Date: 2017-02-25
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

¢Welcome back Spaghetti Legs. Due to the overwhelming response we had from our first interview with you, our producers have invited you back for a follow-up interview.¢Thank you. I¢m glad to be here.¢What our audience wants to know is, how did you really mess up, and what advice would you give to future thru-hikers?¢There are a lot of ways to mess up on the trail. Whatever flaws you have as a human being will become magnified on the trail. I found out that I have a hard time paring down my gear. I carried far too much for far too long. I imagined I would be duct taping my feet every night, so I took about 10 feet of duct tape, wrapped around a piece of cardboard. 5 feet of that I finally put in a hiker box in Luray Virginia. I gave away the last 5 feet two days before the end to a hiker whose shoes were falling apart, and even then, I had a hard time getting rid of it.I imagined all sorts of outlandish scenarios in which I was stranded by myself and forced to start about 40 fires with waterproof matches. I never used a single match but carried that waterproof container of matches every step of the way. I also carried a heavy backup magnesium striking fire starter kit all the way to Luray, Virginia.My first-aid kit was a huge extra weight. I had enough first aid to open a small clinic for the lacerated and impaled. And so did almost everyone else. The official first-aid bag which carried everything probably weighed more than necessary, and then weighed more when various products leaked all over the bag. The reality is you only need enough first aid to make it four days. You don¢t need 20 band-aids or multiple types of gauze. One roll of something is more than I ever saw used on the trail. I also had over-the-counter medications. I never popped a single pain pill, but I realize I was out of the norm there. ¢This advice seems pretty standard. Why would you say more people don¢t follow it?¢The saying goes, ¢You pack your fears¢. You will also end up packing the fears of everyone who cares about you. If you¢re blessed with some sort of support system while you¢re on your thru-hike, the price of that support system is listening to their well-intentioned advice about planning for contingencies. Before you begin your hike they will lay awake imagining the horrific ways you could die and they will find the gadgets that they want you to carry to mitigate that risk. You will not be able to explain that the lighter your load the safer you are. So take the knick knacks and paddywacks and thank them for thinking of your needs. Hike with them four or five days to Neels Gap, say a few words of thanks, and lay them to rest in the hiker box. Yes, even the gadgets you promised to carry all the way to Katahdin. If you feel guilty remember that the weight of all those items added up will blow out your knee, compress your spine, and prematurely age you six years. That¢s a fact, at least potentially. ¢Quite a bleak picture indeed. Is there anything unusual you would recommend then?¢Accumulate friends or at least positive interactions with as many hikers as possible. Friends don¢t weigh anything unless you have to carry them, which is worth the risk, because they are equally likely to have to carry you. There are going to be plenty of people who take everything but the kitchen sink, and are going to be delighted when you actually need it 600 miles from Springer Mountain and they can lighten their load a bit. The trail community can be a large network of friendly people if you adhere to the basics of common sense. ¢To switch gears a bit, you wrote some rather groundbreaking theories about, shall we say, the plumper hiker. How did your theories hold up on the trail?¢I was a little off, but not outrageously off. One interesting thing I noticed is that in the beginning, everyone hikes until they are not comfortable hiking anymore and then they stop for the night. For a person that¢s out of shape, this comes much quicker, which has a protective effect on the knees and feet which are getting used to the miles. I may have been noticing the things that supported my approach to the trail, but it seemed like a higher percentage of physically fit people experienced knee and foot problems early on, because they weren¢t out of shape enough to want to stop at a reasonable interval. There were plenty of physically fit people who did the large miles right out of the gate and had no problems, so until the statisticians get involved, I would take my experience with a grain of salt.Socially, it was a bit frustrating to always feel like I was averaging one to two miles less per day. People I enjoyed hiking around drifted farther and farther up the trail, while I was stuck reading their shelter logs. But the area where I feel I was surprisingly right was the last third of the trail, particularly New Hampshire and Maine. It seemed like everyone was either running out of gas or didn¢t want the trail to end, but I was finally doing more miles and catching up to people in the hardest sections of the trail. I attribute that to having fat reserves left to burn. There comes a point when you just can¢t consume enough calories to go the distance you need to go, so if your fat reserves are depleted you are basically limited to the energy output derived from pop-tarts and peanut butter. ¢So how exactly would you modify your theory?¢I would say if you¢re in the process of trimming down, being about 20% over your target weight makes sense in terms of fat reserves, but if possible, be in good enough shape to hike 15 miles a day with a full pack in the mountains without too much pain. This isn¢t mandatory for a successful thru-hike, but seems like it should increase the odds of success. It will also reduce the cost of your hike, because you will be able to finish in closer to 5 months rather than 6 months.¢What about your thru-hike are you most proud of?¢I¢ve given this question a lot of thought. I¢m proud of the fact that my body held together for 2200 miles. I¢m also proud that I didn¢t yellow blaze or even blue blaze (although I did slackpack and sometimes in the reverse direction which is ¢unclean¢ according to some definitions of purist). There¢s a fine line between a purist and someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, but I think I stayed on the right side of that line. I¢m most proud of the fact that I tried. It wasn¢t easy to tell my wife I was going to leave her for six months or quit a perfectly good job. It wasn¢t easy to spend a bunch of money on expensive gear without knowing if I would even like backpacking. I had months of waffling and plenty of opportunities to gracefully back out. But I didn¢t. I chose to spend my valuable time, money, and perhaps my health pursuing a dream. Even if I had sprained my ankle on the approach trail stairs and had to go home on the first day, I would still be proud that I tried. To live proactively is a scary thing because it means you are responsible if things go wrong. The alternative is to safely go from crisis to crisis with someone else to blame.¢What do you say to those people who say you really just hiked the trail to conduct secret government research about our national migratory capabilities through mountainous terrain in the event of some national emergency?¢If that was true, then it wouldn¢t be a secret if I talked about it.¢Obviously it¢s not true¢¦ But suppose it was true, what would you say you learned?¢The mountains are relatively inhospitable to pedestrian movements, but well maintained trails are feasible for certain volumes of hikers in semi-decent shape. The right hiker gear is essential. Well supplied towns including some with outfitters at regular intervals are critical. A functioning postal service is a big help. Capacity is effectively limited by practical sleeping / tenting locations near the trail but particularly in the vicinity of water sources. In perfect circumstances, with the right gear and well supplied resupply opportunities, and the majority of the population choosing other migratory routes, well maintained mountain trails could be a feasible and perhaps preferable means of cross country travel in an emergency situation. I would expect the quality of the trails to drop off dramatically with a spike in usage. Privies are not designed for sudden surges in usage. Water sources are more prone to contamination with inexperienced hikers. In summary, it would have to be a near end of the world situation for it to be a good idea to use mountain trails to hike across the country to evacuate from some emergency situation. Even then, there could be little to no transport of possessions. A family might manage thirty to forty pounds of small possessions beyond the essentials for survival.¢Spaghetti Legs, I have no doubt that those that find it relevant are captivated by this analysis. As always, your insights inspire and amuse.¢Thanks for having me.   ¢I could have missed the pain but I'd have had to miss the dance¢-Garth Brooks, ¢The Dance¢