Tbrann - Appalachian Trail Journal - 2010

An Introduction

I have always enjoyed hiking and being in the woods. I belong to two hiking clubs in Maryland. My other main hobby is homebrewing. Nothing like finishing off a long day hiking with a pint of stout or an India Pale Ale!

In the late 80s & 90s I did some backpacking trips in the White Mountains with my brother Mike & friends. I guess it was Mike who first put the idea in my head about thru-hiking the Appalachian trail, but it never seemed likely that I'd have the time or the money to do it. Time passed, and although I have always enjoyed hiking, I never seriously planned on doing a thru-hike. I moved on to other hobbies, such as skydiving. I eventually bought a small house in Frederick, Maryland, which allowed me to begin to save money. I don't spend much, and now that I owned my home, I no longer had to endure the constant increase in rent that seemed to occur every year when I lived in apartments.

I had joined the Mountain Club of Maryland and the Maryland Outdoor club & enjoyed going on challenging mountain day hikes on the weekends. There was one member of MCOM who had thru-hiked the trail in 2008 whose trailname is Peanut. I guess it was she who re-awoke the idea of a thru-hike in my mind. I am single & have no children, & I suddenly realized that I could do this! I began to think about it more & more. I did more hikes with MCOM, and completed the 2009 Hike Across Maryland, a bi-annual event in which participants hike the Appalachian trail through Maryland in one day, from the Pennsylvania border (at PenMar) to the West Virginia border (Harper's Ferry). It's a distance of just over 40 miles.

One Saturday I hiked the Maryland Heights near Harpers Ferry, and afterwards I stopped in at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters. I talked to the volunteer there & mentioned that I was considering just quitting my job & thru-hiking the AT. He told me there was a book about another guy near my age who had done exactly that. The book was "AWOL on the Appalachian Trail" by David Miller. I bought the book & enjoyed it. The more I thought about thru-hiking, the more certain I became. It began to even seem ridiculous to me NOT to thru-hike the AT!!

Later I began to get more involved with the hiker community. I attended Trail Days in Damascus, Virginia (and met AWOL there). Then I attended Warren Doyle's Appalachian Trail Institute, a four-day course that gives you a good idea about what it is to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. And in October I also attended the Gathering in Gettysburg, PA.
I plan to be at Mt Springer in March, 2010.

Here is a link to a glossary of hiker jargon:

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8115

I should note here:

Viewers may want to go back over posts, because I usually go back & edit/add to them, and also add more photos.

Please also notice that many entries have more than one photo posted for that day. Look at the little numbers over the thumbnail.

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