Hikers Note Dramatic Increase Of Crusty Old Dudes Who Want To Tell Everyone Trail Used To Be Better

"If you're not carrying enough weight
to cause long-term damage, are
you really even hiking?"

Current-year Appalachian Trail hikers have reported a stunning increase in the number of old dudes who want everyone within earshot to know that the trail “used to be so much better than today.”  Whether it’s reminiscing fondly about objectively awful aspects of hiking twenty years ago, or waxing nostalgic for a time that didn’t really exist, large numbers of old dudes are on trail complaining that the trail experience now is easier/more crowded/less meaningful/full of people younger than them.

“Yeah, I mean, I guess they’ve always been out here,” says Chris “AT Bozo” Kounkel, “but I used to maybe bump into one once a week.  Now every day there’s someone in a shelter pointing out that if you wanted tuna back then you had to carry cans of it, and how he once set a picnic table on fire when his over-pressurized Whisperlite International exploded.”

“Fishn’GaMe” from Connecticut, a current year hiker, agrees. “Yep.  Old dudes are out there in droves, all complaining about how crowded the trail is.  The weird thing to me is how none of them seem to make the connection between the 80-pound packs they brag about carrying in the ‘90s, and the stress fractures in both feet they complain about having in the ‘90s.”

"Even the damn privies are overcrowded."

One of the contentious issues for old dudes is cell phones and connectivity. “I can appreciate the idea of disconnecting and immersing yourself in nature,” says David “Sarcasm The Elf” Vitti, “but one old dude described having to wait in line back in the day at the pay phone in Damascus to make a two minute call home, with people behind him in line grumbling for him to hurry it up.  To me that sounds like fantasy camp for people who like prison, but whatever.  Later that night he made a 45 minute call to his grandkids with his flip phone on speaker.”

"Even the damn weather is worse than it used to be."

“And feeds, man, don’t get them started on feeds,” says “Breeze” from Florida.  “I rolled up on one with a hiker named ODB and had to listen to him harangue everyone for ten minutes about how much better it was when nobody did nice things for anyone.  There was something about self-sufficiency in there at the end, but it was hard to understand with all of the hot dogs he had crammed in his face.”

"And these damn kids won't get off of my lawn."

Regardless of what old dudes are comparing, one thing is clear: the trail used to be much, much better.  “Yeah, I’ve been told the trail was awesome at some vaguely defined period in the past, and now it apparently kind of sucks,” says newcomer “Walkingstick” of Crossville, TN.  “Which is sort of irrelevant to me, because I have no basis for comparison.  But when every story about the abundance of shuttles ruining the necessity of hitching includes the phrase, ‘I didn’t realize how drunk he was until I was in the car,‘ well, it makes me kind of happy I’m hiking now.”



Note: this is, of course, satire, and I have taken liberty with the facts.  In reality, all of the old dudes who want to tell everyone that the trail used to be much better are online rather than on trail.  

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Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker Situational Training

As someone who has successfully completed thru-hikes, I’ve occasionally been asked about my pre-hike training routine.  As a contributor to Yogi’s PCT Handbook, I described my PCT training  like this:
I watched “Jeremiah Johnson” and “Lawrence Of Arabia” and I read a book about the Donner Party called “Desperate Passage.”

. . . but until you start, maybe stay on that couch.

When asked what I would do differently next time, I said I would get “Desperate Passage” in paperback instead of hardcover.

So I’m not that into pre-trail physical training.  Why?  I’ve come to believe that the best and most efficient exercise for hiking the trail is actually hiking on the trail.  So I could spend two months physically training for a five month hike.  Or I could spend the first month of that hike physically training for the other four.  Will that first month hurt more than it will for someone who’s been exercising for two months?  Possibly.  Because they spent the previous two months in pain, while I spent them on the couch blissfully eating Funyuns.  I’m pretty sure I win that round.

