Appalachian Trail - 2024

Tomorrow we cross into NJ. Soon, we'll be ticking states off left and right! Our next resupply will be in Harriman NY, 100 miles from where I'm camping now, and 100 miles from there we will be on the verge of getting into Western Massachusetts. I suspect this section of the trail will really fly by.  Everything has been going great. Kristina came down this past weekend and we spent some much needed time together, and all in all, the guys and i are feeling about as good as we can expect to.  Rocksylvania also didn't destroy us like everyone said it would. Were there alot of rocks, oh yah, absolutely. Did they make us want to quit and seem impossible? No, not even remotely close. Maybe it's the fact that we're from NH and have done alot of hiking in the whites and up in Baxter over in Maine, but Pennsylvania wasn't anything harder than either of those two regions. However, the trail was still hard, and a new challenge from the unbelievable easy section of trail th

We're in PA! From Tuesday to Thursday, we averaged 32 miles per day. We did the expected 24 then a 28, then a 45! Followed up with an easy 2 mile day yesterday on Friday.  There is a challenge on the AT called the 4 state challenge, which goes from the Virgina / West Virginia state line to the Mason Dixon line, or the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland. We woke up at 4:15 and started hiking by 4:45. I did 13.5 miles by 9:30, 27 miles by 1:30, 38 miles by 5:30, and 45 miles by 9:05. I can't quite describe to people what it's like to have done that many miles, and to have changed over 15,000 feet of elevation over the day. And I'm not quite sure if it was more mentally or physically exhausting. What I do know, is that I will absolutely never be doing a 45 mile day again! It was a cool experience and I'm sure that I'll remember completing this challenge for many years to come, but the level of soreness that my feet were in is not something I'd like to repli

Today was the first day where I really got the sense of what finishing the trail and slapping the sign on katahdin might be like. We are now at mile marker 972. Within the next 10 days, we will be on the verge of 1200. That means, we'll cross out of Virginia (the largest state on the AT by a longshot), cross out of West Virginia, Maryland, and enter Pennsylvania. We'll also cross both the 1000 mile mark and the halfway point. The trail will feel like it's speeding up. Instead of counting up to 1000 and the halfway mark, we'll be counting down, and quickly as well. The central part of the trail is not as challenging as the southern or northern portions, and as a result, we are planning on doing more 25 miles days and even trying a few 30's as well. Between now and the end of May, roughly 5 weeks, we are estimating that we'll get to somewhere in New Hampshire -- we'll see how accurate that estimate becomes shortly. Details since last recap: Miles hiked - 1

I've been meaning to write a really good post for awhile but a bad one will have to do.  We've been loving central Virginia. The weather has been great, there's barely any people, and the hiking has been hard yet completely within reason.  We are 2 days our from starting the Shenandoahs. For the past couple days, and this description will include tomorrow as well, we've been knocking out the hardest section since the nanthahala section probably. These mountains go allllllll the way down and then allllll the way up. Each day there's at least 1 climb that goes down to 800 feet and then back up to 4,200 feet. And with the 80 degree sun beaming down on us, it's hot!  It's been really rewarding hiking a new section of trail, and it's extremely hard to believe that we are less than 180 miles from the 1000 mark.  As for the lack of blog posts, I haven't really had the motivation or time. I'm aware that documenting this trip will provide a lifetime of en

I have been really slacking on writing blogs.  We're doing well. We got back to Pearisburg which was incredibly rewarding, the girls came down which made for a fantastic weekend, and we're going to hit the 700 mile mark today and dragons tooth. We have about 50 miles to Daleville and other than the standard aches and pains, we're feeling decent. Thanks,  Tyler M.

We're currently camping at the last campsite walker and I stayed at in 2020. Tomorrow, we will wake up and do a very simple 20 mile section. The elevation change is the easiest that we've potentially ever seen and the weather should be decent.  Before I wake up and hike though, what did we do today? Well we started moving around 7 and by 8:15 we were ready to start getting the show back on the road. Chuck took us to Arby's, where I got a bacon, egg, and cheese on a biscuit, a sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit, and a smokehouse brisket sandwich, which is just brisket, cheese, BBQ sauce, and a bun. Needless to say, I wasn't hungry again for another couple of hours.  We started hiking around 9 and I remembered most of the trail today for one simple reason, it wasn't very hard. We started the morning with less than a 1000 foot climb, and once we got back some of our elevation, we mostly just ridgewalked for the rest of the day. Surprisingly, we got a good dusting of

All we did was zero at Chuck's today. We played darts, ate a bunch of food, and we did a resupply.  We have 45 miles to pearisburg which we plan to do in two days. Then the girls come down and we'll zero with them.  Should be a fantastic time.  Thanks for following along,  Tyler M.

We decided to go all the way to Chuck's. The first thing we did in the morning was go up 1000 feet in a mile. Thankfully, before I was really awake, we started to level out and 3.8 miles into our day, we summited chestnut knob.  For the next 8 miles, we walked a section known as burgers garden. Here, you ridge walked and overlooked the valley known as burkes garden. The trail was fairly rocky, but the ascent and descent over the 8 miles wasn't anything more than 1,500 up and down.  Once we finished this section, we dropped up and down two different mountains / valleys until we hit a trail crossing known as "unmarked trail." Up until this point, we had done roughly 18 miles on the day. Seeing that it was only 330, we made the decision that we would push another 8 miles to Chuck's house.  For those of you who don't know, chuck was a guy who in 2020, randomly drove by us at a road crossing and invited us to spend the night at his house and have a cookout. Now, 4

We took our sweet time today.  I woke up around 7:15, called Kristina while she was on her way to work, told her of our plans for the next couple days, and started packing up around 8. After taking it easy in the motel room, eating breakfast wings and pizza, we got back on the trail around 10.  Our goal for the day was to camp slightly uphill from the base of chestnut knob, one of the larger peaks in southern Virginia. Last time, walker and I camped on top of the mountain, but with weather on the horizon, we didn't want to get caught in a thunderstorm like last time.  Our morning went pretty slow. Anyone want to guess what we did? We climbed back up to a slightly higher elevation. Surprise! I remembered that this section had several half mile meadow / pasture ridge walks, and they didn't disappoint. Although Virginia still has a lot of elevation change, it's nice to have the occasional field walk, where the birds and chirping and the sun is shining.  Sometime in the early t