Thruhike the Appalachian trail anyone?

Paco Dennis said:
No. No. No. BUT, I have watched a couple videos of the experience. I really liked them. A YouTube search will bring up several videos. It seems like quite a trip. A real adventure. Do you plan on hiking the whole trail ( Yikes ), or a part of it? My vote is that you give it try. It will keep the ol' blood pumping. :)
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yep i plan to attempt it march of 2025. i just retired dec 2023 so i need to do some planning and training!! i cant wait.
 
MountainRa said:
At this stage of life I’d be thrilled to just hike a small portion of the Trail. Not likely to happen.
Hope you get to do it and have a safe, wonderful experience.
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thank u so much!! my plan is march 2025. have some training to do in the meantime. and some research
 
old medic said:
I have hiked the entire width of the trail.. I have done several sections of it. I wish I could go with you, but my hiking days are defiantly over.
If you haven't seen or heard of it, The book and movie , A Walk in the Woods.
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funny...thank u.
 
jujube said:
No, but I've "cross-hiked" it a few times......hardest three feet I've ever done...LOL.

Seriously, I've hiked maybe 10 feet of it at the southern end at Amicalola Falls, maybe a little more at Clingmans Dome, walked across the trail at Harper's Ferry, and ....uh....thought seriously about it in Maine, but not *that* seriously.
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the beginning and the end are tough!!!
 
Here in California, surprising numbers of seniors are day trail hikers and fair numbers backpackers, that anyone that thru hikes long trails must learn to be. And not a few have been doing so all our adult lives since those turbulent times when much of the rest of society was against us.

A current thread is whether happiness is a choice or not. As a twenty-something after enduring the Vietnam War, I had just a few hundred dollars and just a duffle bag of clothing. By choice I moved to San Jose area where I was alone without any support and began a jr. electronic technician job for $2.83 an hour.

Although I had little, I was confident as a native Californian I could find great happiness in its world class natural world that is free beyond a bit of vehicle driving. One of the first activities I chose to embrace was backpacking that means carrying all one's heavy gear in a large pack in order to stay overnight camping style in what is usually wilderness areas without any roads, infrastructure or machines.

Thus one brings food, cooking gear, clothing, a sleeping bag, tent, and much small survival gear strenuously carrying it all on one's back often up mountain trails. Was very popular during the 1970s for we Counterculture young people.

Now 5 decades later, I've backpacked over 200 times that has been a source of immense happiness and fulfillment in my adult life. Along the way, I became a trout fisherman, natural science enthusiast, and later an accomplished landscape and nature photographer. All related activities that have also brought great happiness to my life despite having nothing to do with money so many others only ever seek.

Although the notion of hiking a long thru trail after reading what others have done, excites many, it is not something to do at a whim without making a serious effort to train one's body to endure its strenuous physical effort. One must also learn a list of skills that are only acquired with actual experience and not just reading some book or watching YouTube.

Accordingly, many try it but quickly find it more effort and difficulty than they are willing to make, so quickly abandon it. That is more the case as a senior given our older, less resilient bodies. Thus will suggest, before one jumps in up to their neck on a long logistically complex thru hike, they first wisely rent some gear from a sporting goods shop and just do a shorter out and back short backpack of 2 or 3 nights.

Even better would be to do so within a group of like others within a guided class or Meetups group. Best of luck!
 
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David777 said:
Here in California, surprising numbers of seniors are day trail hikers and fair numbers backpackers, that anyone that thru hikes long trails must learn to be. And not a few have been doing so all our adult lives since those turbulent times when much of the rest of society was against us.

A current thread is whether happiness is a choice or not. As a twenty-something after enduring the Vietnam War, I had just a few hundred dollars and just a duffle bag of clothing. By choice I moved to San Jose area where I was alone without any support and began a jr. electronic technician job for $2.83 an hour.

Although I had little, I was confident as a native Californian I could find great happiness in its world class natural world that is free beyond a bit of vehicle driving. One of the first activities I chose to embrace was backpacking that means carrying all one's heavy gear in a large pack in order to stay overnight camping style in what is usually wilderness areas without any roads, infrastructure or machines.

