The Appalachian Trail Girl's Guide

The Appalachian Trail Girl’s Guide

Megan Hashbrown Maxwell

Copyright © 2014 by Megan Maxwell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

www.appalachiantrailgirl.com

Book Layout © 2016 BookDesignTemplates.com

The Appalachian Trail Girl’s Guide/ Megan Maxwell. – 2nd ed.

ISBN: 978-1539803508

CONTENTS

Why Hike? 1

Telling the World 7

What Gear to Bring: The Big Three 14

What Gear to Bring: Footwear 27

What Gear to Bring: Cookware 34

What Gear to Bring: Other Essentials 41

What Gear to Bring: Clothes 50

Trail Cooking and Snacks 54

Budgeting for Your Hike 61

Hygiene, Periods, Pooping, and Peeing 68

Trail Skills 77

Georgia 85

Southern North Carolina and the Smokey Mountains 95

Northern North Carolina and Tennessee 103

Southern Virginia 109

Northern Virginia 116

West Virginia and Maryland 126

Pennsylvania 132

New Jersey and New York 144

Connecticut and Massachusetts 157

Vermont 171

New Hampshire 184

Maine 201

Post-Trail Life 220

Gear Checklist 228

CHAPTER ONE

Why Hike?

In the summer of 2009, I was going to Maine with my parents for our family vacation. I had just finished my freshman year of college in my home state of Ohio. While I had a great time during my first year hanging out with my roommates, exploring the city of Columbus, and maintaining an A- GPA, I still had no direction as to what I wanted to do with my life.

While driving across the Massachusetts turnpike, I saw an overpass with a brown sign that read Appalachian Trail. I’ve always enjoyed hiking, but up to that point in my life, I had never hiked more than five miles in one day. From the back seat, I happily announced to my parents, I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail.

And that is how my thru-hiking obsession began.

My sophomore year of college was only slightly less fun than my freshman year. In addition to taking extra classes during my attempt at a double major, I was also working two jobs and throwing house parties with my roommates every other weekend. I worked at the campus admissions office call center as well as a calzone delivery restaurant, so I had a lot of downtime at work to pour over trail books.

I read as many trail memoirs, how-to guides, and data books as I could get my hands on. I decided to do a section hike the following summer. I recruited a friend to go with me, and I started planning a three-week long trip. My friend backed out a month in advance, after I had already bought all of my gear.

Despite my mother forbidding me from going hiking alone, my dad decided that they should drive me to Massachusetts and drop me off at the trail head¹. During the nine-hour drive to Great Barrington, I could practically feel the waves of anxiety emanating off of my mother. She was certain that these were the last hours she would ever get to spend with me. We stayed in a hotel overnight, then headed to the trail first thing in the morning. Before driving away, my mom insisted on taking a photo of me, So I can identify the clothes you’re wearing to the police if I need to.

Sometime during the first quarter mile of my hike, I had a What did I get myself into? moment. My pack hurt my shoulders and my boots rubbed my feet. The mountains, which wouldn’t have been too bad with just a day pack, were almost torturous with the forty pounds of weight I was carrying.

In short, my first three-week backpacking trip was a logistical disaster. The best way to learn about backpacking, however, is to go backpacking. Despite the difficulty of the trail, I had a great time meeting new people and experiencing the mountains. After that first section hike, I was certain that I must thru-hike the Appalachian Trail one day.

By junior year of college, I dissatisfied with the routine of being a student. I thought that it would be best if I hurried up and got a degree before I ended up with even more student loan debt. I dropped my photography major, keeping it as a minor, and focused on English. I didn’t know what I would do with an English degree. I just knew that it came naturally to me, and taking an extra class every quarter wasn’t too challenging.

I sweet talked a few friends into coming along for a section hike in Georgia over spring break. To my surprise, I managed to convince two more friends to hike the Shenandoah Mountains with me during the summer. With two more section hikes complete, I felt prepared and mentally ready to start my thru-hike.

I powered through summer classes, and graduated at the end of my junior year. With my degree in hand and no job prospects in front of me, I headed back to my parent’s house to spend the long winter planning my thru-hike.

Why does anyone thru-hike?

While there are different crowds of thru-hikers, the majority of them fall into the white and middle-class demographic. I’m not sure exactly what percentage of hikers are men, but I would roughly estimate that the year I hiked only one out of five hikers were women. In recent years, and possibly due to the popularity of Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild, the ratios have become more balanced.

These categories aren’t exhaustive or exclusive, but it will give you an idea of the type of people you might encounter on the trail.

Recent college grads or twenty-somethings: This group of hikers might not be sure where their lives are headed. Many, like me, hope that a thru-hike might give them a greater sense of direction.

Ex-military guys and girls: After spending the better chunk of their twenties in the military, they do a thru-hike to transition back into life State-side. A former military man once told me that after a few tours of Iraq, hiking the Appalachian Trail restored his faith in humanity.

One-big-hurrah-before-I-settle-downers: These folks may be traveling with their significant other. They are almost ready to settle down, have a family, and hold a steady job. They just want to go on one more, crazy adventure before diving into the responsibilities of careers and children.

The retirees: Some of these people have been planning their hikes for decades. They don’t have to work anymore, so they decided to go for it. The oldest hiker I’ve ever met on the trail was eighty-one.

The mid-life crisis-ers: These folks normally fall into two categories. The first group likes to party hard. They run up seventy-dollar bar tabs in town and try to pick up ladies. They take three zero days ²in a row making the Motel 8 their temporary home. The second group are serious hikers. They start hiking before the sun comes up, and they log in as many miles as they can every day. They treat the trail like it’s their job away from their real job. I should also note that many of the retirees fall into the latter category, as well.

