It happens so often, it almost qualifies as a phenomenon. There must be a reason for it. “I’m thru-hiking the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) again this year,” I frequently read on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. And remember–we’re not talking about repeating a round of golf or seeing a movie a second time. The Pacific Crest Trail is a 2,663 mile hike through the desert and high mountains all the way from the...

I just saw a post of a friend from Amicalola Falls, where the approach trail to the Appalachian Trail begins. “Starting in the rain,” he wrote. “Hey,” I wrote back, “we fair-weathered hikers time our entry onto the trail.” I was being half-droll and half-serious. To be sure, given how early it still is in the hiking season, I would wait until good weather was forecast for a few days before beginning. As tough...

“Feliz cumpleano (Happy Birthday),” to Dennis Blanchard, author of Three Hundred Zeroes and enthusiastic program director for the very active Appalachian Trail Club of Florida. Heck, this is a big day for Dennis. Not only is it his 65th birthday (Hey Dennis, you can hike year-round just on a Social Security check!), but also St. Patrick’s Day. Surely somebody as chronically fun and upbeat as you has some Irish in them. And...

You get off to good and bad beginnings with your fellow humanoids. My initial contact with the well-known Appalachian Trail (AT) personality, ‘Baltimore Jack’, was of the decidedly rocky variety. While there was probably plenty of blame to go around, I want to take my share of the culpability. I first met Baltimore Jack in 2005 at the AT hiker hostel at Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. I was in the process of rooting out what was...

The Appalachian Trail Kickoff at Amicalola Falls, Georgia saw a record turnout this weekend. First, let me say thank you to Lauretta Dean for doing such a boffo job at arranging the whole weekend, as well as inviting me to speak. But much more importantly, this event–which is just a few years old–has now become one of the marquee events in the hiking community, along with Trail Days in Damascus, Virginia (May 17-19) and the Pacific...

You may have seen my tweets and posts relating to ‘Beware the Ides of March’. I was referring to those thru-hiker candidates on the Appalachian Trail who begin in March. To be sure, this has its advantages. If you’re a hiker of modest strength, this gives you an extra month to make it all the way to Mount Katahdin in northern Maine. But the perils of bad–even dangerous–weather loom. Yesterday a hiker was rescued off...