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Is It Getting More Expensive To Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail?
Is it getting more expensive to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail? It sure feels that way. You might think spending six months eating ramen in the forest would be a real money-saver. Somehow, that’s generally not the case.
Once you factor in the cost of expensive backpacking gear, hostel stays, six months of hiker-hunger grocery bills, transport to and from the trail, and any ongoing expenses back home while you’re income-free, the price of thru-hiking starts to look prohibitive for many people.
We survey Appalachian Trail thru-hikers every year, and we always ask them about how much they spent.
This year, hikers spent an average of $7,602 dollars total on their hikes (about $3.45 per mile). That figure includes an average of $2,212 spent on gear. Compare that to 2016, when we first started collecting budget data from thru-hikers. Back then, the average was between $4,000 and $6,000 total, including between $1,000 and $2,000 spent on gear.
This means the AT has gotten a lot more expensive. Right?
Math time!
Photo: Dana Tokarzewski
Don’t forget that inflation is a thing (honestly, who can?), so we need to adjust for that to accurately compare how much it costs to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail over time.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say the average total cost of a thru-hike was an even $5000 in 2016. That’s $6,531 in today’s money. (I know, right? It’s a big increase. We’ve experienced 30% inflation over the last eight years.)
Remember, in 2024, thru-hikers spent an average of $7600 total on their thru-hikes. That means that the AT has gotten more expensive since 2016 — 16% more expensive, to be precise — and not just because of inflation. Even adjusting for that, today’s ATers are still spending $1,100 more on average than the Hikers of Olde. And that’s just looking at the eight years since we first started collecting budget data.
Anecdotally, the stats wizard who ran our survey back in the day found even the 2016 numbers surprising. “I spent only $4,000 on my thru-hike in 2014 (about $5,300 in 2024 dollars) and did not realize that hiker spending had changed so much since that time,” she wrote in 2019 when looking back on earlier surveys.
But why?
Photo: Perry Winters
What’s driving the increase? Could be a lot of things. For one thing, prices for many consumer products have grown faster than inflation due to various factors, like pandemic supply chain disruption and good old-fashioned price gouging. For instance, the US dollar has inflated by about 23 percent since 2019, while the cost of food has gone up by 28 percent.
There may be other factors at play too. The average age of thru-hikers in our surveys has steadily crept upward over the years. The average respondent in 2016 was 31 years old. In 2019 the average age was 36. This year it was 39. Older hikers might have more wealth and buying power than those just starting out, and thus might be able to afford to spend more on their hikes.
Also, hikers may be keeping a slower pace and, therefore, spending more total time on the trail. In 2016, the average number of miles hiked per day was an even 16, compared to about 13.8 in 2024. This could make a huge difference. I’ve often said the most effective way to save money on a thru-hike is by hiking faster. Every day spent on the trail is another day not working, another day when you need to consume three to five thousand calories, another potential town vortex to get sucked into.
meanwhile, the amount hikers spend on gear has gone up pretty much in line with the overall cost of thru-hiking. Today’s hikers are spending more on gear than their predecessors, but it still works out to be roughly 30 percent of a hiker’s total budget.
BTW I Also Do Not Know the Answer to the Question
Now seems like a good time to remind you that I’m currently making wild assumptions based on limited data. These days we get somewhere around 400 responses to the survey annually, compared to the 3,000-ish people who thru-hike it each year, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
And that’s up from when we started. When we first began collecting demographic data in 2016, we had fewer than 200 participants. Is the AT getting more expensive, or is it just that the relatively narrow sample of the thru-hiking population that does our survey is spending more? We can’t say for sure.
The famous budgetary rule of thumb for thru-hikers on the AT was to save about $1,000 for every month you plan to spend on the trail. The average length of an AT thru-hike is five to six months, so that rule would have made perfect sense in 2016.
That’s not so much the case now. Our survey data has the average thru-hiker budgeting almost $1,400 per month of hiking, an extraordinary jump. Pure anecdote, but I’ve even heard hikers saying their goal is $2,000 per month.
