Hey! I’m Bloggin’ Here!

I’m Katie (trail name TBD), and I’ll be hiking the Appalachian Trail northbound next year starting in March! For some reason I felt weird about jumping right into regular posts without doing a little intro, so here’s a little bit on how I ended up with plans to hike all 2,194.3 miles of the AT next year.

Where It All Began

For my whole life, my family has owned a house in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, so I started hiking at a young age. (My mom actually hiked more than one of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers while pregnant with me – she’s amazing.)

While I’ve been hiking for as long as I can remember, I only fell truly in love with the mountains three or four years ago. I quickly became obsessed with the popular quest to hike all of the 4,000-foot peaks in the Whites, which by now I’ve done almost four times.

Cheesin’ at the summit after finishing my first round of hiking New Hampshire’s 48 4,000-footers.

An Obsession is Born

Being from New England, I always had a vague notion that the Appalachian Trail existed and that people hiked it. In classic zillennial fashion, one day I stumbled across some AT vlogs on YouTube (shoutout to the Crawfords, Julia Sheehan, and Chaunce, among others). The more I watched, the more entranced I became, until eventually I realized, Hey, I think I could do that. I need to do that. I love to be physically challenged and pushed to my limits (I’m one of those weirdos who thinks running marathons is legitimately fun), and that combined with my ever-growing love of the White Mountains led me to place thru-hiking the AT squarely at the top of my bucket list.

White blazes for days.

In the months and years that followed my realization that I needed to hike this trail, I became more and more enamored by the AT and the mountains. I watched trail vlogs every day, researched gear, made many elaborate spreadsheets, and hiked as much as I possibly could (not even really to prepare for the AT – just because I really, really love the mountains and being outside). I even wrote a college research paper on the history of the AT (one of the only times I can remember actually enjoying writing a research paper).

And then last year it finally happened – I committed to hiking the AT in 2022! And now here we are, in the present, and I am so, so, so excited for this journey. 🙂

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Comments 3

  • pearwood : Dec 1st

    Katie,
    Wonderful. Maybe I’ll see you on the trail.
    Steve / pearwood
    https://thetrek.co/author/steven-tryon/

    Reply
  • Chris : Dec 1st

    Katie,
    Great! Maybe ours paths will intersect.
    Chris

    Reply
  • eric : Jan 28th

    Following with great interest. Wishing you luck, good health and beautiful weather. Keep on bloggin’.

    Reply

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