Never Say Never…Did I Ever?

So before I left for my AT thru attempt this year, I made a list of 14 things I thought I’d ‘never’ do on my thru hike. I acknowledged it was more of a list of things I didn’t want to do as opposed to being smug enough to think I wouldn’t slip on a couple of them. But still, it’s time to revisit that list and reflect (If you want to read the original post, that’s here) so here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:

Out of the 14 things I thought I’d never do on my 2024 AT thru hike, I can confidently say I absolutely didn’t do 10 of them. Some of these were extremely easy ‘not’ to do, like not checking for ticks each night, not wearing shorty shorts, or not hiking naked. Those were made more simple to avoid by the cool starting temps at elevation in Georgia in early April (my coldest night was 28 degrees F according to my nerdy temperature monitor I brought with me). A small sacrifice of carrying a bear canister made it effortless to not sleep with my food, although I admit I may not have often made it 200ft away from where I was sleeping according to proper ‘Bearmuda Triangle’ protocol. I am also proud to say I never violated Leave No Trace guidelines and followed proper cathole procedures when that need presented itself. My feet continued to be lucky and I never got any blisters, which was probably helped by the fact that I also kept my promise to not start too fast (I kept my daily mileage around 10 miles a day for the first couple of weeks). I NEVER drink untreated water so that was a cinch to stick to which also helped with my goal of never poo-ing in my pants. And finally, I vowed to never stop posting which this write-up serves as evidence for the outcome of that.

The Bad:

There are three things I can’t say that I doubtlessly didn’t do. The first two are because I never got the chance, geographically speaking. I swore I wouldn’t be surprised by Pennsylvania’s rocks and that I wouldn’t think I’d keep my same pace in New Hampshire and Maine and that was easy to ‘not’ do when you never make it north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The third is open to interpretation. I swore I’d never get lost, and while I never did get truly lost, I did wander off trail once. It happened when I was busy gawking at a pile of tarp that some idiot left at a campsite, and my attention to that caused my inattention to the actual trail and I missed that the AT jutted at an awkward angle up a hill. I followed what seemed like the trail even as it caused me to suffer some thatchy blowdown areas until that path just seemed to stop. I checked my FarOut navigation app, and realized my mistake and was back on the real AT in a few minutes.

The Ugly:

My final ‘never will I ever’ is a tough one to judge. I vowed to never quit the trail. Well, I didn’t finish the trail but I didn’t make a voluntary decision to leave it, either. My body made the choice for me (more about that here). So, while I’m sad that my body ultimately didn’t do what I wanted it to do, I’m actually proud that all my brain prep and body prep didn’t have me getting off the trail for the usual cliched reasons. I’ve since returned to the AT for a section hike and I plan on attempting a thru hike again in the future. So maybe let’s call this one a draw?

I love this shot I took on a recent AT section hike near Damascus, VA

What’s next?

Well, I’m going to continue to share my small adventures, hiking memes, and love of the AT on my personal social media pages (@emplowered) and I’d love to keep doing periodic updates here on The Trek (or maybe they’ll let me write some other things for them?). I’ll keep you posted!