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-Snapshots from a 2000 Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike.

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A little Q + A
Q: What did you eat?
A: Mostly sticks and small grubs, and sometimes dirt... There was a town, or what passes for a town in the deep south, every 80 miles or so. Depending on the size of the store and their selection, I could usually find something resembling food, specifically: bagels (always a favorite), peanut butter, trail mix, granola, a block o' cheese (you'd be surprised how long these keep in the heat, especially extra sharp cheddar), candy, candy, candy, cereal, Lipton Noodles and Sauce, Lipton Rice and Sauce, Raisins, ramen noodles (only when I had to), macaroni and cheese, tortillas, bread, Kool Aid, and basically anything else that had a high calorie / weight ratio. Sometimes people carry fresh fruits and vegetables for a day or two out of a town but then they get accused of being nuts. My favorites were broccoli (can't bust it) and bananas. Oh yeah, the 'mysteriously inexpensive' Fudge Dipped Macaroon Bars were a definite staple also. Calories are key. Long-distance backpackers can burn anywhere from 4,000 to 8,000 calories every day, so most people find themselves eating a lot of everything.
Q: How far did you walk?
A: I started from Springer Mountain in Georgia and finished on Mount Katahdin in Maine. I didn't walk every inch of the trail in between. Sometimes, due to a hitchhike into or out of a town, I would miss a little bit of road walking here or there. I'm estimating that I missed a little less than 5 miles of the trail's total length, that leaves about 2,160 miles.
Q: How often did you go through a town?
A: As mentioned above, in the deep south, the towns could be few and far between. Further north, I usually carried about 3-4 days worth of food (about 60 miles between resupply). Getting into New Hampshire and Maine, the towns begin to spread out again as the population density decreases.
Q: How do people resupply while on the trail?
A: There are two ways to go about resupplying: buy food as you go, or do mail drops. Most of the people planning to hike a large section of the trail do the latter. A mail drop is simply box of food and supplies that someone at home sends out to post offices along the trail. The packages are held via general delivery, for the A.T. hiker. There are some advantages to this, such as consistency of diet and lower overall food cost. The problem with all of that consistency is that most people decide about three weeks into the trail that they shouldn't have planned to eat oatmeal every day for the next 5 months. Becides a lack of flexibility in diet, mail drops also have a tendency to dictate your hiking schedule. Nearly everyone I talked to who did mail drops was delayed in a town at least once while waiting for their package. They're then forced to either resupply at the store and "bump" their mail drop ahead to the next town, or wait on their drop. Even if everything goes as planned, most people stop at the grocery stores every chance they get anyway just to buy foods that aren't available in mail drops, like Ben & Jerry's. I think the ideal solution is some combination of resupply in towns, and mail drops for things that can't be found in the average trail-town grocery store or outfitter.
Q: How far did you walk a day?
A: This varied a great deal for me depending on my mood, the terrain, the weather, geographical location, alignment of the planets, etc. After my feet stopped bleeding and my body was acclimated to walking up mountains all the time, I could average 18-20 miles a day without much trouble. I took a fair amount of rest days, half days and sit-in-the-shelter-and-read-'cause-the-weather-sucks days, so my overall average mileage was much lower than this.
Q: What did you carry?
A: As little as I could. Before I left, I bought a lot of expensive, heavy duty, "lightweight" backpacking gear. I soon found out however, that the less weight I carried, the more I felt like actually hiking instead of catching the first bus home. I started with a little over 40lbs in my pack with food and water. At its lightest my pack weighed well under 18 lbs. I sent much of the equipment I had just bought back home as I got into towns with post offices. Some I replaced (BOOTS: see Blister Files, Pack, Raingear, Stove) with cheaper, lighter, simplified gear, the rest got rid of and never missed. Many people start the trail and are forced to quit because of knee, back, and other preventable injuries. My body wasn't designed to carry 45 lbs. over 25 miles of mountains in a day (it was very quick to point this out to me). Besides, who needs all that useless crap anyway? One of my favorite things about backpacking is the act of getting by with less; eliminating the nonessentials. With much help from people who knew far more than me about both backpacking and life, I was repeatedly amazed at how few posessions are actually necessary to get along in the world.
Q: How did you bathe?
A: Well, uh, the truthful answer to this one is, not very well. I'm sure that I smelled worse on this trip than I ever have in my life and if you don't believe me you can ask my brother who had the pleasure of picking me up from Mt. Katahdin after five months in the woods. I did try to keep clean with the 'dundo bath' method (don't ask), but I really was never clean until I got into a town for a real shower. The current 'Leave No Trace' wilderness ethic prohibits people from really using soap (even the biodegradeable stuff) in amounts that would actually do the job. This is because the soap suds pollute the streams and rivers which are the sole source of water for other people and animals on the trail. Many people disregard this as tree-hugging 'fanaticism', but as one who has had to go an extra 7 miles for water because someone wanted to bathe in a mountain spring I can tell you, it does make a difference.
Q: Did you take a gun?
A: No
Q: Did you take a cell-phone?
A: No
Q: Did you see any bears?
A: Yes

Any more questions? slack-packer@angelfire.com