morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2016-01-22
To: Doing The Math: The Magic Number is 21.5
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Professor can you give me a hand in doing a math problem. OK we have 4 months to hike the trail. That gives us 17 full weeks. How many miles do we have to average a day to get to Katahdin?Well let's see. 17 weeks x 7 days = 119 days. So we have a total of 119 days. Sounds good.But we need some rest days. So how about 1 zero or nero day a week. That's 17 days119 - 17 = 102. Now we are down to 102 total hiking days.We have 2180 miles to cover.   2180 / 102 = 21.37. Let's round it off.Ta Da!!! The magic number is 21.5 miles/day.21.5 miles/day sounds kind of daunting at this time considering that our longest training hike has been only 14 miles with 3000 feet of elevation gain.If we want to make it to Katahdin we are going to have to hit the trail motoring. And we will need plenty of good weather. Our plan at the beginning is to do as many miles as we can to get us near to our daily goal of 21.5 We will start off slower allowing ourselves 2-3 weeks to get trail tough. We have found that no matter how much prehike training we put in, it takes us a minimum of 2-3 weeks before we can start cranking and hike a full day.If all goes well we will pick up our mileage in the middle states to make up for whatever deficiency we incur at the start. Hopefully we will build up a cushion to allow for less miles per day through the Northern states. That's the game plan. Sounds pretty simple. Actually it sounds too simple; and a bit regimented to me. Maybe too much like a schedule. Actually it is only a broad outline. Once we hit the trail, we will be in 'go with the flow' mode focusing on the beauty of the AT.Will
Date: 2016-01-25
To: Testing the Galaxy Note 5
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Annie got a new Samsung Galaxy Note 5. We will be using it on trail to transcribe our entries on to Trailjournals. So I thought that I would give it a try today to see if I could get it to work. I am not very tech savvy but I am impressed at what these smart phones can do. The camera on this phone is excellent. I will try and post a few photos from our morning hikes.Preparation for our hike is coming along nicely. We continue to do some low level training. We are trying to avoid getting too gung ho. It is a great time to be hiking the Arizona desert. The nights are cool. There is frost on the ground in the morning so we can hike freely without having to worry about rattlesnakes. AWOL's AT guide has arrived and we have had a chance to look it over. It looks like an excellent resource. We also downloaded Guthook's App. This also looks like an excellent tool.   We have the free Amicalola Falls approach trail section and have purchased the first section from Springer Mt to Mile 241 Standing Bear Farm. We will see how it goes and then decide if we want to pay for sections further on up the trail.I have been following Slipknot, Blizzard and AK on Trailjournals. Good hiking to all. I've read a few 'AT' books. Trying to keep the fires burning.Will
Date: 2016-01-31
To: A Walk in the Woods Revisited
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

As I noted in my last entry, I really don't know much about the AT. I read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods shortly after it was published. I thought that parts of it were funny but overall I wasn't inspired to put on my pack and do an AT hike. Since my initial reading of the book, we have done three very short hikes on the AT: in Georgia around Neels Gap, 60 miles in the Smokies and a few miles in Shenandoah Natl Park. That's it. Pretty limited.In preparing for this hike, I decided to read a few AT books. A Walk in the Woods is number one on the list of Best Appalachian Trail Books on Goodreads. It has 80% 4 and 5 star ratings on reviews at Amazon. Based on this I decided to reread the book.Bryson does a good job of going over the history of the AT. He covers bears, cougars, hypothermia and environmental issues. He makes fun of southerners in a stereotypical manner. He doesn't like most of the trail towns. He doesn't like Thoreau: 'priggish and wearisome'. The woods seem dark and foreboding. He would have liked a wilderness that was a bit more genteel. He seemed woefully unprepared at times. Leave No Trace Ethic had been around for years when he wrote the book. The idea of Katz, his buffoon of a hiking partner (whether real or fictional), jettisoning food and gear along the trail didn't strike me as funny Some of the humor is at the expense of others and at times condescending. For many hikers, an AT hike is a life long dream. There was none of that in this book. In fact, I never got the sense that Bryson was ever comfortable on trail or that he enjoyed his hike. Bryson is a good writer. I can give this book a decent grade as a fictional comedic farce. But as a hiking book, I found it once again uninspiring. There are better books and journals out there that cover the AT from a hiking perspective. I am a fan of Robert Redford as an actor and director. I like what he has done with the Sundance Film Festival. But the movie A Walk in the Woods was terrible. It missed on so many levels. Where was the beauty of the trail? I got a few chuckles here and there but overall I found it disappointing. I think that the AT deserved better.Will
Date: 2016-02-03
To: AT Hiking Books
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: heavy intensity rain

