“There’s a million things I haven’t done… just you wait.” A. Hamilton

What are we going to do?

Russ and I have put in our resignations at our employers and we are planning to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, or AT for short. First and MOST importantly to Russ, you must pronounce the name of the mountain range and trail correctly.
Appalachian      a-puh-LATCH-uhn

For you visual and audial learners…

As you can see below the pronunciation of the trail is about as split as the political
parties in this great nation (possibly the only political comment in this blog).

The AT is a hiking (only) trail through the eastern seaboard along the oldest mountain

range in the US. The trail spans 2,190-ish miles and traverses 14 states. The trail
begins at the top of Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends at the top of Mount
Katahdin at Baxter State Park in Maine. We estimate that the entire hike will
take us about 6 months. Yes, we are doing this together.

There is quite a bit of history about the trail online. You can read about it HERE.

The most frequent FIRST question we get asked about the trail is, “Where do you sleep?”

Every 8 – 10 miles along the entire length of the trail are shelters (262 of them to be exact). Most of the shelters are three sided structures the size of a one-car garage in which 6-8 people can fit inside. They have a roof, floor and usually house mice. These shelters can get crowded. (SURPRISE! We aren’t the only ones crazy enough to do this.)

We will also be carrying a 2-person tent. We have split the weight between us. Russ has the

tent and footprint and I have the tent poles. This will be our option for
shelter when we don’t want to stay in the provided shelter if the shelter is too
crowded or we want to camp elsewhere along the trail.

We are going to THRU-hike the trail. This means we will hike from one end to the other in one calendar year. The alternate would be to section hike the trail, meaning we would bite off one piece, be it big or small, at a time over a number of years. We are looking forward to starting and finishing this endeavor THIS YEAR. (positivity right?)

THE ODDS: The odds are not in our favor. Legend has it that one in every four hikers attempting "thru-hiker" status will make it all the way from Springer (GA) to Katahdin (ME). Hiking as a couple isn't going to make it any easier for us. But the odds have improved over the past few years to almost 30%, so we plan on improving the numbers in 2017. We have a few more attributes in our favor but thats for another post.

We know you probably have a bunch of questions. We are going to try to answer them over the next few posts and if you have one in particular please leave it in the comment section and we will try to answer it.

Betsy