the trek
Day 148 – Sick Leave
It was a rough night – chills, shivering, runny nose, and coughing. By morning I knew I wouldn’t be hiking today, especially with the big storm moving in. I turned...
Day 147 – Hikers Hike
I’ve got a full-blown, honest-to-goodness cold. But hikers hike, or so I’m told. Hey, that rhymed!
Day 146: The Hurricane Birthday Zero
I spent the day in Rangeley, Maine, sitting out the non-hurricane, nursing a cold and celebrating my birthday. And by celebrating, I mean sitting in a motel room doing nothing...
Day 145: The Day Before the Storm
I also had near-perfect hiking weather - just chilly enough that I wasn’t soaked with sweat on the climbs but not so cold that I needed to layer up. Or...
Day 144: What? Another Easy One?
The thrill of hiking in the woods is back. As I sped along a soft, well-graded trail at over two miles per hour, past moss-blanketed terrain, bear-scratched trees, and fragrant...
Day 143: An Easy One
The trail still had its share of ladders, rotting plank walks, mud pits, and alpine bogs, and of course there were no switchbacks, but it was definitely more walkable than...
Day 142: The Mahoosic Notch
The Mahoosic Notch is a 0.8-mile jumble of car-sized boulders that fill the bottom of a narrow steep ravine. The trail winds over, under, around, and through these boulders. The...
The White Mountains Is Where Crying Is Required
I wrote this a week behind and with one very tired braincell. The laws of reality, grammar, and human speech are dead to me after walking almost the entirety of...
Day 141: The AT’s Toughest Ten Miles
But when the trail gets really crazy, like it did today, I’d just stop and say, “You gotta be kidding me. That can’t be the trail.” It wasn’t that I...
Day 140: A Real Thru Hike – Part 1
Once I left the dirt road for the woods, I felt excited to be walking past the white blazes again. It felt right. My legs were a little shaky at...