So I didn't care for A Walk in the Woods from a hiking perspective but I have read several books that I found to be of value.1) Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardine. Although this isn't a book strictly about the AT, it covers the philosophy of thruhiking and lightweight backpacking. I think that Ray has hiked the AT three times, the most recent in 2010. This book is a classic. I believe there is a new edition called Trail Life. It changed the way we hike. Grade A 2) Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery. I first heard about Grandma Gatewood in Ray Jardine's book. Here was a woman who set out to hike the AT in her 60s with a duffel bag, a shower curtain for her shelter and sporting Keds sneakers.   It covers the spousal abuse GG suffered and her subsequent escape to and healing on the AT. A great story about a very strong willed woman. Well written. Grade A-3) AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller. This book reads like a journal and is a bit dry. There isn't a lot of emotion or introspection. In fact David admits somewhere in his book that he doesn't have any great epiphanies. It has value in giving a good overall perspective of the day to day events of a thruhike. Grade B4) On the Beaten Path: An Appalachian Pilgrimage by Robert Rubin. This book is more emotional and introspective than AWOL's book. Robert is a good writer. Middle aged, quit his job at a publishing company. Completed a thruhike. Lost 75 lbs. Honest about his conflicted feelings in regards to the effect his hike had on his wife and their marital relationship. Grade B+5) Walking With Spring by Earl Shaffer. I liked this book. It has historical value. Earl was the first thruhiker. He completed his hike in 1948 when many thought an end to end hike of the AT in one season was impossible. Grade B6) Lost on the Appalachian Trail by Kyle Rohrig. Kyle completed a thruhike, most of it with his little dog. Kyle isn't a great writer but he captures the essence of a thruhike. Out of all the AT books I read I enjoyed this one the most. Kyle is able to convey the ups and downs of a thruhike: the elation and difficulty; the life changing nature of a long distance hike. Grade A- Last but not least is Appalachian Trials by Zach Davis. I think that this is a good read and an important book. I'll cover it in a separate post.Three weeks until our departure to Georgia. I have been following the journals of the early season hikers. Man it looks cold. Stay safe!! Will
Date: 2016-02-04
To: Appalachian Trials
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail is 90% mental and 50% physical."Yogi BerraYogi was actually talking about baseball but he could have been talking about long distance hiking. In Appalachian Trials, Zach Davis covers the mental-psychological-emotional aspects of long distance hiking. 70% of hikers attempting a northbound thruhike fail to reach Katahdin? Zach lists a number of reasons for the high failure rate and gives some practical advice on how to overcome some of the obstacles one encounters on a long distance hike.This isn't a book which emphasizes the physical aspects of hiking ie. training, nutrition or gear selection. I'm not sure what percentage of the hike is physical and how much is mental. But as I get older, the physical obstacles are becoming more noticeable. I can't hike the way I did 10 years ago. I can make adjustments. But if I don't have my head on right and I don't have the right mindset, it doesn't matter how light my pack is, I'm setting myself up for a miserable hike.This book has value in that it is one of the few books that I have encountered on thruhiking that deals with the mental-emotional-psychological dynamics of thruhiking. I give it an A-.One of the exercises in the book is to focus on the question WHY? Why am I hiking the AT? When the romance of hiking the AT wears off and I have to trudge through snow for two weeks, or I am wet, cold and borderline hypothermic after five days of continuous rain, or the mosquitoes and black flies are driving me insane; when I have about had it and I look at Annie and I say 'why are we doing this'? I need to have a good answer. Will
Date: 2016-02-10
To: Why?????????
Miles today: 0.0

