, (also a swing era song and a train station in his hometown of Birmingham) at the Rainbow Springs Campground near Franklin, North Carolina. He was 55 when he started in early April, 80 pounds overweight and on beta blockers to regulate his heart beat. A few months earlier he had undergone bypass surgery. By 800 miles into his hike, he had lost 50 pounds. His doctor told him he had improved enough to throw away his prescriptions. He did. He also quit the trail, but that's another story.

Birdman hiked 700 miles in 1992 while carrying nearly 300 pounds on his five foot, six inch frame. Bill Irwin hiked almost all the trail, despite being almost totally blind, helped by a guide dog.

Bob Barker had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed in 1963. In 1970 he developed multiple sclerosis. Sixteen years later in 1986 he hiked the trail on crutches, averaging a bit more than 10 miles a day. The last I heard he was still hiking at age 75, though he's now also legally blind. 

Most of the people I met on the trail were in their 20s, but all ages were represented. The oldest was 77, a fact he kept secret until finally confessing in the register at the Hurd Brook shelter in Maine's "100-mile-wilderness," 20 miles from the summit of Katahdin. "I didn't want people to feel they had to slow down for me," he explained. The youngest thru-hiker I met was a pretty 19-year-old homeless girl, who had lived on the streets for two years before hiking the trail. "My folks just didn't want me at home," she said. But people far younger have done the trail. My grandson, Jon, then 11, hiked almost all of the miles from  Harpers Ferry in West Virginia to near the New Hampshire border. He could have gone the whole distance but his mother seemed to think school more important. Last summer a 10-year-old did complete the trail. He hiked with his mother and four siblings, ranging in age between 12 and 21. I ran across him a year ago in an April snowstorm in the Smokies, !
 and by happenstance while hiking on Whitecap Mountain in Maine early last October. 

NONE OF THIS MEANS that physical condition doesn't play a part. Young, healthy athletes can go faster, at least at the start. But sometimes they finish later. Probably a bigger percentage of 60-year-olds finish the trail, than do 20-year-olds. Youth sometimes lack the patience and perseverance to keep going. They get distracted by places like Rustys, a particularly attractive hostel for hikers in Virginia. 

In truth, few trail hikers start in prime physical condition. The wise ones pace themselves until their condition improves. A few five mile days at the start can help avoid blisters, stress fractures, and sore joints that can delay for weeks or perhaps cancel a hike altogether.  

Anything that improves your general physical condition obviously helps. But what is really needed is to gradually build your strength and stamina to the point where you can comfortably walk 15 miles a day up and down steep hills, while carrying a 45-pound backpack. However, if you are going to do that, you might as well do it on the trail as anywhere else. The only real training for the Appalachian Trail is to hike the Appalachian Trail.

It takes a certain mind set to endure the physical discomfort that is part of the adventure. I came out of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park with three other hikers. Tux was behind me. Two dental students from the University of Illinois were in front. The girl was sobbing. Her knees hurt. Her feet hurt. Her stomach and sides ached. She was telling her companion that she "would never do this again." 

I tried to cheer her up. "They tell me backpacking is a little like childbirth," I said. "You forget the pain.  The joy remains forever." She sobbed louder. But at the foot of the mountain smiles reappeared as we posed for final pictures.

I could sympathize because my knees were aching like giant twin toothaches. From time to time I let out a groan of my own. "This is the noisiest group I've ever hiked with," Tux complained. "But it helps," I said. "You just haven't discovered the power of therapeutic sobbing." 

FORGET THE ELABORATE RECIPES found in some backpacking manuals. They are great for playing around for a weekend or a week, especially if you have no great commitment to cover a lot of miles. But they simply take too much time and energy on a long distance walk. Thirty cent macaroni and cheese dinners, Lipton Dinners, instant mashed potatoes, instant oatmeal, Ramen noodles, Snickers candy bars and pop tarts are the basic trail foods of most AT hikers. Few long distance hikers take time to cook elaborate meals. Lipton Dinners and similar packaged meals are popular because they cook quickly in one pot, contain lots of calories, and because they make cooking and cleanup easy, fast and trouble free. You want variety? Add a chunk of cheddar cheese, a few spoonfuls of peanut butter with crackers, or an occasional package of dry soup.  
Major weight losses, however, are common. Tall Drink of Water, who started the trail at a skinny six feet, six, lost 40 pounds. He got so thin he was forced to quit after walking about a thousand miles. Tux, who started badly overweight, ended up comfortably within the range that insurance companies consider normal after two months of steady hiking. 

I used to wile away hours pondering starting a weight loss business. Customers could eat all they wanted, providing they carried everything they ate in 45 pound backpacks, while walking 15 miles a day up and down mountains. I would guarantee weight loss.

