What are the Greatest Stories from the Appalachian Trail?

the A T into this international trail. I mean, I guess I can see that from like a branding perspective, But why would you do that? You're gonna remember this from your school age, Mango. You remember the word Pangaea when all of the continents were together, So they were connected some two hundred million years ago, And so he noticed that when the landmass broke up, so did this giant mountain range. And you know other pieces of the range that are in Morocco and Greenland, Norway, Spain, a

bunch of other countries. So the Appalachians kind of continue around the world, and you look at what other countries are doing. Canada's already does ignated eighteen hundred miles from Maine to Newfoundland, and the British Geological Survey has done the same thing with this nineties six mile portion of a trail that runs through the UK. But all this excitement over the International Appalachian Trail it made us want to take a closer look at how the original Appalachian

Trail got its start. Why did some people start hiking the eight in the first place, what are some of the crazy stories from those early hikes, and what's the real reason park rangers don't want people hiking naked? Because, believe it or not, there is a good one. So let's dig in yea. Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man Guess Ticketer and the other side of the soundproof glass, steam rolling his way

through a tub of rocky road. It is rocky road, definitely rocky rocky road ice cream. That's our friend and producer Tristan mcnailo. I get it. Rocky roads stupid well anyway, believe it or not, Trista is actually trying to pass this off is part of his training for hiking the Appalachian Trail. I don't know if he's going to hike the whole thing or what, but he claims there's a tradition that began around the nineteen eighties where hikers would

down a ton of ice cream. I'm just not so sure about this sum It actually is a real thing. It's called Gallon Challenge and hundreds of eight hikers take it on every single year. And Tristan is getting a little ahead of himself though, as he always does. The challenges something hikers do once they reached the official halfway point of the truck. It's actually in this town called Pine Grove Furnace in Pennsylvania, and the idea is to celebrate the milestone by wolfing down a half gallon of

ice cream in under an hour. There's like a time limit on it. There's actually this general store there that's been hosting the for about forty years now and the owner says that the all time record for a half gallon challenges under five minutes. Oh gross, that is Uh well, we'll have to put our our friend Yas or the competitive eater up to the challenge to see if you can beat that. But that sounds disgusting, and I'm curious. Do the challengers get anything for pulling this off besides

brain freeze? Of course, I mean you get bragging rights, of course. But there are these little prizes. They call them victory spoons, and it's basically one of those little wooden spoons that comes with an ice cream cover, except this one has the words member of the Half Gallon

Club printed on it. What a fancy priz. I mean, I actually love hearing about all the Appalachian Trail traditions that have sprung up over the years, because you knows, the trail really is its own little world, and at this point, it feels like the trail's unique social life is it's really as much of a draw as the beautiful scenery or the sense of the challenge. And if you think about it, there's this entire community spread across fourteen different states and now, as we've learned in Morocco

as well, maybe one day. But the only thing that ties them together is that pull they feel towards this trail. So you've got this team of trail maintenance volunteers who keep the route clear and safer hikers and supportive residents along the way and these adjacent towns, and they come in to cheer on the hikers or give them food or often even a place to crash for the night.

And then there are the hikers themselves, and so they'll often meet as strangers from all walks of life, but you know, a few shared hardships a couple of thousand miles later, and they form these lifelong friendships. Yeah. I mean, I have a few friends who have done this, and there's clearly no question that hiking the a T is this life changing experience for tons of people. Yeah, well, you hear that over and over, and so today we thought we'd take a closer look at why that is.

So we'll talk about how the trail got it, start about some of the most notable folks who have hiked it, also dig a little bit deeper into life on the trail, and check out a few of the clever ways that intrepid hikers have found to keep things interesting. So there's a lot to talk about, But where where do you want to start? Manga, Well, how about running through some quick stats about the a T just for those who

aren't familiar with it. So for starters, the a T is the longest hiking only footpath, not just in the US but in the entire world. It's official length fluctuates every year. It's um because miles are added or removed as they perform various upgrades and repairs along the passes,

but in general the trail runs just under miles. It stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia all the way up to Mount Cataden in Maine, and along the way the trail cuts through the mountainous regions of twelve other states. And while millions of day hikers visit some portion of the trail every year, the a T is probably most famous where it's so called two thousand miles Club. And these are those super determined folks who covered the trails

entire length from one end to the other. And there are a bunch of different ways you can do this. You can take the trail and segments over the course of multiple years. They're called segment hikers. The people who do this UM You can hike straight through and that often takes five to seven months. Those people are called through hikers. Or you can complete half the trail and one direction before switching to the opposite end to complete the other half of the trail later that year, and

those are called flip flop hikers. But you know, no matter how you do it, hiking the a T is this grueling challenge and it takes about five million footsteps if you had a predometer on to complete. Wow, I mean that is just so long, two thousand miles. I'm not sure if I've actually walked that long in my entire life, and I'm sure I have, but that is so long, and obviously it's why so few people make it.