Now, if I had to hit the ground running?  If I was attempting a speed record, or had to be in school by the middle of August, or someone was paying me by the mile?  Yeah, absolutely, pre-trail physical training makes sense.  But for most people, there really isn’t any sort of necessary rigorous schedule at the beginning of an AT hike.  There aren’t 150-mile stretches without resupply.  No 35-mile stretches with no water.  No one coming up from behind and killing the slow people just for being slow.
People who are used to the rat race sometimes have a hard time listening to their bodies and adjusting to life at walking speed.  But sooner or later most realize that being on trail isn’t a race.  Although there is rodent feces pretty much all over the place.

And the thing is, blind people have thru-hiked.  So has a guy with one leg.  Diabetics.  Smokers.  Obese folks.  A guy carrying a tuba.  I’ll repeat that slowly:  A guy.  Carrying.  A tuba.  If there’s anything even remotely healthy about you, you can thru-hike without exercising beforehand.  People who think Nutella is a food group have done it.  Come to think of it, most of the people who successfully thru-hike think Nutella is a food group.

So let’s say you accept the proposition that you don’t need to exercise.  That doesn’t mean you don’t have to train.  You do.  You just need to train mentally.  You may have heard people say that thru-hiking is 90% mental, and that works out well for me because I have often been described as “completely mental.”  So I figure I have 10% to spare.  But maybe you don’t have that margin of error, or like me you just want to make sure.  In that case, you need to do what I call “Situational Training.”

Situational Training prepares your mind for the situations you’ll face on trail that aren’t part of your normal life.  And that’s important.
So here (after the longest intro in the history of trail blogging) is my 14 Day Appalachian Trail Situational Training Schedule.  If you’re like me, you’ll do it and successfully complete an AT thru-hike.
(Note: I can’t imagine you’re like me.  That’s just a turn of phrase.  Still, do the peeing outside part anyway, if only to horrify your neighbors)

Starting on day one, and for every day of this schedule, put on the clothes you wore yesterday, stand in front of the mirror, and prepare to answer questions about your hike by saying, “about 2100 miles.  About 5 months.  About 15-20 miles.  I haven’t seen any bears.  I was carrying an accordion but I sent it home” (the last is the answer to the question, “are you carrying a weapon”).

Appalachian Trail Situational Training Schedule

Day 1
Start peeing outside.

Day 2
Go online and look up possible exercises.  Realize all of that looks exhausting.  Instead, lay on the couch and flick around the channels until you come across Cliffhanger starring Sylvester Stallone.  Realize that the bad guy’s girlfriend also played the mom in The Princess Diaries.  Resolve never to let anyone know that you’ve seen The Princess Diaries enough times to notice that.  Because that's exactly the sort of thing that gets you a trail name you don't want. 

Day 3
After dressing and talking to yourself in the mirror, put in iPod earphones and play Wagon Wheel on a continuous loop all day.
Hour 1 will be somewhat enjoyable.
Hours 2-4 will be progressively more annoying.
By hour 5, you will fantasize about traveling back in time and murdering the person who wrote Wagon Wheel.
Somewhere between hours 7 and 8 you will no longer notice it at all.  That’s right where you want to be.

Day 4
Go on an online hiking forum or Facebook Group and ask what tent you should carry.  More than half of the responses will involve why you should carry a hammock instead.  Realize that talking about gear makes you hate people.  And gear.

Day 5
Wash underwear.

Day 6
Start eating nothing but Lipton Sides, Idahoan Potatoes, cheese, and Snickers bars.  Continue for the remainder of the training (see exception below).

Day 7
Turn heat off in house.  Open windows.  Sleep on floor.

Day 8
In the morning: think about showering, but decide against it.

In the afternoon:
Carefully measure out 1/4 cup of Gold Bond Medicated Powder.
Swallow it.
Begin vomiting.
On a yellow legal pad start writing the following: “I will stay away from unlabeled bags of white powder in hiker boxes.”

Keep writing until you stop throwing up.
Maybe go ahead and take that shower after all.

Day 9
Change socks, throw underwear in trash.

Day 10
Eat a pint of Ben & Jerrys for breakfast and an entire large meat-lovers pizza for lunch.  And another pizza for dinner, with a pint of Ben & Jerrys for dessert.

