In 1986, a few days after running the Boston Marathon, and following a year of touring the US and Canada in a campervan, I set off by train to realise a dream to walk the Appalachian Trail. I first heard about the Trail from the American wife of a work colleague in Melbourne a few years earlier and had since read widely about the trail. The Trail follows the crest of the Appalachian Mountains for more than 2,200 miles along the eastern side of the US. Starting in mid-spring, I followed the trail northwards from Springer Mountain in Georgia to its northern terminus at Mount Katahdin in Maine, finishing in the late summer. It remains one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, fostering an ambition for more such experiences and inspiring me to retire from work early enough follow through on that ambition. In 1986, only about 80 people each year completed the whole trail, but during that year National Geographic did a feature article on the Trail and its popularity increased dramatically.

Appalachian Trail - Day 078

Day:  078
Date:  Saturday, 19 July 1986.
Daily AT Miles:  21.4
Daily Other Miles:  0.4 (0.2 Shelter, 0.2 spring)
Total AT Miles:  1509.3
Total All Miles:  1554.9
Weather:  Very warm, very humid, hazy.
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Muesli, health drink.
  Lunch:  Biscuits and peanut butter, chocolate bar.
  Dinner:  Fettucine, instant pudding.
Aches:  Foot problems, bad chafing all over.
Animals Seen:  Deer, small snake.
People Seen:  12 overnight hikers, 7 day hikers, many others.

Journal:
I woke up at 5am, when the others began stirring, and got up at 5:30am after a bad night’s sleep.  I resolved to sleep in my tent on future warm nights.  Chafing was also hurting a lot.  I left at 7am on what I hoped would be an easy day of about 21 miles with no big hills.  However, it was going to be another triple H day, which would make it unpleasant.  The first four miles were slow going over, and down, Jug End to a road where I replenished my water at a spring.  While resting, two joggers went past (I wish I was just out for a jog) and some pre-breakfast walkers.  My mind was much pre-occupied with how much further I had to go all day.  It will be nice to finish.  There were some fields to be crossed and a mozzie-infested forest before a fairly long road-walk.  After the road-walk, there was another mountain to go over.  Sweat was pouring off me and my chafing was getting very bad despite heaps of Vaseline.  There followed another brief road-walk, at the end of which I had lunch at about 2:30pm leaning against a lamp-post on a quiet lane.  Very pleasant and I nearly went to sleep.  The final six miles involved negotiating another sweaty mountain to reach the Mount Wilcox North Shelter where I arrived at 6pm.  The mozzies were bad, so I had a wash in the adjacent pond and donned long pants and shirt for protection before cooking dinner and erecting my tent.  Too many mozzies to sleep in the Shelter.  AMC ridge-runner, Liz, and boyfriend, Matt, arrived during dinner and we chatted while we ate.  Matt had not been hiking overnight before, and Liz spent a lot of time explaining to him the rules of “leave no trace” camping, including not washing clothes in water sources (which I had clearly done, as my clothes were hanging out to dry near the stream) and going to the loo well away from water sources and the camp area.  I got into bed at 8:30pm (mozzies getting bad) and did my diary before going to sleep at 9pm.  During the night, I was woken by shouting.  Matt had gone to the loo and got lost in the dark.  He only found his way back after wandering around for a long time then resorting to shouting for help.  Eventually, he woke Liz and me and Liz shouted in reply directing him back to camp.  It was all a bit sad – both were very upset.
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