I was actually just looking at the stats from the a T Conservancy and it looks like about forty people have attempted the through Hike trail over the past twelve months. Yet of those more than four thousand people, only forty nine people actually completed it. And in fact, if you count from when the trail was created back in nineteen thirty seven all the way to today, only around nineteen

thousand high completions have ever been recorded. You think about the number of people that have been out there over the years. So it's a pretty elite club to be part of, definitely, But I do want to talk a little bit about how the trail came to be in

the first place. So you already mentioned the a T was officially completed in nineteen thirty seven, but the initial idea for the trail actually dates back to and that was the year this man named Benton McKay graduated from Harvard and he hiked into the green mountains of Vermont

to celebrate. And as the story goes, McKay climbed to this tree atop of Strandon Mountain and he saw this gorgeous view there and it just gave him this idea for a dedicated trail following the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Maine to Georgia. And twenty one years later, McKay was an established lend use planner and that's when he finally took his first steps to making his dream

of reality. He published this article in an architectural journal and it outlined his vision for a nature trail that anyone on the East Coast could escape to as needed, whereas he put it a place to walk, to see and to see what you see. So if McKay's plan was published in nineteen twenty one, but it didn't open for another sixteen years. Yes, so mackay was a great idea man, but he kind of lacked followed through, and

thankfully there was this maritime lawyer. His name was Meyron Avery, and he heard about the project and he was really the one who pushed it along. So he started mapping the trail's route on his own. He took this rolling measuring wheel, uh, and he went mile after mile, just taking notes for future guidebooks. And he started the process. And then about ten years into the process, he started organizing these crews of volunteers to build a whole thing. So it took him a full decade to map out

the trail. It actually took him sixteen years. He kept mapping even as construction had started, and he didn't finish the project until nineteen thirty six, which is one year before the final portion of the trail was cleared. The task was probably worth it though, in the long run, because technically it made Avery the first person to walk the entire a t at least as a segment hiker. So actually I was looking at the first through hiker in the world. Would have to wait until nineteen for

that to happen. Do you think about the timing of this, You know, you had World War Two that it curtailed most people's interest in the trail for the better part of its first decade or so of existence. But then once the war was over and servicemen were which earning home the A T LRD, a new batch of challengers. Now among them was a guy named Earl Shaffer. He was a twenty nine year old World War Two veteran.

He was from Yorkshire, Pennsylvania. He'd read about the trail in this Outdoor Living magazine, and Schaefer decided to through hike the A T because it was a way, as he said, to walk the army out of his system. So he set out from Georgia on April four, and he made it to the end of the trail in Maine just a hundred and twenty four days later. If you do the math on this, this means he averaged about sixteen and a half miles a day. That is

so long. Now along the way, Schaefer kept a journal to document his thoughts and to really service proof that he had truly done what he claimed. And what's interesting is that he sort of unintentionally kicked off a new literary genre. Today, the Internet is full of these online hiking sites that catalog entries from people's Appealachian trail journals, and occasionally these accounts even make their way onto the

store shelves as they do. You know, if you think about the most famous one, probably Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Yeah, I mean, that is cool that he kicked off this genre. But what's weird is that Schaeffer's legacy is even bigger than that. So he hiked the trail twice more in his lifetime. Uh. The second time was in nineteen sixty five, and then again he

did it in at the age of seventy nine. And that second time Schaefer hike from Main to Georgia, which actually made him the first person to throw hike in both directions. That is amazing that he did this at seventy nine, and it should offer some encouragement to Tristan. He's in his seventies right right, so he can still

he's got time. Well, I mean, even though Earl Shaffer passed away in two thousand two, you'll be happy to know that before his death he donated both the backpack and the boots that he wore on that nineteen forty eight hike to the Smith Zone. So you can go see and keep in mind that Schaeffer wore the same pair of boots for all two thousand miles of his trip. That you can't imagine how torn up these things were. And he'd often walk days without socks for some reason.