Day 11
In the morning, attempt to hitchhike to the next town over by yourself.  Give up after two hours.  In the afternoon, stand in the same spot and try again, but with a female friend.  You’ll learn the importance of this lesson later.  Hint: It’s not that hitching is easier after noon.

Day 12
Start reading “A Walk In The Woods.”  Quit a few hundred pages in.  Instead, find someone you recently met but don’t know very well, and invite them to share a hotel room with you.  Assuming that, like me, you’re not attractive enough to get away with that sort of thing, they’ll look at you like you just asked them if you can hide a body in their basement.  The response isn’t important; the asking is the thing, and you need to practice.  Because on trail they’ll say yes if it means a hotel room costs twenty bucks instead of forty.  Has anyone explained to you that you’ll be staying in forty dollar hotel rooms?  No?  You will.  They’ll be just south of appalling, and you’ll think it’s a forty dollar slice of heaven.  Unless you can get in there for twenty.

Day 13
Go into a local upscale swanky hotel and tell the desk clerk you’ll give him $20 for a room for the night.  Tell him you’re not leaving until you get a room for that price.  This isn’t really part of the training, but did you see the look on that guy’s face?  And the security guy’s face?  He looked angry, didn’t he?  And he had fists the size of Tom Clancy novels.  You probably would have soiled your drawers if you hadn’t thrown them out on Day 9. 

Day 14
Get in shower fully clothed and turn the temperature all the way to cold.  Stay in there for two hours chanting, “no rain, no pain, no Maine.”  Upon exiting shower, slip and break ankle.


Before sharing this training schedule with you I submitted it to three Appalachian Trail hikers for review.  Sharon “Wonder” Hart called it “something you’d have to be a complete idiot to do.”   Angela “Roots” Sally said it was “at best ill-advised and at worst verges on reckless and irresponsible.”  Mike “Cool Breeze” Smith said it was “just what the doctor ordered.  Dr. Lecter.  Dr. Mengele.  That kind of doctor.”
Since I could easily describe thru-hiking using all of those phrases: the plan is perfect.

And if you need one final bit of demotivation regarding exercise, keep in mind that most healthy people aren’t any fun.  All they want to talk about is their Vegan CrossFitBit and their Broccoli Kale P90X Smoothies and how many burpees they can do.  I don’t even know what a burpee is.  Until recently, I thought it had to do with vegetable seeds, but it’s apparently some sort of exercise.  Let those people get on out ahead of you.  Hike with my people.  Your people.  The alarmingly out of shape, mentally strong people.  We’ll see you out there!  Unless you start a day ahead of us, in which case we will never, ever, ever catch up to you.  So have a great hike!

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NOT Trail Magic: Gazelle's Hitch Story (NSFW)

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Things Hikers Sometimes Do, Chapter Two: Hitchhiking (With Helpful Hints)

One of the things that makes those new to long distance hiking nervous is the prospect of having to hitch into towns for resupply.  But I think you'll find that unlike listening to Chris Collinsworth or watching Dance Moms, the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll be with it.

While on the CDT in 2012 I had to hitch into Encampment/Riverside from Battle Pass and then back again, because I am incredibly lazy and have no interest in walking 13 miles into and out of town.  Battle Pass is a notoriously tough hitch, but I got a lucky ride down from the pass.  The next day I had to hitch back to the trail, which turned out to be slightly more difficult.

11:00am Looks like rain; off to The Mangy Moose for one last beer.

11:20am No rain.  Start hitching at the intersection of Routes 230 and 70.

11:30am Still hitching.

11:40am Still hitching.

11:45am Reposition pack to make it more visible to passing cars.

11:52am Move 30 feet up Route 70.

12:00pm Go back to The Mangy Moose for another beer.  Is anyone heading up to Battle Pass anytime soon? No?  Watch Gunsmoke.

12:35pm Back to hitching.

12:45pm Is it because I’m a guy?  Throw a little leg out there just for fun.

12:50pm I mean, they can’t smell me from a passing car, can they?

