Miles 31 – 70: How to Make a Trail Family

It’s somewhere in between Neels Gap and Hiawassee – miles 31 and 70. We sit stranded in a shelter, the contents of our packs laid disorderly across the floor, the tent dripping water on an improvised laundry line a few feet down. Last night, a thunderstorm swept over the mountainfoot where we were camped, leaving our tent drenched and covered in mud. This turn of events led to an unplanned ‘zero day’, as we patiently wait for our stuff to dry out.

Sharing the shelter with us are an odd assemblage of weary hikers: Grocer, an 18-year old from New York who earned his trail name after starting with 16lb worth of food and then turning strangers into friends by giving out half of it; Otter and Sunshine, a couple from Texas who made a fortune in the stock market and are now dedicating their time to hiking; Tank, a shoeless man who has been on the road for 3 years with his dog Lola; an older guy sulking in the back corner who offers us his unsolicited advice regarding our every action (what is it about a certain type of white middle-aged dude in the outdoors that makes them think the entire world needs to know their opinion about everything?); and Raven who also attracts the sulker’s sneering commentary as she struggles to lit up her wood burning stove. About half of the people we meet have “trail names” by now – this is why you might run into a group of friends called Gourmet Noodles, Limping Eagle and Jake.

Somewhere along the way, we unexpectedly find ourselves part of an impromptu ‘trail family’ with Grocer and Raven. Both were initially hiking with someone else (Grocer with his mom and Raven with her girlfriend) who eventually could not carry on, and somehow chance brought the four of us together. ‘Tramilies’ (as hikers who choose to hike together are called) can be fleeting, basically requiring that a group of people happens to hike exactly at the same pace. But sharing the same overarching goal and everyday reality also has the power to bind strangers together way more quickly than would happen in normal circumstances. The trail is tough and it has been great to be able to share the joys, the exhaustion and the unexpected turns of thru-hiking with our small trail family. I can only hope that one day we’ll summit Katahdin all together.

It’s not just about finding people that you like but there is also something about the thru-hiker lifestyle that affects the kind of relationships that develop on the trail. Travel always means temporarily giving up some of the standard markers of personal identity but hiking, however, takes this to an extreme. We all wear the same clothes each and every day, mainly distinguished by the colour of one’s puffy, we sweat under the same items of ultralight and not-so-light gear, and eat the same 1,5$ pouches of tuna and Idahoan instant mash potatoes. We moan about our sore feet and obsessively count our calories, while holding up endless conversations about sleeping bag ratings and water filters (sawyer mini vs sawyer squeeze). In fact, I had been on the trail for almost two weeks before for the first time explaining what I did in my pre-trail life.

Tired hikers resupplying for high calory food

I find that there is something freeing about leaving behind the masks we wear in our everyday life and the consequent inability to hide behind whatever external thing we attach our sense of self to in our relationships. Perhaps that’s why tramilies feel so special; with one’s face covered in dirt, toothpaste and cream cheese there is only so much you can pretend to each other (and luckily not all of our conversations are dead boring).

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The day after, our tent is finally dry and we set off towards our next resupply town, Hiawassee. We’ve now made it past Neel’s Gap where a quarter of thru-hikers quit. This new, extraordinary lifestyle is slowly becoming a routine and our London lives already seem distant and blurry.

First Days: This Is Not a Story

It’s the end of Day 2 on the trail and no one has been eaten by a bear yet. We are at Hawk Mountain shelter – it’s our first night sleeping in the small 2-person tent that we picked up at REI just three days earlier (an ultralight Big Agnes Copper Spur together with a DYI footprint made of Tyvek – people, never spend 70$ on an official footprint!). It’s fairly busy but not crowded, and by the time the sun sets at 7pm most people are already huddled inside their sleeping bags.

Arriving in Atlanta on Thursday, we were welcomed into the home of our lovely American hosts Colleen and Andy. Colleen took us shopping for trail food and some last minute items and made sure we were well fed while Andy shared a wealth of useful tips and information. Throughout our stay we were treated like family – their son thru-hiked the AT last year and, impressed by how kind people were to him, Colleen now wants to help other hikers. It’s incredible how deeply the AT seems to impact on people, even those who’ve never set foot on it!

Having Colleen and Andy being the ones to finally send us off on our journey on Saturday seemed like a good omen. After registering at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Amicalola Falls (I’m thru-hiker number 714), we waved goodbye and began the steep climb up towards Springer Mountain. As the elevation grew, the surrounding forest quickly became enwrapped in a white fog, making it impossible to see further than 50m. Walking through the eerily silent woods felt like a strangely natural thing to do, as if I had already forgotten the concept of being ‘inside’. We stopped at the Black Gap shelter, opting to sleep inside the simple wooden structure instead of setting up our tent, and fell asleep to the sounds of thunder and rain.