And let’s not forget that these are just the costs immediately associated with thru-hiking. Most people also have bills back home, which may or may not factor into our survey participants’ self-reported budgets. Continuing to pay for insurance, a phone plan, a mortgage, etc. while not bringing in any money is a big hurdle, to say the least.
So. How does anyone afford this activity?
Photo: Kimberly Fetherston
Just because most thru-hikers are spending more doesn’t mean you have to spend that much. A substantial minority of hikers this year reportedly kept their total spend below $5,000 dollars. Some participants said they only spent one or two thousand altogether.
You can do a few things to make your thru-hike more affordable, including the following:
- Buy used gear and only swap gear when you really need to
- Take fewer zero days; town = money
- Eat from the grocery store instead of at restaurants
To be sure, thru-hiking is an extraordinary privilege. Section hiking the trail isn’t necessarily less expensive. It may even be more expensive since you have to pay for transit to and from the trail multiple times and may require more hiking days overall to complete the trail.
Still, it allows you to break up the expense into chunks. Most importantly, you can chip away at the miles gradually, without having to quit your job, fake your death, abandon your life, and grow a disguise mustache as the rest of us must do.
Because I have a pathological need to end every story on a positive note, I’ll just say this. Section or thru, hiking the Appalachian Trail is, as you’ve probably already surmised if you’re even on this website, a life-altering experience. It’s worth a few years of aggressive budgeting to make this dream a reality.
Featured image: Graphic design by Zack Goldmann
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Comments 11
I was literally just reading an article from last year about the cost of the hike! I appreciate your acknowledgement of the limited data. I know the survey results from last year’s hikers was also limited to Trek readership so is probably already skewed, but there were also a lot of retirees, engineers, nurses, and other higher paying professionals taking a break from working for the trail. I’m guessing that since a lot of thru-hikers are likely coming from a wealthy income and have savings (and are older with more buying power like you said), they are likely budgeting themselves to spend $10k on the trail in towns and thus not being as frugal they could be. This is also a complete SWAG and correlating data that may have no business being correlated.
But seriously, I would agree that increases in food prices and hotel prices make up the majority of the total differences.
If I’m allowed to post links, here’s the short I just uploaded like an hour ago about an article from last year: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BtK-h3AEvYE
Ok, I got a bone to pick with this article. What the author is describing is what’s commonly called by thru-hikers “Platinum Blazing”. Yes most tend to spend more money than they reasonably should, but that’s just because of consumer mindset. On my hike I blew $5000 or thereabouts according to my margin. But about 3 and a half was just food. My motto was never pass a restaurant. My initial equipment buy in was $600 all told. It all lasted the whole trail except shoes. I wore a two year old set of new balance trainers. 970 miles later I bought my 1st trail shoes from Walmart for $27. 600 miles later I got the same thing for the last stretch of 600. I carried a $5 Walmart umbrella for my only rain gear and I stayed dryer than anyone else. Also never got a blister, cut, or serious injury except maybe a broken foot. I’m still not sure about that though cause it stopped popping after New Hampshire. I did take a couple days off for it in Vermont at the cult hostel. Nice folks if a little loopy. But all in all it was an easy hike. The fact is Americans think that they gotta have the best gear to do anything. I know a guy spent thousands on several pair of boojie shoes. But they forget good enough is good enough, and a lot of the fun of the trail is in “making due”.
Another fascinating if slightly frustrating dive into the data you guys collect, this write-up raises plenty of interesting questions that the data geeks among us (guilty) would love to see addressed in future articles. For instance, it was a revelation that the average age of hikers in your survey has gotten older over time. Is that really happening or is it an artifact of the limited but growing amount of data you collect from year to year? Likewise, average miles per day is dropping. Same question. Do you have enough data to say if holder hikers spend more money? It seems like they might, but do you have enough data to support the supposition?
