The AT Evaluation

Bangor, ME

Unless you are needing to give life a good kick in the pants, there's no real scenic reason to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. Maybe ten percent of the trail is worth a good vacation; the rest of the miles are drudging, viewless climbs through somewhat less-than-notable second-growth forest. The Smokies, the Roan Highlands of Tennessee, Grayson Highlands and McAfee Knob in Virginia, some of Vermont, the Whites, and Katahdin are all worthy of visits. I can't be objective about the Smokies. They're where I vacationed as a child in the summer, and they are where I first fell in love with the outdoors. Some folks have a much less positive impression of them.

The trail starts brutally, with steady two thousand foot climbs and drops up and down Georgia clay. No rocks, but if there's any water on the trail at all the clay is incredibly slippery. This trend holds until you get near Virginia. The Roan Highlands are the incredible centerpiece of the southern section. I'd recommend an overnight trip starting at Roan mountain, spending the night at the gorgeous Overmountain Shelter, and finishing at Mountain Harbor Bed and Breakfast.

"Virginia is flat," so say locals and ex-thru-hikers with a perverse sense of humor. It's not flat in any way, and it's five hundred miles. I've known thru-hikers who have taken two months to get through that state. It's the state that breaks your spirit. There's pretty much nothing notable between Grayson and the Shenandoahs, except for McAfee knob, which is an OK summit. You could skip from Grayson in VA to Greylock in MA without missing an awful lot.

Get ready for the civil war state! I have great memories of Maryland. The trail in this state follows the great skirmishes around Antietem, a plaque every ten miles documenting your hike around that field of slaughter. Through MD And southern PA you can get town food every day, right on the trail. Stop at Caledonia State Park, Pen-Mar's pizza delivery, and Pine Grove Furnace for the "Half-Gallon Challenge", where through hikers race through half-gallon size portions of ice cream, to celebrate the halfway point.

Pennsylvania up to Port Clinton is really honking boring, but at least it's passable. Northern PA is nasty, nasty trail, and if I had a time machine I'd go back and tell myself to skip this section. Defining experience: after an attack of clear vomit during a one hundred and seven degree day, I collapsed in a shelter, cursing the ridiculous boulder field they called a trail. I hear a truck engine. This guy pops out of a pickup a dozen yards from the shelter. "Hiya there," he said, "I'm the Ridge Runner for this section!" If I wasn't so blasted I would have killed him with my bare hands. Ridge runner!? Ridge Driver, more like. When was the last time you saw this goddamned trail?

The saving grace of PA was Palmerton, which was easily the friendliest trail town of the whole trip. Doubly impressive considering the whole town sits on top of a toxic Disneyland, the EPA superfund site I might have mentioned.

I raced through the mid-Atlantic so fast I hardly remember it. The Low Point at Bear Mountain Zoo was fun (124' in elevation). Crossing the Hudson was awesome. Hiking with Tin Man. Seeing Monica, getting engaged.

Once you get to Vermont, really, after Greylock, things get really scenic again. And they get scenic very fast indeed after you get to NH. I can't talk up the Whites enough, and really, southern Maine is gorgeous too. Southern Maine is also home to Mahoosuc Notch, which although it is not the "hardest mile", it is the slowest. It took me an hour, but non-thru-hikers generally want to allow four or six hours for navigating the notch.

And then Northern Maine, where the climate definitively changes to Canadian, and the trail gets intensely muddy. You fly through the wilderness- although the warning signs say to bring ten days of food, even novice hikers will probably not need more than seven, and there are resupply points in between. The fine folks running White House Landing winter in Anna Maria Island, funny enough. I told them I'd drop by when I got home. It seems a lot of people on the trail in Maine winter in or near Bradenton.

Then the big K, or Miss K, Baxter Peak, Katahdin. Easily the best summit on the trail, even without the emotional underpinnings. It's also the most challenging.

I'm just starting to get used to the idea that I'm not climbing mountains anymore. My hands are shaking. I have way too much excess energy. My kingdom for a stairmaster!

Lord knows I'm going to need one, and fast. I'm trying to eat well now, but my body still wants enormous quantities of food. I've lost thirty five pounds, and have a resting heart rate just shy of fifty BPM. I won't be able to keep this kind of shape (ten to twelve hours of aerobic exercise a day is a great way to live, but doesn't exactly pay the bills), but hopefully I can add enough muscle to this somewhat depleted frame so that my metabolism stays high.

Thanks to everyone back home for all the support- sometimes it was the emails from home that made it all worthwhile. We thru-hikers forget, sometimes, exactly the scale of this thing we do. A lot of the time we just sort of feel like hobos. "It's a very thin line between being a thru-hiker and being a vagrant". But the emails from home reminded us of who we are, and helped to restore a bit of our dignity.

And more than anyone else, a huge thank you to my future wife Monica, who's really been supernaturally patient with this whole project.

Time to get that flight set up. Time to go home.

And . . . What's this? A book about the Pacific Crest Trail?

Interesting . . .