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 092

Day:  092
Date:  Saturday, 2 August 1986
Daily AT Miles:  10.1
Daily Other Miles:  0.8 (to Trail)
Total AT Miles:  1787.5
Total All Miles:  1840.7
Weather:  Warm, humid, partly sunny.
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Eggs, sausages, muffins, pancakes.
  Lunch:  Chicken rolls.
  Dinner:  Fettucine, instant pudding.
Aches:  None.
Animals Seen:  None.
People Seen:  Many overnight hikers, day hikers and others.

Journal:
We got up at 8:15am and had breakfast in the dining room before messing around for a while buying odds and ends around town and leaving at 10:30am.  Marj had decided to walk the first few miles with us, so she bought some sandwiches and carried them.  Because of construction work, we had to park nearly a mile away from where the AT crossed US 3, so had to walk that distance along new trail before reaching the AT and beginning the ascent of Lafayette Mountain.  The climb was tough and relentless and Marj was falling behind, so we stopped earlier than our planned Liberty Spring and, after lunch, bade farewell to Marj who returned down the mountain.  She had decided to stay another night in North Woodstock.  We continued our ascent. Seventeen year old Peter also began to find the climbing hard and we had more frequent rests and travelled more slowly than I had anticipated.  We eventually reached Little Haystack Mountain and were greeted with excellent views.  The Trail was now above the tree-line and we had a magnificent walk along the exposed ridge as the Trail passed over a number of peaks including the 5249’ Mount Lafayette.  We were there at 5pm and still had four miles to our target of Garfield Ridge Campsite.  We pushed on with Peter becoming very tired and eventually reached there at 7:30pm just as a shower of rain passed through.  The Shelter was pretty full, but we squeezed in and I cooked dinner outside after the rain stopped.  We had the stove so didn’t have to worry about wet wood.  We retired at 9pm with me having to sleep right across the entrance of the Shelter hoping it didn’t rain and that I wasn’t stood on as some-one made a night-time excursion.
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