“This is the most realistic look at the tough slog that is an Appalachian trail thru-hike,” a recent book reviewer wrote on Amazon.com. Those words were music to my ears. For that is the exact purpose I had upon setting out to thru-hike the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail, which runs 14 states from Springer Mountain in north Georgia to Mount Katahdin in northern Maine in 2005 despite never having even spent a single night outdoors. My...

Bill Walker, author of the popular Skywalker hiking series on the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, will be having a free Amazon Kindle upload Friday, May 23d of his recently published non-fiction book, Tall Tales–The Great Talisman of Height. Walker, who is just shy of 7-feet tall, tells strange tales of being rejected by the U.S. Army for his height, suffering rejection by horrified members of the opposite sex, and the bizarre...

Bill Walker, author of the popular Skywalker hiking book series, will be having a free Amazon Kindle upload (as well as other handheld devices) of his popular Appalachian Trail book, Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail. This is the story of his thru-hike of the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail which runs fourteen states from Georgia to northern Maine. Walker is also the author of Skywalker–Highs and Lows on the Pacific...

Are you looking for something in our Sports & Outdoors books department? If so, you might be interested in these items. Sports & Outdoors books Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian trail Bill Walker, Jerry Gramckow, Audra George Price: $4.95 Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the...

I stopped off at the Standing Bear Hostel just north of the Great Smoky Mountains yesterday and was pleased to see hordes of members of the Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hiking class of 2014 streaming by. According to the Standing Bear owner, Curtis, this is on record to be the busiest year on record. And once again the AT staggers the imagination with its diversity. The man I dropped off is 71 years old and hoping to do the trail in ten...