Ask fifty thruhikers why they hike and you are likely to get fifty different answers: the physical challenge, getting fit, connecting with nature and the cosmos, to enjoy the the camaraderie of the hiking tribe, to find oneself, to sort out life's problems and on and on.One of the exercises in Zach Davis' book Appalachian Trials is to write down one's reason for hiking the AT. I think that every hiker instinctively and organically knows why they hike. Having said that, deep down I know why I hike, but I have never really taken the time to articulate 'a big why'.Simply put, I hike to get HIGH. The longer the hike, the greater the change in consciousness; the deeper the connection to nature and the earth. Hiking for me has always had a spiritual component to it. Pilgrimage and quest are words which come to mind and loosely define the broad view. It is never always about the destination but the day to day journey and the deepening of experience.Beauty is the ongoing fuel and food which propels me down the trail and up to the passes. I am a junkie. I can never get enough of the natural beauty which surrounds us. Leaving behind the world of comfort, I find myself coming alive.Finally I find that the beauty and the highs are more pronounced and more intense when shared with my hiking partner of almost twenty years, the incomparable and one and only RoadRunner. Synergy 1=1+3. I always liked the word synergy. There is a lot of energy buried in that word. When we are hiking at our best we are feeding off of each others energy. The mutually shared joy seems to lift us to another level.Will
Date: 2016-02-16
To: Hiking with Purple Haze
Miles today: 0.0

We went on a training hike with Purple Haze the other day. When I think of 'Purple Haze' the first association that comes to mind is Hendrix. "Scuse me while I kiss the sky". It would make for a great story if there was some Hendrix connection, but this Purple Haze is a long distance hiker and fly fisherman extraordinaire.PH actually refers to a fly that is used in Montana and since PH has done quite a bit of fishing on the Montana streams his trail name relates strictly to flyfishing. PH is a fellow Arizoner who we met on the PCT in 2013. We enjoyed hiking a portion of the desert with him. He hiked the AZT in 2012 and is now section hiking the CDT.We drove down to Tucson on Valentine's day and did a 7.5 mile training hike through the beautiful Sonoran desert. Annie, PH and I had a good time catching up on the hiking life. And there was just enough water in the washes for our lab Jedi to get wet and keep cool.Afterward we went to a nice Mexican restaurant. We got a chance to meet the lovely Mrs Haze and spend some time with her. It was a real nice outing. Thanks again PH for the meal. Greatly appreciated.This week will be my last week of training before we head out to Georgia. My legs are still feeling a bit weak, so I am going to push the climbing. I will cut back on my mileage but increase the intensity and steepness of the climbs.Hopefully that will help me get ready for the big climbs in Georgia that our friends have warned us about.Will
Date: 2016-02-20
To: Expectations
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