1:00pm A red pickup pulls out behind me, stops, turns around, and comes back downhill to give me a lift.  This is either because he’s a really nice guy, or he still hasn’t filled up the crawlspace under his house with bodies.  I assume the former (mainly because he isn’t wearing anything made of human skin), throw my pack in the truck bed, and hop in.

This right here is a key moment in the hitch.  Introductions.  You have to keep in mind that the person giving you a ride has no idea whether or not you’re going to try to kill them, unless you’ve been holding a sign that says, “PROBABLY NOT GOING TO TRY TO KILL YOU.”  So it’s important to make a good first impression.  I usually use my trail name when I introduce myself, and sometimes they hear “Jester,” and other times they think my name is “Chester.”  Either name works -- not that weird, not that threatening.  All I’m saying is that if your trail name is “Breakfast Enema” or “Marmot Pounder,” you may want to go with “Hi!  I’m Steve!”

Which, by the way, ends up being the name of my ride.

It turns out that Steve is really into the idea of long distance hiking, might want to hike the CDT in two sections, might want to hike 500 miles in Montana, might want to hike The Winds.  And he might end up doing all of that, or he might not.  But one thing is for sure: we’re definitely going to be talking about gear for the next 20 minutes.

I’m not big into talking about gear.  I’ve worked at an outfitter, I go to hiker get-togethers, I’m occasionally on trail, and wherever I go I try to avoid getting sucked into talking about gear.  If you ask me what kind of pack I’m carrying, I’m probably going to say something like, “well, it’s blue.  And big enough to hold all of my stuff.  Oh, and it has these cool stretchy thingies where I attach my fuchsia Crocs.”  But when someone is nice enough to give you a ride, you talk about what they want to talk about.  If your driver is easily distracted, maybe you can knock them off track by telling them one of your stock hiking stories -- “The Time I Saw A Mountain Lion,” “The Time I Played Twister On Top Of Mount Whitney,” “The Time I Knocked Myself Unconscious With A Hiking Pole” -- but in this case Steve is focused, so we talk about gear.

Yes, backpacks, yes tents, yes hiking poles, but always, always, invariably: “Do you carry a gun?”  I don’t, and when talking with Steve I outline my reasoning, most of it having to do with the weight of a piece of gear that I will most likely never use.  I point out that I plan to pick up some bear spray in Lander, or Pinedale at the latest.  And while I’m busy extolling the virtues of bear spray, Steve reaches between the seats and, like a magician pulling a potentially lethal rabbit out of his hat, produces an enormous gun from I-know-not-where and slaps it into my hand.

At this point I am now confident that Steve is not planning on killing me.  Either that, or he’s an evil genius, his plan is incredibly elaborate, and I stand no chance against him.

“Is that too heavy?” he asks, as I envision the most hilarious carjacking in Wyoming history.  “Yep,” says I.  “Definitely don’t carry this.  If you really want to carry a gun, you’ll want to go way lighter.”  I hand the gun back to Steve before I accidentally shoot out the windshield, myself, or him, and it magically disappears once again between the seats.

As if nothing unusual has happened, Steve talks about my upcoming climb up Bridger Peak, places to eat in Rawlins, and how much it’s probably going to suck hiking through the Great Divide Basin.  And with that, we’ve arrived at Battle Pass.

As we pull up to the pass, Steve says, “let me just spin it here and I’ll drop you off on the other side of the road.”  Why was he heading back the way we had come?  Because as it turns out, STEVE WAS ONLY GOING TO THE POST OFFICE, less than a mile from where he picked me up, and drove 40 minutes out of his way round-trip to get me back to the trail.

So yeah, you might be nervous about hitching at first.  And some crazy things might happen when you ignore the advice your Mother always gave you about not taking rides from strangers.  But there are incredibly nice people out there in the world, and chances are that if someone is willing to give a filthy thru-hiker a lift, risking their safety and the safety of their vehicle’s interior, they’re one of the good ones.

With special thanks to: Pea Hicks, Lint, and, of course, Steve.

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