And so rather than replaced the boots a few times along the way, you know, like most hikers do, Shaefer would simply patch them up himself, or he then resold in towns along his route. And you know, as you can imagine, these things were very much worse for the wear. In fact, one of the museum curators once confessed, quote, the boots are smelly, and those cabinets are opened as little as possible. Shaffer was the first man that through hike the eighteen But do you know much about the

first woman to do this? I do, And this was a really interesting read. That was Emma Gatewood, or Grandma Gatewood as she later became known. Now her story is a pretty amazing one. She was the mother of eleven children and something like twenty three grandchildren, and after thirty years of being in an abusive marriage, she divorced her husband and started her life all over and was sometime

in the nineteen fifties. She read this nat GEO article about the Appalachian Trail and how Earl Schaefer was the first man to throw hike it, and she told her daughter, quote, if those men can do it, I can do it. So then in nineteen fifty five she proved she was right by walking the entire trail. It only took her a hundred and forty six days. Now, this was impressive

for all kinds of reasons. For one thing, Gatewood was sixty seven years old when she completed her hike, and she did the whole thing by herself, without any support. I mean, it's just unbelievable. In fact, she was kind of a pioneer of what we call ultra light hiking today. Gatewood wore a pair of ked sneakers the entire trip. She traveled without the usual staples like a sleeping bag, a tent, or even accomplished I mean, some of this

just seems way too crazy to attempt it. She did carry an umbrella with her, which she used to chase off a black bear at one point, apparently, but that was pretty much the extent of her quote unquote luxuries as you might see them. In fact, Grandma Gatewood gave this great quote to Sports Illustrated. So I'll just read this. Here's what she said. I thought it would be a

nice lark. It wasn't. There were terrible blowdowns, burnt over areas that were never remarked, gravel, sand, wash outs, weeds and brush to your neck, and most of the shelters were blown down, burned down, or so filthy. I chose the sleep out of doors. This is no trail. This is a nightmare. I mean, of course it's the night's using an umbrella. Yeah, I think she could have made it a little bit easier on herself, but we still would have been impressed. I know, it really is impressive.

But you know, I did set you off there a little bit. I do want to point out that Emma Gatewood was not the first woman to throw hike the Appoliation Trail. You let me tell this whole story that way. She was the first person that threw hike it solo though. Okay, yeah, why why Everything I read said that Gatewood holds the title. Yeah, I mean, it's probably the biggest misconception about the trail's history. You know, even Grahama Gatewood thought she was the first

woman to do this. But in reality, a woman named Mildred Norman beat her to it three years earlier, that her accomplishment largely went unnoticed. I mean, can you imagine what a bummer that was. I'm sure she didn't just do it for that recognition, but for Grandma Gatewood to get to the end and be like, yes, I'm the first, and then find out it's Mildred. But I'm curious, what

why is this? I mean, it was huge news when Gatewood finished her hike, So why had Mildred Norman been overlooked for so long for doing the same thing first? I mean, it's hard to say for certain, but the likeliest explanation is it's because she didn't complete it alone. She actually traveled the whole way with a companion who was a male companion who is not her husband. Oh that last part is probably key. There is not her husband. I mean, that sounds a lot less scandalous than it

probably was in the nineteen Is that it? I mean? Is that why her name isn't in more history books? I think so. I mean it's also amazing that, like, Mildred really didn't mind being slighted, uh so on our hike in two she had this life changing vision. She was sitting on a hill overlooking New England and she renamed herself Peace Pilgrim, and then she set out on this cross country activism walking to her It lasted the next twenty three years and took her over. Well, I'm

glad she got something out of the experience. And you know, since we're on the subject of a t record holders, I do want to tell you a little bit about Joe McConaughey. So last year he broke the all time speed record for a through hike and you won't believe how fast he did it. So I definitely want to hear the details about this. But first let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about what it's like to hike the Appalachian Trail,

all right, Mago. So this isn't something I thought of before, but apparently there's this whole subcommunity of people who try to hike the entire a t as fast as they possibly can, you know, because leisurely hiking isn't challenging enough, I guess, And so the speed hiking practice caught on in the early nineties and ever since then it's been this constant tug of war of records, and I say records plural because they're actually separate records depending on whether