If you are carrying less than two pounds per person per day, you aren't carrying enough. Even that is skimpy for a long distance hike. You can get by on that amount only if you get to town regularly and stock up on extra calories. Most hikers do. We all tell stories of eating a quart or two of ice cream at a sitting, or a whole pie.

Salad bars are popular places for stocking up. In the South health regulations prohibit customers from taking a dirty plate back to a salad bar for a refill. That's why one Pizza Hut in Virginia delivered us four plates each when we placed our orders. We used them all.

MORE HIKES ARE SPOILED BY CARRYING too much weight than for any other reason. Wise backpackers aim for no more than 35 pounds. I say aim, not achieve, because I was rarely able to get below 40. Occasionally my pack weight jumped 15 extra pounds, usually just after I had stopped at a supermarket and restocked. It's incredible the impulse buys that you can't resist after being in the wilds for a week. 

Most thru-hikers carry one-pound backpacking stoves that burn white gas. I carried a Zip Stove, which burns tiny chips of wood, pine cones, scrap newspaper, charcoal and other miscellaneous bits of organic matter. It has a battery and small fan to provide plenty of draft, which means it usually lit without major problems, especially if I had found a scrap of birch bark along the trail sometime during the day. Birch trees have a very helpful habit of discarding bits of themselves. You can find all you need lying on the ground along the trail. 

A handful of broken twigs, or the charcoal bits from a fireplace usually provided enough fuel for morning coffee and oatmeal. At night it took two handfuls of fuel to cook my rice and macaroni and still have enough hot water for hot chocolate and dishes. 

After washing my pot, I usually boiled a couple quarts of water to drink the next day, thus avoiding the hassles, foul taste and potential health problems from drinking iodine purification tablets for six months, or, carrying the weight of a filter pump.

THOUGH SOME HIKERS rely on cold cereals, peanut butter and other cold foods, I find it difficult to hike without a stove. Tents are a more iffy matter. I carried a five pound backpacking tent through the cold months of April and May. But I shipped it home in favor of a two pound bivouac tent in June. Some hikers carried only an emergency tarp. Some nothing at all. The trail shelters tended to get very crowded on rainy nights and noisy every night. But they were also the centers for the trail community. You can walk the trail without using the shelters. But you lose a significant part of the experience of the trail if you ignore the camaraderie of the shelters.

Had I chosen to use my tent in addition to carrying it for emergencies, for instance, I never would have met Nostrademus (sic), a 53-year-old, overweight, chain smoking, high school dropout. A former advertising salesman, who now "pulls weeds and cleans shit houses" for a living at a campground in California, Nostrademus had left Springer Mountain on the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's death. He hoped to reach Monticello, Virginia in 83 days on the anniversary of Jefferson's birth. When our conversation lagged, he filled in by reciting from memory 10-minute long passages from Jefferson's writings. Employees at the campground where he worked had alerted the press in Virginia. As he prepared to leave the trail, a television crew showed up to record the moment. Nostrademus was momentarily flustered by the unexpected publicity. But after a moment or two he dove into his pack and modeled for the cameras a brilliant, red, white and blue cape in celebration of Jefferson's 250th b!
 irthday. We never hiked together, but met a dozen times at the shelters.

OTHER ESSENTIALS OF A COMPLETE BACKPACK include, of course, a sleeping bag. I substituted a two-pound down sleeping bag liner. I augmented it during the cold spring days with a down jacket and insulated underwear, both of which I shipped home by late May. Cleanliness takes on new meanings on the trail. I wore one set of clothing until I reached a shower and a Laundromat. Once bodily clean, I donned clean clothes and washed the dirty ones. Bill Irwin was even more frugal. He carried only the clothes on his back, covering himself with a poncho, while doing laundry.

Only socks were special. Feet are particularly precious on a 2,000-mile walk. Socks were changed and washed daily -- in the pot that doubled as a rice and macaroni cooker -- and hung out to dry on a giant safety pin attached to my pack. Why the pot? It's considered environmentally bad form these days to wash directly in streams. 

Most times I ate out of my cooking pot, which was rinsed with my hot chocolate or coffee, before being pressed into service to boil my next day's drinking water. But I carried two cups in case company showed unexpectedly. One was a metal Sierra Cup with a dented bottom from a vain attempt at scaring a bear a few years ago in Yosemite. The other a giant plastic measuring cup capable of holding almost a quart.

Utensils were one World War II Army surplus stainless steel tablespoon (forks
and table knives are unnecessary weight), a pocket jackknife with locking blade
and can opener, and a light weight cork screw, left over from college days in
case someone showed up with a bottle of good wine. It never happened. But one
must be prepared.

Weary