Not Quite Thru: Appalachian Trail 2012

Everyone warns you about the Pennsylvania rocks, but no one ever mentions the rocks of Maryland. They start off somewhat innocuous, jumbles of small stones that make up the footpath. Then you climb to the top of the ridge of South Mountain and discover what rock hopping feels like in earnest. “I heard something slither,” …

Here we are reaching the Mason-Dixon line! I was thrilled to find that the AT followed an old streetcar line here. Dad would have loved that discovery.

Not a sight you’d expect to see in late April, but as we came to Max Patch, it was covered in snow. We did not climb it this day, opting for warm and dry and a return at a sunnier time.

Getting our official photo taken at ATC headquarters in Harpers Ferry, we’re waiting for the volunteer to get us into their 2012 archive photo album. “You’re section hikers, right?” she asks. “No, we’re thru-hikers, but we jumped ahead,” I say. Finishing the AT in a single year counts as a thru-hike, no matter how you …

The very name felt ominous – Blood Mountain, standing tall above Slaughter Creek. None of the simple trail materials with us provided a backstory, so I imagined it a dark place along the Trail of Tears. For a thru-hiker, it’s the first massive mountain on the profile chart, scary to imagine crossing. But beyond lay …

The year, 1996. An outing with Keystone Trails Association to celebrate the installation of stone steps leading almost straight down the steep slopes of Peters Mountain to a spring – a rare commodity in these parts – for one of the newest, finest shelters in Pennsylvania. This was my introduction to Peters Mountain, and a …

It was a given my shoes would fail. I’ve been hiking in New Balance running shoes for a decade – men’s size 9D, my feet shaped like bricks with no arches to speak of – and each pair normally lasted me about 350 miles. In Florida, sand means erosive destruction of the heel and toebox. …

While Lord Willin knew that PATC was the cream of the crop of trail maintaining clubs along the AT, we didn’t get our first taste of just how much so until Maryland. Although an old shelter, Crampton Gap was well cared for, with plenty of tent pads and no grafitti. A far cry from what …

I look out across the water watching the turtles, fish and birds. The tall pines and oak trees sway in the breezes. On the porch I hear the hollow sounds of the bamboo wind chimes and watch the prayer flags flap in the wind. All the while, I’m gathering up the gear for our new …

“Why are you here?” We were finishing up dinner at the 501 Shelter when Coach popped the question. I laughed. That’s the question John and I asked hikers all along our journey. More often than not, they were standard replies. “I was bored and had no job prospects,” “I just got out of college so …

Furniture against the walls of the apartment continues to vanish as the piles of gear, from winter jackets and gloves to bottles of Dr. Bronner’s Soap, loose stuff sacks, and technical t-shirts, grow. A stack of maps – reviewed, folded, and set aside after the realization that almost no two of the maps are alike, …