you do as supported or a self supported run. So on a supported round, the hiker has a companion or a crew that kind of shadows them along the trail. They might provide water or food or fresh supply, is even moral support, which of course is incredibly helpful on

such a long hike. And then on the flip side, a self supported run means the hiker takes care of all these things themselves, So every five days or so, the hiker would have to leave the trail and then head into a nearby town to restock on food supplies. I mean, that might sound like a burden, but those self support runs are really the kind that most regular hikers make, since you know, there's only so much weight

you can carry in a backpack. And thankfully, restocking actually isn't that difficult, because the a t intersects with the road every four miles on average, which is way more than I'd expected that. I wouldn't have guessed that the trail brought you into civilization that often, but it obviously always hasn't been that way. Yeah, and it's kind of surprising. But even with stores and towns just a few miles off the trail, that's still more time than some speed

hikers want to spend. But the record holder I want to talk about today is a self supported hiker. His name, as I mentioned, is Joe McConaughey, and when he broke the through Hike speed record last August, he was just twenty six years old. But get this, he averaged forty eight miles per day for most of his room and finished. When he finished this thing, it was with a stunning one and ten point eight mile push over the course of the last thirty seven sleepless hours. I mean this,

that sounds like a real nightmare to me. The guy is just the machine and it was that final push that helped him just destroy the previous record by a full nine days. In fact, he even beat the current supported record by ten hours. And in the end, McConney he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in the fastest time ever reported forty five days, twelve hours, and fifteen minutes. Wait, so he basically hiked the whole Appelaian Trail in like a month and a half. I can't even imagine that.

It's unbelievable. I mean, after setting up camp for the night mcconnae, he says, he ate like nine'mores, and then the next morning he and his girlfriend drove straight to a diner where he ordered the Hungry Person special and he ate half of his girlfriend's breakfast for good measure. I mean, I just can't even imagine what this guy felt like at the end of this thing. I know, being up for thirty seven hours, you know, is it self difficult for some people, and to be running the

whole time just seems insane and over mountains. Yeah. Well, Gay pointed me to this interview and Runners World where he talked about some of the struggles he faced along the way, and so I thought I'd just read a

quick excerpt from it. It was a constant battle, he says, describing sprained ankles, extreme chafing, wasps things, painful blisters, a sore on his lower back, swollen quads, and a case of ramdom eliasis, which is when muscle tissue breaks down and releases damaging protein into the blood and it can be very dangerous. Actually, easy days on the a t were few and far between, but there is one thing that made those rough days a little bit more bearable

for Joe. And that's something that hikers referred to as trail magic. Have you ever heard of trail magic. Yeah, I've read a little bit about it. It's like those small acts of kindness from strangers, right, Like you'll be hiking along suddenly you'll find like a cooler full of sodas that someone's left as a pick me up for an hikers you're going by. Yeah, that's right. And you know people who produced this trail magic. They're known as

trail angels. So I've got to say this bothers me a little because I feel like trail magic should be produced by trail magicians. But I guess we'll go with us that way. That's the trail angels. I don't know. That feels pretty sweet, but whatever you want to call them. These are mostly local residents who live near the trail and kind of take it upon themselves to lift the hikers spirits with these small and unexpected forms of aid.

So you know, for instance, Joe mcconneughe he met a trail angel and Vermont who cooked him a delicious omelet one morning. So I guess you could call this person an omelet angel. But you know, a day hiker once gave him some extra batteries so Joe could power his head lamp and keep running through the night. So it could really be anything I ride into town or back to the trail, a hot shower, a night on a couch,

some spare food, band aids, whatever it might be. Trail magic definitely comes in many forms, but all of these are very much appreciated by these hikers. Yeah, so I was reading about this one legendary trail angel. His name's him Tabor, and he lives near a section of the trail in rural Pennsylvania, and for the past few years he's been placing hundreds of these hand carved wooden spoons

all along the route. And the spoon's obviously come in handy for any hiker who needs one, but maybe more importantly, they provide this little emotional boost because the word of the spoons have spread all to the hiking community. And there's this legend now that if you're lucky enough to find one of Jim spoons, then you're supposedly like guaranteed to finish your through hike. I mean, these are the kinds of stories that I love about the Appalachian Trail.

