Thru-Hike Stats: This Is How I Spent 5 Months and $10,000 Hiking the AT

The following is a guest post by Anna Brown.

In 2023, I decided I was going to do it. I was going to leave the corporate job and walk the Appalachian Trail.

I read memoirs, researched and made meals, organized supplies, and planned my daily miles and weekly resupply points using the AT Guide.

At the end of February 2024, my son and I set off to hike all 2197 miles of the trail. Ultimately, we spent 5 months hiking and travelled 1927 miles of trail from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Grafton Notch in Southern Maine before we had to stop due to scheduling constraints. Our total cost for the hike was about $10,000 per person.

As a data professional and a planner by nature, I learned many things and had many questions, many of which I couldn’t answer by asking others or reading up.

Answers to most questions were subjective and certainly biased by the single-sample error of the person I was talking to. When I would ask a fellow thru-hiker how far away a waypoint was, the answer was always: “not too far, less than a mile.” If I asked a local about the difficulty of that section of trail, I would always get: “The highest mountain in the area <insert mountain name> is tough, but after that, it’s easy all the way to Katahdin.”

“I needed more.”

Similar issues would come up when reading blog posts. Articles stating that people spent 6 months and $10,000 on average to thru-hike didn’t clarify for me how and where that money was spent or how the full 2,197 miles of trail were broken down over 180 days. Do people just hike 12.2 miles a day every day?

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy the anecdotes and experiences of other thru-hikers and the articles that share stories and summarize experiences. But as a person who needs to crunch the numbers to truly understand something, I needed more.

How did I spend my $10,000 per person? What exactly does it mean if you ask me how long the hike takes and I answer that it depends on your hiking speed? Toward the goal of giving my fellow number crunchers a better understanding of these things, I give you my spreadsheet documenting all 150 days of our Appalachian Trail thru-hike experience. (I do not doubt that, given one more month of hiking time, we could indeed have finished the trail in 180 days, but alas, life intercedes, and we returned to Florida in time for my son to start law school.)

In this dataset, I list the distance walked, money spent, and weather conditions. It can be downloaded and played with in Excel or Google Sheets (for the analysts and amateurs), or correlated and graphed in Python (for the scientists). It can be loaded into your favorite visualization software like Power BI or Tableau. Whatever your process is, it’s yours now.

2024 Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike Data

Hiking Time

Here are my insights on how long it takes to hike the AT based on my data. 

My understanding from AWOL (he took 4 months), Happy Hiker (he took six), and various other blogs and books is that most people are suffering by the time they are tackling New Hampshire. Stories of lost toenails, painful joints, and general fatigue had me worried, especially considering that my son and I are from flat South Florida.

Yet by the time we got to New Hampshire, we felt able to take on the challenging rock scrambles.

I assumed our daily mileage would change based on the total elevation change, the temperature, or even the number of pounds we carried (immediately after resupply versus not carrying any food). But, because we had a plan and were determined to stick to it, we tended to make up for hardships with more hours walked. Our miles per hour ranged from 1-2 throughout the entire hike.

By the Numbers

We covered 1,927 miles in 147 days. We hiked 127 and took 20 zero-mile (grocery and laundry) days, bringing our total average to 12.2 miles a day. To understand how the hiking conditions affected our mileage, we need to look at a running average, smoothing the zero days into the total mileage in the window of a week.

In Georgia, we were challenged cardiovascularly and by very cold weather for the first 3 weeks, averaging between 8 and 11 miles a day. By the time we got to Virginia, we were in shape and enjoying the decreased elevation changes, averaging close to 16. Connecticut brought on a heat wave, pushing our progress down; the nice weather and soft, sometimes muddy paths of Vermont brought it back up. When we got to New Hampshire, we were told to expect our miles per hour to go down by half because of the hike difficulty level, but we only experienced a dip of 25%.

Thru-Hiking Expenses

These are my insights on the costs of hiking. Broad categories for hiking costs are Supplies (Gear and Groceries), Restaurant Meals, Travel, and Lodging.

Supplies: 14% of Total Budget (Roughly $1,400 per person)

This category includes gear and replacements, shipping of groceries from home, and purchasing groceries on the road. I did not outlay a lot on gear, using the old stuff we had around the house from years of Boy Scouts, and choosing inexpensive replacements as needed on the trail. 

I also spent very little on groceries, preparing 150 dinners, granola, dried fruit, and lunches ahead of time from scratch. To achieve this, I bought dried beans, grew kale, purchased vegetables and fruit in season in bulk, then cooked, seasoned, and dehydrated them. My husband periodically mailed these supplies to us throughout the hike. 

As we progressed, we also realized my husband could buy less expensive foods like ramen back home and send them to us for cheaper than we could obtain them on trail. Why? The local groceries charge hikers higher rates, and the shuttle cost to get to commercial groceries like Walmart is often $40 or more. Uber is unknown or unreliable on most of the trail.

Restaurant Meals: 21.5% of Total Budget (Roughly $2,150 per person)

We were extravagant in our use of restaurants on the trail. We would often stop if a restaurant appeared within half a mile of the trailhead. Though most hikers also took advantage of restaurants on the trail, we were on the extreme end for this one. This only doesn’t show as an over-expenditure because of how much we saved on supplies, as described above.

Travel: 18.3% of Total Budget (Roughly $1,830 per person) 

This category includes Airplanes, Car rentals, and Shuttles. I was generous with our travel costs to get home on airplanes. My daughter joined us mid-trail, arriving at the Shenandoah Airport in Virginia with a $350+ one-way ticket, and left mid-trail from New Hampshire flying out of Boston with a $250 shuttle ride. With tired legs, I paid for checked bags and extra leg room for my son and me to get home at the end of the hike. 

It is difficult to record exactly what shuttles cost because some generous hostels include free shuttle services as an all-inclusive payment for staying with them.

Lodging: 45% of Total Budget (Roughly $4,500 per person)

To my surprise, we spent 43% of our nights on trail in paid lodging. Though I slept better and was happier when we were in a tent at night, zero days and slackpacking due to extreme weather (both too hot and too cold) drove us into the hostels nearly half the time.

I’m sure I could share many more insights and explanations, but I encourage you to explore the dataset yourself.

Happy Hiking!

Anna Brown

This is a guest post by Anna Brown. All images courtesy of the author. Featured image graphic design by Chris Helm.