Thus one brings food, cooking gear, clothing, a sleeping bag, tent, and much small survival gear strenuously carrying it all on one's back often up mountain trails. Was very popular during the 1970s for we Counterculture young people.

Now 5 decades later, I've backpacked over 200 times that has been a source of immense happiness and fulfillment in my adult life. Along the way, I became a trout fisherman, natural science enthusiast, and later an accomplished landscape and nature photographer. All related activities that have also brought great happiness to my life despite having nothing to do with money so many others only ever seek.

Although the notion of hiking a long thru trail after reading what others have done, excites many, it is not something to do at a whim without making a serious effort to train one's body to endure its strenuous physical effort. One must also learn a list of skills that are only acquired with actual experience and not just reading some book or watching YouTube.

Accordingly, many try it but quickly find it more effort and difficulty than they are willing to make, so quickly abandon it. That is more the case as a senior given our older, less resilient bodies. Thus will suggest, before one jumps in up to their neck on a long logistically complex thru hike, they first wisely rent some gear from a sporting goods shop and just do a shorter out and back short backpack of 2 or 3 nights.

Even better would be to do so within a group of like others within a guided class or Meetups group. Best of luck!
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thank u for that. very interesting. and yes i do know that only 25% actually make the distance. who knows if i will or not. however, i am not doing this on a whim. i have planned this for many years but needed to wait for retirement. i have gone on section hikes with my sister and others. altho, admittedly none longer than a week at a time. i have my gear already but do want to upgrade a bit too. also i have a year to train. so i won't be going from the couch to the trail...i live on the side of a mtn about a mile from the trail. so training is now part of my life. i just couldn't do it while working.
 
In 1985 I hiked the N.Cal, (Mt. Shasta north) OR and S.WA sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. Finished off by hiking the Wonderland Trail which goes around Mt. Rainier in WA. It was a great time and I actually didn't want to stop but I had a new job waiting for me and had to attend to that.
 
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When I moved to Nevada in 1997 I met people that had just started to hike and became an avid hiker. Our group ranged in age from 35-52. The people that were overweight lost the weight as we hiked every night after work and the entire weekend. We trained to hike Mt Rose which is 6 miles with quite an elevation gain and the top is a little over 10k feet.

During the winter we snowshoed to keep in shape. The group lasted for two years and it was one of the best times of my life. So much natural beauty here.
 
twinsinpa said:
...i have gone on section hikes with my sister and others. altho, admittedly none longer than a week at a time. i have my gear already but do want to upgrade a bit too. also i have a year to train...
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Great @twinsinpa , you are all ready with gear and experience to start that great adventure. There is quite a list of Appalachian Trail hiking forums and groups on social media one might web search for where one will more likely find others that might join you on that journey. As someone 3000 miles west, I'm not familiar with any of that world. But as someone on this SF forum board a few years now, I will note there does not seem to be many still current outdoor enthusiasts though several were hikers when younger and still love nature.

As noted, I still backpack each year though only made one 5-day trip last year. The below image is near where I spent my first two nights after hiking almost 6.5 miles up about 2000 feet of vertical with little me at 5'6" 138# carrying 58# pounds. A successful photography trip with the below a downsized for web version of a 4 column 1 row stitch blended image using 85 individual focus stack blended shots with a 30mm lens, full image 12,500 by 6000 pixels.

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Below are 100% pixels crops from the above image showing the full detail in 4 areas. That distant lake is upper mid right and the falls center mid left.

UD03970-04054-4x1v-cr1.jpg
 
OK, here's a real hiking adventure, or maybe it was madness.

A headline in the tabloid press told of a British family who 'walked' 15,000 miles from Britain to Australia to avoid flying. Not quite true, the main aim was to avoid flying and so save the planet. Apparently the return air journey is equivalent to 60 % of the average Brit's 'carbon footprint'.

The journey took 4 months, over £1000 in visas and overall cost three times the cost of flying. They travelled by boat, train, taxi - through many countries avoiding unsafe regions - any way to avoid flying With supreme irony, at their last halt in East Timor they waited 3 weeks for a boat to Australia, but gave up and flew the remaining journey in order to attend a wedding.

Someone pointed out that aircraft still flew that route, so whether or not they were passengers, the resultant pollution was still the same and their overland journey would have added to that.
 

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