The second day showed no signs of the storm from the night before, and we took our first steps on the AT in bright sunshine. The first 9 miles we had hiked, known as the “approach trail”, are not yet part of the Appalachian trail. It is thus fairly common for aspiring thru-hikers to quit without ever reaching the AT. In fact, two of the people we met on our first night had decided to quit after just one day and were now looking for a lift back to the city. There is definitely a hunger games-y feeling to all of this! As we set out, I wondered if we would at least make it through until Neels Gap, our first resupply point 5 days later.

On the trail, I feel like a character in some greater narrative. There is something exhilarating about the idea of walking to Maine, from all places. Evoking images from the books of John Irving, Maine at this moment seems almost like a mythical place, closer to fiction than reality. But in the past years I’ve grown tired of living in a story that never feels quite like mine. Life, as it turns out, is much more bizarre, messed up and spectacular than what any single narrative can contain. Neither will this journey follow a prewritten path; each step I take is a step into the unknown.

Tomorrow, it’s another 8 miles walk until the next shelter and I already can’t wait. Keep your fingers crossed that we’ll make it out here at least long enough to get our trail names!

Getting Ready for the Appalachian Trail, or, Why Our Lives Aren’t Ultralight

It is only four days before I will be standing on top of Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian trail. As I’m writing this, me and my partner Ana are waiting to board our flight to Orlando, Florida from where we will catch a late night bus to Atlanta. We will spend a couple of days in Atlanta where a kind woman we’ve never met will host us while we do some last minute gear and food shopping (in the hiker community this is known as ‘trail magic’, referring to the hospitality and kindness of complete strangers towards one another). On Saturday morning, our host will drive us to Amicalola State Park and we’ll set off with nothing but two backpacks, weighing about 31 lb (13,5kg) each. I don’t think either of us has any idea of what is waiting for us.

The Appalachian trail is one of the world’s longest hiking routes, a walk of over 2200 miles (or 3500km) starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia, spanning through 14 states alongside the East Coast, and finishing at Mount Katahdin in Maine. For most people, the endeavour takes 5-6 months (although the record is 45 days). So difficult is the challenge that from all the people attempting the hike, only one in four will succeed. Northbound hikers like us (“NOBOs”) tend to start in early spring in order to make it to Katahdin before snowfall makes the mountain inaccessible. During these months, hikers will encounter never-ending rain, snow, sub-zero temperatures, mountain storms, heatwaves, sunburn, mosquitos, tics, rattlesnakes, and bears, to name just a few of the potential hazards.

There are as many reasons for hiking the Appalachian trail as there are different hikers. Personally, I have a fair amount of baggage from my childhood that has been slowly catching up to me for the past decade, until 2 years ago I finally reached a point where I could no longer carry on as if nothing had happened. Trauma distorts a person’s sense of time, making her feel stuck in an eternal loop where future does not exist and the past and the present become indistinguishable. There have been times I was unable to leave the house, afraid of every stranger on the street, the world suddenly turned into a strange and precarious place. After being forced to ask for extended leave from the PhD I had just started (and that I had spent years planning and dreaming about), I felt like my life had no direction.

It was while going through this painful process that the idea of hiking the Appalachian trail first hit me. Growing up in the northernmost corner of Europe, the only long-distance trail I had ever heard of was the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage way in Spain. I had read the book Wild some time ago and learnt about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and although I was drawn to the idea, the PCT seemed way too difficult for an inexperienced hiker (and I didn’t feel quite as badass as Cheryl Strayed). Then one night it occurred to me to google if there were other long-distance trails in the US (turns out there are many) and I discovered the AT. Because the climate conditions on the AT are less extreme, and it’s easier to access food and water supplies than on the PCT, I was surprised to find myself thinking that I could do this. That I should do this.

It was not difficult to convince Ana to sign up for this new plan (in fact, it was her who had spent years trying to convince me to do the Santiago walk) that at that stage did not seem even vaguely realistic – and yet we were both absolutely certain we were going to do it. Neither of us had any experience hiking (apart from day hikes) or surviving in the nature, we didn’t own a single piece of hiking gear (and as you start googling about the AT, you very quickly realize gear is going to be a big expense), nor were we particularly fit in order to carry 13kg packs up and down mountainsides with a combined elevation gain that equals to 16 Mount Everests. Moreover, I had basically just gone on unpaid sick leave for an undefined period of time, and we were struggling to pay our London rent on only one income.

Against the odds, a year and 4 months later we are actually going to do this, and ready to start our thru-hike attempt. It took some months of therapy for me to get better to be able to work again (and coincidentally, I ended up getting my dream job), a year of saving pretty much every extra penny we earned, as well as a strike of fate that allowed Ana’s family to help us to turn our unrealistic idea into flight tickets to Orlando and those two overweight backpacks. I still have not hiked much, and by any standards I am probably utterly unprepared for what awaits me. But I can’t help but to feel like it was getting to this point that was the hardest part. Our lives are not ultralight, and compared to all the other things a person must carry on her shoulders, hauling one 13kg backpack to Maine can’t be that bad, right?