Why?

A little background on how I came to the decision to attempt a thru hike of the A.T....

I grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia, so the Blue Ridge Mountains were basically at my back door.  When I was a kid, my dad would take me, and my younger brother out on overnight camping trips.  Totally roughing it.  A tent optional sometimes.  Just some hotdogs, a bag of Cheetos, sleeping bag, and a flashlight.  I went to summer camp a few times in Maryland, and liked the outdoor activities there too.  When I reached the age that would allow me to go on a big kids trip at camp, I chose to do a backpacking trip in Pennsylvania for that week of camp.  That was tough, but really fun.  Through my teenage years I started to get away from the mountains, focusing more on soccer and football.  In college, the only time I spent in the woods was a couple weekend trips here and there to camp out with friends.  After college, I moved to Charlottesville, started working in the food and beverage industry, and worked my way up.

I guess from the time I spent at camp is where I first heard about the A.T., but never really gave it a second thought.  In the summer of 2009 that all changed.  I bought a pass for Shenandoah National Park for the first time, and spent an afternoon driving on the Skyline Drive.  I started at the southern district and drove north, stopping at every overlook.  I noticed there were so many trails that crisscrossed the park in all directions.  One of those trails was the A.T.  Then it dawned on me that this trail went all the way to Georgia if I followed it one direction, and all the way to Maine in the other.  That was amazing.  I got maps, and started a list of trails in  SNP that I wanted to hike, and then I started hiking them.  Just day hikes at first, hiking blue blazed trails, then hooking up with the A.T. to make a loop back to where I started.  I would bring friends or relatives, who ever would go with me, and started crossing a lot of trails off my "to hike" list.  Eventually, I started spending days out on the trails on my own.  It took some getting used to, especially the whole fear of the unknown kind of thing, but after a few trips I started to get more comfortable.  My friends and coworkers, to varying degrees, thought I was a little crazy to be by myself, especially when I came back with stories of bear sightings, thunderstorms, or whatnot.

Work usually kept me busy, and my schedule was totally random every week, but if I could get a couple days off in a row, I started taking overnight trips on my own.  Sometimes I would hike out to a shelter on the A.T., spend the night, and hike back to the car in the morning.  Memorial Day weekend in 2010, I got my brother to come up to visit, and we took a backpacking trip from Humpback Mountain to Maupin Field Shelter near Three Ridges, a distance of roughly 16 miles.  The following morning my brother left the trail to drive back home, but I had made arrangements to meet my uncle to hike another 16 mile loop around the Three Ridges Wilderness.  About 32 miles in two days, not too shabby, but it was a shock to my body and painful case of tendinitis in my knees had me limping back to the car at the end of that hike.  After that trip, I really started researching the A.T.  I spent about a year lurking on hiking forums like whiteblaze.net, reading journals on trailjournals.com,  and scouring appalachiantrail.org for info on long distance backpacking.  I even started reading books (pretty amazing if you know me), granted they were all about the A.T. and long distance backpacking.  2010 was all about research and buying gear.

In July of 2011, I had 5 days off from work over the weekend of the 4th, so I decided to test out my gear and do a "shakedown" hike.  My plan was to start at the top of Afton Mountain, at Rockfish Gap, and hike north on the A.T. through SNP and see how far I could get in 5 days.  On the first day out, I made it 20 miles all the way to Blackrock Hut and stayed the night in the shelter.  The second day out, was another 20 mile day, making it to Hightop.  I met a few thru-hikers that day as well, and enjoyed hiking with them and getting a feel for the hiker lifestyle.  One of the hikers, going by the trail name LOL, was hiking with her dog, and I ended up spending a lot of time talking to her about her trip, finding out what I could about what it was like to hike all the way from Georgia.  On day 3, our group was catching up with and passing each other back and forth throughout the day.  Two of the hikers ended up pushing ahead for a big 25+ mile day, but LOL and I were content with another 20 miler and stayed at Big Meadows, finishing our hike in the dark, hurrying to beat a thunderstorm.  Day 4, we continued hiking, but when I went to stop for a lunch break, I realized I didn't have my wallet.  I got off the trail and hitched a ride back to the campground, and luckily someone found it and turned it in.  That ordeal pretty much shot my day, so I called my parents, who live nearby, and they came to pick me up a day early.  What I learned from that trip was that when hiking in July, in 90+ degree heat, you stay wet all day and your clothes don't dry out at night from the humidity.  I also found out that I carry a few extra unnecessary clothes, and way to much food.  I could have kept hiking for another week with the food bag I was carrying, haha.  Even so, my pack weight was around 35 pounds including food and water, so that wasn't an awfully heavy weight for a beginner starting out.

In October 2011, I had a few days off in a row, so I decided to pick up where I left off in Shenandoah, and hiked about 9 miles to Byrds Nest shelter for the night.  There was only one other hiker there, doing a section just like me.  The next day, I hiked into the north district of the park, and made it to Gravel Spring Hut.  There were maybe a dozen hikers there that night, including several thru-hikers traveling Southbound.  On the third day I hiked all the way out of the park and finished where the trail crosses a highway near Front Royal, Va. where I had arranged for my parents to pick me up and shuttle me back to my car.  On this trip the weather was much cooler, only in the 50s at during the day, and low 40s at night, with not a cloud in the sky.  Absolutely beautiful hiking weather.  I packed less food this time, but any weight I saved was offset by the extra warm clothes I brought due to the cooler temperatures.  When I got to the side of the road near Front Royal, I reflected on what a great hike that trip had been, and I really just wanted to keep hiking north.

At that point I really had the itch to do a thru hike, but I didn't think it would be financially possible this soon.  Over the next couple months I watched my finances carefully, and in December I realized that I could actually do this in 2012.  I then had to have the talk with work, and here in January, I'm just a couple months away from leaving for the mountains of northern Georgia, with hopes of hiking for the following 5 months until I get to Mount Katahdin in Maine.......