Limited though it may be and skewed by the population from which it’s selected, the information The Trek collects each year is both valuable and interesting and I hope you continue to sift through it for insights.
Here’s the best cost increase that wife and I encountered on the AT in 2019 and 2021.
In times past resupply of nutritious food could be done at grocers when passing through small towns. When big box grocery stores and super centers opened a dozen miles away locals took their shopping dollars there and snuffed the in town grocer. We were usually reaching the little towns late morning to early afternoon. By the time we got Uber to the big box, completed shopping, and ditched the excess packaging there was not enough day remaining to Uber back to town and hike to next campsite. So now an overpriced skanky interstate motel night is added to the cost and time for resupply. I soon realized that for every $1 of supplies we purchased I was spending another $3 for transportation and lodging.
If I recall math correctly we are more like 50 to 100 percent inflation, and 4 years ago inflation was zero. Go back and do some research. Gasoline and diesel doubled under this regime. I fully advocate buying used gear, upcycling and repurposing. Going to the grocery store today has way more than doubled here in Maryland starting 4 years ago. I think it’s time to bring out our older gear. I just recently got a top of the line kelty pack for 10 bucks. Still works fine. And I still use my svea 123r I purchased in 1978.
Where are you pulling these figures of 50-100% inflation? Over what time period – the last 4 years? A few minutes of looking at data online from several sources shows you are wildly off. Currently we are at around 2.5% for 2024. 4 years ago (2021) it was 4.7%. Worst was the following year at 8% due to the skyrocketing cost of transportation and large demand during the pandemic, and those costs got passed onto us (and haven’t gone down whatsoever – when do businesses ever lower prices???). Worst ever in the last 100 years was 18% in 1918. 1947 was bad at 14.4%, and 13.5% in 1980…
In any case – yeah, use what you’ve already got. I use my 1986 Svea 123 for many of my trips…
I am an outlier in the statistics. I did most of a thru hike of the AT in 2024 (cut short by Hurricane Helene) and will complete it in 2025. I am age 67, semi-retired engineering guy. I hiked with a retired rocket engineer. We had a support van with a driver and spent most nights in hotels after eating at restaurants. Some other hikers refered to this as “Diamond Blazing.” Much of this method of a thru hike was due to my requirement to support my clients. For many of the days on trail, I would head back to the hotel after dinner and work 3-4 hours. Sometimes more. This was not the plan… I was supposed to be fully retired during the hike, but life will throw a curveball at you.
For my hiking partner and I, we spent much more than most anyone I think. The math works out to over $35 a mile hiked not including gear. Because I was working, I did end last year’s hike with a positive gain. Not that I would recommend this method. It was not easy working 3-4 hours after a day of hiking and also doing a daily Ypoutube vlog edit! And note, we did also stay at a few hostels, mainly to experience that. And we did spend a number of nights in tents or shelters, often because we had no choice (like in The Whites). But all in all, I wonder about how different my hike would have been, to have been non-supported. So the thru hike in 2025 will be just me and my backpack. 🙂
While waiting to summit Katahdin at The Birches, we met a young hiker who mainly subsisted on food from Hiker Boxes and also replacement gear/shoes from those hiker boxes. His toes were sticking out of the old shoes. He said he had spent under $250 for the entire trail. He was finishing his NOBO hike. I respected that.
The telling comment seems to to be:
Eat from the grocery store instead of at restaurants.
This is why I follow the continuous footpath rule. I am allowed to blue blaze to and from the grocery, and skip white blazes, but never to set foot in a vehicle, save a police car, the veritable ‘blue light’ blaze, which, while not always mandatory, is usually free. Hostels may be used for laundry or resupply, but I never pay to rest my head. If you feel like a mooch and a dirty hobo, you are doing it right.
I wonder if town food etc. is a higher cost than previous years. I’ve read over 30 AT thru hike books, and time in town seems to be significantly more popular than it was in years past. Now I read journals where people get town food every 2 or 3 days.