While I originally wanted to thru-hike because I was looking for an adventure and hoped to find a sense of direction in my life, my reasons behind continuing to long distance hike in the present day have shifted. I have direction now, and I don’t need to walk 2,000 miles to maintain it.

Nowadays, I hike because I am the happiest I have ever been when I’m on a long trail and occasionally the most miserable I have ever been. It offers me a wide range of mental and physical challenges, and allows me to grow as a person. Long distance hiking continues to shift my perspective on the world and my place in it.

CHAPTER TWO

Telling the World

Most of my friends and family have always known that I can be a bit impulsive. It’s one of my more redeeming qualities. I don’t think anyone was very surprised when I announced that I would be hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. After all, my loved ones already knew I liked backpacking based on my frequent escapes to the mountains. Living in the woods for six months isn’t exactly the type of thing that appears out of character for me.

I’m sure some people were doubtful that I would be able to walk 2,000 miles, but thankfully they didn’t express it to my face. I was confident in myself. There was never a point before my hike that I thought I wouldn’t make it.

It could have been my own self-assuredness that provoked the support of those around me, or maybe they just knew better than to voice their concerns in my presence. The point is, I felt good about starting my hike, and that’s all that really mattered.

After giving careful consideration to your commitment to hiking the Appalachian Trail, you should tell all of the people who matter in your life.

Why you should tell your loved ones that you are going to thru-hike:

You will find that many of your friends and family members will be ill-informed about the dangers of the trail, and they may try to discourage you from doing it. It’s best to get the opinions of the naysayers out of the way long before your departure date. If you wait until right before your trip to tell everyone and then are bombarded with negativity, you may start second guessing your decision.

My family was excited for my trip, so they gave me things like dry bags and wool socks as holiday gifts. My grandparents gave me some money for my hike, and my mom bought me my Osprey backpack. I saved a few hundred dollars because my family wanted to see me succeed. I was also determined to make them proud.

You will be more confident in yourself if you have a few people who believe in you. Announcing to the world that you will thru-hike also makes you more determined to do it. It’s easy to quit the first week when things are hard if there’s no risk of public embarrassment.

Having the support of people at home makes you more likely to hike the entire trail. Whenever I was having a hard time on the trail or just needed to pretend to be normal, I would call one of my friends back home. They helped me stay positive. While I don’t have any statistics on the percentage of women who succeed, I do know that most of the ladies I met and stayed in touch with did finish. I believe a contributing factor is having a strong support system in place before departing.

Plenty of people at home would love to do something like the Appalachian Trail, but they can’t due to life’s commitments. They will want to help you. I got care packages galore during my hike, and I was also welcomed into the homes of a few different family friends.

If you get lucky a few people will want to come hike with you for a week or two. Several of my college buddies hiked my first week with me, my mom came to hike for a week in Pennsylvania, and my college roommate’s little sister joined me for two weeks. I found great satisfaction in getting to teach them about hiking and spending time with them.

I kept up with social media while hiking. I liked posting lots of photos on my Facebook and reading all the positive comments. People I hadn’t talked to in years would message me to tell me how happy they were for me.

Doing online research is a standard part of any preparation. There are plenty of reputable websites and blogs out there. Online forums and Facebook groups can be a solid resource, but they can also be disheartening. On the popular website WhiteBlaze.com, there is a women’s only forum that is swamped with male contributors and their questionable advice that isn’t applicable to the female demographic. Sorry, but I don’t want to get period advice from someone who has never had one.

Why You Should Take Internet Forums and Groups with a Grain of Salt:

There are countless Appalachian Trail related Facebook groups and online forums. Each group often has hundreds, even thousands, of members. The problem here is that plenty of these people are not actual hikers who spend a substantial amount of time in the woods. This is fine if they are there to learn, but oftentimes these members offer expert opinions without the experience to back it up.

Behind the screens of a keyboard, people are much more likely to become aggressive with their words. The trail is, for the most part, a supportive and friendly place. Spending too much time in A.T. forums might lead you to believe that the trail will be full of hostile, argumentative people. This is not what the hiking community is about.

People might argue that their own opinion is the right one. With hiking and hiking gear, there is no right choice, only the choice that is right for you. You might post a link to a camp stove you’re thinking about buying and ask for opinions on it, and there might be one member who is vehemently against it. That one member might dissuade you from buying a camp stove that would have been perfect for your gear setup.

Sometimes people legitimately don’t know what they are talking about. I once wrote a well thought out blog entry on avoiding creepy men while hiking. I received an overwhelmingly positive response from my fellow female hikers. Then an older gentleman commented something to the effect of, Take whatever precautions you want, but having a male hiker partner is still the best way to avoid unwanted attention. Needless to say, his comment got deleted without a response. My job is to help women feel confident in their own hiking abilities, not urge them to cling to a hiking partner just to help them avoid a few potentially awkward scenarios.

Not all forums and groups are going to be negative. It just takes some extra searching to find a quality group full of positive people. I belong to the Women of the PCT Facebook group (I’m thinking about doing a thru-hike of the PCT), and the members there are absolutely amazing and supportive. The administrator only allows women to subscribe and rude people get deleted. It’s worth the extra effort to find an online community that is full of good people.

Before I set off for my hike, it seemed like others were worried for my safety. They thought that it would be smarter of me to find a hiking partner ahead of time. Turns out, it’s difficult to find someone who wants to live in the woods for six months. And I much prefer to live by my own schedule and whim.

Is It Safe?

Yes, the trail is absolutely safe, even for solo hikers. If you need to assure any of your family members that you will be fine, throw a few of these points their way:

The