Date: 2008-03-01
To: Questions to Answer
Miles today: 0.0

I just perused my existing journal entries for the first time since I wrote most of them, and looking back over the last year plus, it is interesting to see my initial excitement transition into the realities of planning to becoming more dominated about worrying about giving notice to work and making sure I have everything ready to go for my hike. Oddly enough, in all those entries, I never really talk about the physical trail itself. Maybe that says something about my own trail psyche, but I should throw out some facts and stats and lingo (from my own experience) for family and friends reading this, who may not be familiar with the trail.The Appalachian Trail, or AT for short, is a footpath that runs roughly 2,175 miles from Georgia to Maine. Or Maine to Georgia depending on your perspective. The actual mileage changes slightly every year due to re-routes of parts of the trail. Along the way, the trail passes through 14 states from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Katahdin, Maine, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. People who attempt to hike the entire trail in the course of one year or season are known as thru-hikers. Thru-hikers who hike from South to North are known as Northbounders or NoBo's, and those who hike from North to South are known as Southbounders or SoBo's. The trail itself is marked by white blazes, which are 2 by 6 inch white marks painted on the trees or rocks, spaced every so often along the path the trail follows. Other blazes mark side trails to water sources, shelters and campsites or other interesting landmarks that are not on the trail itself. Of these, blue blazes are the most prominent in my experience. Yellow blazing refers to the yellow line on the road and to people who hitchhike and skip parts of the trail. Slackpacking refers to hiking parts of the trail without your full pack on, usually because you are able to leave it with someone and pick it up at the end of the day. Flip-flopping refers to hiking part of the trail in one direction, say Georgia to Maryland north, and then jumping ahead to Maine, and hiking south back to Maryland, so you've thru-hiked, but not all of it in the same direction. Flip-flopping and slackpacking are often combined for much smaller sections as well. Purists are those who believe in hiking every mile of the trail past every white blaze in the same direction, almost always with their full packs on. I think I most likely fall into the purist category. However, just because they are called purists does not make their hike any better or more official than someone who hikes sections at a time, or slackacks or flip-flops. There are also shelters and lean-tos built along the trail as well as camping sites, something like an average of every 15 miles along the trail, I think. Most of the shelters and lean-tos consist of three sided wooden structures with roofs, with the fourth side open to the forest. Some are pretty old and date back to the trail's original construction in the 1920's and 30's. Although I've hiked about 11% of the AT already, I've never actually stayed in a shelter. And yes, even though I've hiked parts of the trail already, I will still hike these same parts again as part of my thru-hike, despite the obvious redundancy to some people. Doing the whole thing at once is what appeals to me and makes it a thru-hike to me personally.Adam