I found out last summer that expectations can derail a hike in no time. When we hiked the GDT in Canada, I had made the assumption that the GDT would be similar to the Roper's Sierra High Route. I had made this assumption after looking at all the pictures in the guide book which showed the panoramic views from the high passes. Stunning!There were stunning views from the high passes but there were many miles of being locked in the forest on often poor trail. Combine that with lousy weather and cold wet rain and needless to say, it wasn't what I expected. I wasn't a happy camper and mid hike I considered bailing. In the end it was just a transient meltdown and I'm glad that I persevered. The hike just kept getting better the further north we hiked.I am going into this AT hike with low expectations. I'm expecting lousy weather. Wind, rain and snow. It's still winter.   Limited views. The 'green tunnel' effect. We are preparing for worst case scenarios. Our base weight will be up 3 or 4 lbs with additional clothing and winter gear.One of the biggest reasons for thruhiker failure is unmet expectations. 'It's just not what I expected'. I can honestly say that I have checked my excitement at the door. Will low expectations help? Not sure. They are still expectations. I guess conditions could always be worse.The AT has never been at the top of our hiking list. In fact at one point someone asked us about the AT and we just said we didn't have much interest. But here we are a few days from takeoff to Georgia. So never say never. I am ready to love the AT. I just hope that I am not expecting too much.Will
Date: 2016-02-24
To: All My Bags Are Packed and I'm Ready to Go
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

This morning as I was getting my hiking gear around and closing up my house for our hike, that old John Denver song popped into my head. You know the one. 'All my bags are packed and I'm ready to go.... I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...'(quick factoid: John Denver wrote and sang this song but it was Peter, Paul and Mary that made it famous) well, I sort of know when I'll be back again. But I don't know exactly when I'll be back again, so I guess it fits.Once we got on the plane and we were in the air, it sort of hit me that I'm really on the verge of hiking the Appalachian Trail. We are past the planning stage. Past the packing stage. Past the getting er done stage. We have entered the Adventure Begins stage. And that is an awesome stage to be in. We arrived in Atlanta and collected our baggage, then headed out to wait for my brother Doug to pick us up. That's when the reality of winter hiking sort of set in for me. It was cold! When we left Phoenix we had 80 degree weather and above. It was much colder here. And Atlanta is not even high in elevation. Well, we have brought our winter hiking gear, let's hope it does the job!We have quite a bit of family here. My daughter Wendy lives in Atlanta and also my son Justin . Both of my brothers live in Atlanta and Gainesville Georgia plus a niece and nephew. And of course my mother. Everyone is pitching in to help us get what we need to do done as well as drive us various places. We really appreciate it and are thankful to have them nearby.A couple more days and we will truly be on the trail. We plan to start the approach trail this Saturday, 27th February. So, if you plan to follow along as we travel the Appalachian Trail, you are welcome. But you might want to wear a hat and gloves. It could get very cold reading our journal!Road Runner
Date: 2016-02-27
From: Amicalola Falls

To: Springer Mountain 
Miles today: 0.0

We finished sending our resupply boxes out. Our last night before heading out to the trail, we spent with Cherie and Scott. They are native Minnesotans who moved to Georgia 7 years ago. Cherie is planning an AT thruhike in 2017. We had met via our journal and got together last night for dinner and some good hiker talk. It was a real nice way to head into our hike. Thanks again for dinner. I am sure that Cherie will enjoy her hike and do well.This morning Denny, Annie's older brother drove us to Amicalola State Park. After taking a few pictures we went into the visitor center and signed in at the through hiker registration. We were hikers 211 and 212. Wow that seems like a lot of hikers already on trail and it is still winter. We got started around 10 o'clock. It was cold but clear. We climbed the steps to the top of the falls and then headed off on the AT approach trail. We could not have asked for better weather. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. I was able to stay warm while hiking in my base layer and wind shirt. We met a lot of weekend hikers who were out enjoying the sunshine. We did meet one thruhiker by the name of Matthew. We have a nice campsite. The late afternoon light is filtering through the bare trees. Tomorrow we officially start our AT hike. We are at T-1 and counting. We are hoping for a continuation of this great winter weather.Will
Date: 2016-02-28
From: Springer Mountain 

