Category: Appalachian Trail 2024

Well that wasn’t that bad! The worries about the weather were unfounded – it ended up being a beautiful day for hiking. A little cloud cover, lower humidity and great temps. That combined with some of the flattest and best terrain (for the first 3/4 anyway) let us put in a 20 mile day on…

The word of the day today was: moist. It rained lightly overnight on and off. We got lucky in that it let up around wake up and breakfast time. But it was cloudy and on and off rainy all day. Honestly it was a little welcome since it made some of the climbs a little…

Today was a hike sandwich with a town stop in between. I woke pretty early after not sleeping well from about 4 on. It was supposed to rain today, but not until 11 so I had not put up my rain tarp. The sound of anything hitting my hammock cover made me convinced it was…

Today was a fun, but long day. I left last night’s camp a little after 8 and rolled in to tonight’s camp around 8:30. 12+ hours on trail and nearly 18 miles (more if you count the side trips I’ll get into below). My initial plan was only 16 miles, but the creek near that…

I woke up around 6:30 (for the second time – the first was around 3:30 when someone decided to get a really early start on the day and was getting their bear bag down from the cables). I wanted to laze a bit, but I had the forecast from the night before in mind, so…

What a difference a month makes! Everything is in bloom and the weather was amazing. I started the morning at the Laughing Heart hostel in Hot Springs. I was leaving too early to get breakfast there so I moved my car to trail parking behind the hostel, grabbed my bag and walked down to the…

Writing this from The Smoky Mountain Diner in Hot Springs NC. Waiting on my breakfast and my shuttle (hopefully in that order) back to where I got off trail 28 days ago, just a little south of Newfound gap in the smokies. I’m coming back with a slightly lighter kit and an entirely revamped approach.…

While I still have 3 more weeks of rest and rehab, I think I’ve come to some decisions about what’s next. There’s more I’ll share here in the next few weeks on what went into these decisions / what I learned about myself / the trail from the start of my TH attempt (and some…

Just got back from my local doc and had both an ultrasound and an MRI. They saw the same thing the urgent care doc in Tennessee saw – swelling and some light tearing in the left with the bonus of some swelling in the right as well. The prescription is the same as well: three…