It's so cool, and that he found this one way that he could contribute is pretty neat. It's that sense of community and there's all the shared lore and in jokes that most people outside the bubble have no idea about. Yeah, so I I know what you mean, but I heard one through hiker described the a D community as kind of a mobile small town and one that steadily moves north as the weeks go by. And one thing that helps promote that sense of connectedness is the use of

trail names. And we haven't really talked about this yet, but the majority of those two thousand miles shed their identity while they're on the trail and they take on a new one in the form of a trail name. And this can be helpful in a few different ways. So, for one thing, it helps strengthen the feeling that you've really stepped away from the modern world and are engaged in something totally different from your normal day to day life. I mean, you literally aren't the same person on the

trail as you are at home. But another way trail names are helpful is that they help you keep track of your fellow hikers like you might run to ten days or fifteen Emily's on the trail and they all start to blur together. But you'll probably only meet one brother Buzz or snot Rag in your lifetime, So connecting that face with the name, it just ends up being a whole lot easier. Man, somebody already took snot Are those made up names? No, they're actually real names. But

I don't know the stories behind those. But I did come across this one hikers account of trail names and how important they are to the community, and she gave this great example of her name's Hannah Stores. She wrote about it on this website called the Truck, and I'm going to read from her story quote. The stories that build up around names can be really great and travel up and down the trail faster than the person can walk. For instance, we heard about bear Spray probably a week

before we met him. We got his name from when he was staying at the top of the Georgia Hostel and was trying to get something from inside his bag. He had a bottle of bear spray, and something caught on the safety and released it. He accidentally sprayed bear spray all over the top floor of the hospital. They had to close the whole floor and he had to be washed up and aided. When everyone else at the

hostel heard what happened, they dubbed him Bear Spray. Instantly, the story in the name circulated pretty quickly, and because it was so good, when Sean and I finally met him, it was like meeting an old friend. We were already fond of him, and it was a great conversation starter.

That's pretty cool, And you know, it reminds me these accounts you read from ancient times or even like the Middle Ages, where travelers on a road would introduce themselves with this whole spiel about their family and lineage and their life story, and more often than not, a perfect stranger would recognize who the person was just because they

had heard some story of that family exactly. And this practice of using trail names actually goes way back, like that guy Earl Schaeffer, the first person that threw Hike the a t. He called himself the crazy one because no one thought he'd actually be able to make the whole trail. And then there's Mildren Norman who became Peace program h and the Gatewood was Grahama Gatewood. So the names have actually been there from the start, but they

didn't catch on until the eighties. And so, according to the conservancy's records, less than ten percent of hikers reported using a trail name in three but by seven more than fifty of the hikers were using them, and by percent of all segment hikers had adopted the tradition to While we're on that subject of life on the trail, I want to talk about something that every a t hiker comes to rely on, and that's the white blaze system that's used to guide hikers along the full length

of the trail. So, as you might imagine, the woods and the mountains start to look the same after a few hundred miles, and so it could be all too easy to wander off the course on to one of these many unconnected trails, because there are obviously a ton of them, and they run adjacent to the Appalachian Trail. And so to prevent this, there's this army of trail maintenance volunteers that have marked the way with approximately a hundred and sixty five thousand white blazes. Now these are

these two inch by six inch vertical rectangles. They're painted on white rocks, trees, and signposts all along the Appalachian Trail. I mean, can you imagine how much upkeep that takes. Like, I'm guessing the blazes must get worn away over time and you probably need someone to repeat them constantly. Right. It's a staggering amount of work when you read about this, especially when you consider that the white blazes aren't the

only ones that are out there. They're also blue blazes, which are used to mark many of the trails that branch off from the Appalachian Trail but aren't technically part of it. So if you follow a blue blaze trail, it will likely take you too, maybe like a beautiful view or a water source or a campground, or you know, something else that's just off the beaten path but maybe

worth a look to mostly as really hikers. But the only catch is that most of these blue blaze trails are dead ends, so you do have to double back once you reach the end of one. I do love the idea of that that there are these surprises just waiting for you at the end of these blue blazes. It's really kind of magical. You know. Gabe was telling me about this too, and uh, he almost likened it to a video game, where you know, it's almost like a side quest where it's not your main goal, but