To: South of Lance Creek
Miles today: 24.0
Weather: clear sky

Since we quit a little early last night, we were in bed pretty early too. This must be why at about 3:00am I found myself laying there awake. At about 3:30am I heard Will stirring, so I called out. "I'm awake!!!". To which he replied "it's too early to go anywhere, go back to sleep!!!". It sort of reminded me of the little child who goes running into his parents bedroom at 2:30 am on Christmas morning yelling " It's Christmas! Can we open our presents now?" And the dad yells back " It's way too early! Go back to bed!". But I am wide awake by this time and I have already slept for about 8 hrs so my body isn't having any more of this back to sleep stuff. It is during this time that I come to a very important discovery. My headlamp is missing! This is huge! We use our headlamps for a ton of stuff. Hiking in the morning before daylight. Hiking in the evening after sunset and setting up camp when we get there. Eating when it's dark. Answering the call of nature at night. You get the picture. I tried to think of how I could have lost it. Could it have dropped out of an open pocket at break time? Maybe it fell out when I was pulling something out of my pocket. Or perhaps it fell out in the trunk of my brother Denny'car on the ride to the approach trail. Rats, no sense wondering too much, it was truly gone!I should have realized right then and there what kind of a day this was going to be. After we finally did get up and start heading toward the trail my hiking pole broke off at the jount! I have used hiking poles for probably over 10,000 miles. Normally I buy the Leki Super Makalus. They are an awesome pole and very hardy. But last time I replaced my poles I got a ' flip-lock' version. Oh, they are still Leki's but a complete failure as a piece of equipment. My first pair did the same thing about a week into my GDT hike. I was hopping mad but the poles couldn't be replaced since I was in Canada. When we got home from that trip, I sent them back and received a replacement pair. The pole that broke this morning was that replacement pair! I haven't even had them four months. This is totally unacceptable. Leki, I used to be a huge fan, but now, not so much.The rest of the days hike went pretty well A lot of uphill. We are in the mountains but Will said today they seem more like hills. I guess compared to the Sierras. But if you put enough hills together it still is a honking huge amount of uphill. I texted my brother and asked him to look in his trunk for my headlamp. Sure enough it was there. At least I know where it is now and that I didn't lose it. First day on the AT and it looks like I'll be buying a headlamp and a pair of poles. Sheesh! Oh well, small things in the big picture I guess. Well. I'm going to sign off for now. Catch you later!Road Runner
Date: 2016-02-29
From: South of Lance Creek

To: Chattahoochee Gap
Miles today: 24.2

Last night as we were setting up camp a fellow hiker came in who had a beautiful husky for a companion. This morning as we were breaking camp in the dark, the husky came over to greet us. It was very friendly and playful.Around midnight the wind really picked up and started to howl. There was an owi that seranaded us throughout the night. Whoooo whooo whoo. We got an early start and made the climb up Blood Mountain. There was a beautiful sunrise with a blood red sky. It was cold and the wind was blowing hard. The descent from the top of Blood Mountain was steep in places along rocky terrain. We made it to Neel gap and Mountain crossing where we picked up a small resupply. Annie bought a new set of trekking poles and a headlight. Outside of the outfitters there is a tree full of shoes. These are shoes which hikers have left behind after the first 30 miles because they had problems with their feet. The outfitter was well equipped and quite helpful. They had everything we needed. We climbed from the gap and spent most of our day climbing from gap to gap along the ridges. The trees are bare so we had some unobstructed views of the distant ridges and mountains. It was another beautiful sunny day with blue sky. The sky was cloudless. By afternoon we were down to our shirt sleeves and sweating in the midday sun.It seems like we spend most of our time either climbing or descending. There have not been a whole lot of flat spots. And for some reason it always seems like the the descents are always shorter than the climbs.We picked up some water at Low Gap shelter and climbed up and over to Chattahoochee gap. We have a nice flat spot out of the wind and have called it a day.Today we met several thruhikers along the way including Zach from Indiana, Quicksand and another fellow Arizoner from the Scottsdale area.Tomorrow we may get some late afternoon rain. But for now we're just going to kick back and enjoy the soft golden late afternoon light and what has really turned out to be a great start.Will