they're fun and rewarding if you have the time for it. Yeah, I mean that analogy for hiking the Appalachian Trail being like a video game. I mean, it kind of feels far removed from the experience, but you could think of it like that. And actually, aside from the physical white and blue markers, there are also all of these more

conceptual kinds. For example, yellow blazing is slang for walking, hitch hiking, or driving the highways that run alongside the a T. I mean, the idea is that the yellow blazes are they're kind of like the yellow dashes that run down the center of the highway. So, I mean, I think that's kind of funny, but I'm guessing it's a little derogatory, right, Like hiker is probably frowned upon those yellow blazers a little bit. Yeah, I mean, the yellow blazing is pretty much a short on, so hiking

purists kind of turned their noses up at it. And the same goes for aqua blazing. I'm sure you can guess what this one is. But this is when you're using maybe kayaks or rafts or boats or something to skip a part of the trail rather than cars. I so I love that there's this like whole rainbow of conceptual blazes, Like are there any others? Yeah, I'm not done yet. There's there's You're probably gonna guess what this one is. But there's brown blazing, which refers to a

hiker going off the trail to relieve themselves. It's, you know, often used to refer to a hiker who's dealing with some stomach issues. I guess. There's also pink blazing, which is used to describe hikers who have hooked up on the trail and started traveling. That's it's it's real love. And then there's green blazing, which is when a hiker

spokes pot on the trail. And lastly, there is gold or platinum blazing, which is in reference to those big spending hikers who have all the fanciest gear and tend to live it up whenever they're headed into town. Well, now that we've color coded the trail for everyone, would you say we take a look at the state of the a T today. But first we should take a

quick break. Welcome back to Part time Genius where we're talking about the Appalachian Trail so well, one of the ways the a T has changed over the years is that it's a lot more crowded than it used to be. And public awareness of the trail has grown over the years, and that's largely thanks to some books. Um. The first was edgarves one hit. It was called Appalachian Hiker Adventure of a Lifetime. The book boosted public awareness of the eighties so much that nearly eight hundred people went on

to complete the trail in the nineteen seventies. And just to give you an idea of just how big a boost that was, in the thirty three years between and nine sixty nine, only fifty nine completions had been logged in total. Wow, that is a huge increase, and I would have to imagine that would be a similar, if not a bigger rise. When Bill Brison released A Walk

in the Woods. We talked about that earlier, but that was in the I guess the eight nineties, right, yeah, And and then again in two thousand fifteen when the movie came out. It's actually called the Bryson Bump in his honor, you know, the increase in hikers has also

led to some negative environmental impact on the trail. There's this species of butterfly called the catatan butterfly, and they used to be all over the trail's terminus in Maine, but now the butterfly is considered endangered, and that's because so many people have sort of trampled through the meadows where the butterflies once thrived. Yeah, and I've also read about how the influx of visitors has kind of lowered

the bar in terms of trail etiquette. Like, you know, you read these reports of hikers not picking up after themselves, even doing reckless stuff like chucking dead batteries into their campfires, and it's just it's so irritating when you hear that people do this. I don't know why people would do this. And then even some of the less serious hiking groups that kind of devolve into these roving frat parties where

everybody does way more drinking than they do hiking. And you want people to have a good time, but at the same time, this kind of stuff tends to damp in that experience for those who are actually trying to hike the entire trail. I mean that's definitely true. But there is a bright side to sort of this uptake and exposure for the a T. And what would you say that is so the demographics of who hikes the

trail are actually beginning to broaden. So in the trails first few decades, female hikers only accounted for about fifteen percent of hikers who completed the a T. But in recent years that's actually doubled to nearly And while the vast majority of two thousand miles continue to be white, the number of people of color who hike the trailer

is also on the rise. Um you might have seen this, but there's a story of this woman, Rahawa Hale, and in two thousand sixteen, she became one of the first few black women to ever through hike the a T. And one of the reasons she wanted to do it was just to inspire more people of color to head for the trail. And apparently it was really a struggle for her to even find resources for black hikers, Like she said that when she googled black hikers, the first thing that pops up is a listing for a pair

of black timberland boots. But you know, by documenting her journey for others to read about how it really hopes to change all of the legacy. Well, on that more optimistic note, why don't we do today's fact off a little bit differently and let's just reel off some tips for any listeners who might be thinking of tackling the a T themselves. What do you think I'm downe with that? M all right? Well, the first piece of advice I want to give is to know which way you plan

to go. How smart is that advice? And that might seem pretty obvious, but choosing whether to hike southbound or as people refer to it as SOBO or northbound NOBO, is actually really important decision because it also dictates what time of year you should plan to head out. So think about this for a second. Like, if you want to start in Georgia, then you should plan to head out in the late winter or early spring, and that will help you avoid the heavy snows and those super

cold temperatures that dominate the North at that time of year. Now, on the other hand, if you plan to strike out during the summer, you probably want to start up in Maine in order to dodge some of that southern heat that we experience here. It's ridiculous that I hadn't even considered that. Um, I am curious though, like do most hikers tend to hike in one direction over the other

or is it kind of evenly split? You know, It's funny because I had never thought about this before, probably because of the region I've lived in all my life. But I always just in my mind assumed the only way you could possibly hike this was from south to north. And it's true, like, there are definitely way more north bounders than there are south bounders. I think, so south bounders make up just ten percent of all the completed through hikes on record, and compare that to sixty five

for north bounders. And then the others are segment hikers and those flip floppers. Of course, I just like saying flip floppers. So no matter which way you plan to go, prospective hikers should know that there are a lot of changes in elevation along the way. So this also sounds obvious, but because the trail more or less follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, you end up going up and

down a whole lot. In fact, there's roughly five fifteen thousand feet of climbing spread across the mile trip, and that's actually the equivalent of climbing to the summit of Mount Everest over seventeen times. WHOA I would be using that fact so much if I were to hike this, I do have to ask before I get to my next fact, do you think you'll ever hike the entire Appellation Trail even as a segment hiker? No, I don't

even know why I asked that. There's no chance either one of us are ever going to do this, but it's fun to hike parts of it. Well, there's another word of warning for would be hikers, and that's be where the Virginia blues, because more than a quarter of the trail's length is in Virginia alone. And this is really hard to wrap my hiker. More than a quarter of the trail is in the state of Virginia, which doesn't seem like that big of a trail, but some five dred and forty four miles of it are in

the state of Virginia. So hikers crossed into Virginia and then it's a good long while before they'll see the state line of West Virginia. And I can make it feel like hikers aren't progressing, and a good many of them get so bored or frustrated that that stretch has

become a notorious burnout zone. So for the hikers who do manage to stay the course and make it to West Virginia, a T has the headquarters located in Harper's Ferry, and any hikers who stopped by their can get all they can drink, cold water, internet access, and a chance to pamper their tired feet with these electric massagers. Hikers also get their picture taken and gets added to the wall, you know, for all those people who are tough enough

to make it to the not quite halfway point. Yeah, alright, so this isn't exactly surprising advice, but you should probably wear shoes when you're on your hike. I'm giving some kind of no brainer advice today. But I say that because have you heard of the barefoot Sisters. I haven't. Apparently, these two sisters from Maine traveled both ways on the a T and for about two thirds of their hike they weren't wearing shoot can bananas. But anyway, this is

how they put it. We have decided to try hiking barefoot because it was the way we had always walked since we were kids, and in the mountains near our home or on the coast of Maine. We love the connection to the ground that barefoot hiking gave us. Every surface felt different underfoot, granite, shale, high needles, thick mud. It felt good, which does have a certain romance to it. But it also sounds like they grew up feral. It totally sounds like they grew up fairl None of those

surfaces sound like things I want to walk on. This is all the more. I mean, maybe the mud that might feel kind of nice and squishy after a long walk, but still so. I know you alluded to this in the intro, but I'm going to steal your thundering because I'm just fascinated by this fact. But did you know that June one is National Hike Naked Day. I mean, not to be a wet blanket on this, but isn't

this even legal? So yes, and no nudity within national parks actually is legal so long as you're not doing anything sexual. But forest and park rangers tend to discourage naked hiking in general because the risk of sunburn is so much greater with I mean some burn and other kinds of But if you ever wanted to hike the A T and the Buff for some reason, than June one is your day to hit the trail, and that would be my day to not be hiking on the

Appalachian Trail. That is excellent advice, as you usual, Mango. I mean, this is truly the kind of content that I think our listeners tune in for, which is why I'm going to hand you today's trump. Well, thank you so much, well, and thanks so much for tuning in. Hey, if there are any listeners out there who have hiked a T we'd love to hear your stories. You can always send them into Part Time Genius at how stuff

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