Hiking the AT

A few months ago, we accompanied another couple on a hike on the Appalachian Trail. It was an exhausting, strenuous, but finitely rewarding experience. It was, in fact, the first time I had ever been on the trail.

We started by unloading our packs from our cars near Burkittsville, Maryland. You'll probably recognize the name of the town - it was made famous by a mediocre horror film, but it doesn't seem to have caved to the sellout nature of a lot of small towns suffering from the Hollywood effect. We hiked half a mile deeper into the rough and found a quaint cabin / campsite with primitive setups. We sprayed the DEET on like it was AXE body spray, then played the role of paranoid urbanites by rolling our pants into our socks (thank you ixodes scapularis).

The last time I really roughed it was when I was waiting on a desolate road outside of the town of Saou in France. It probably lasted all of 45 minutes. I was clearly out of my league.

We unloaded our stuff and rubbed our bellies for the first hour, trying to encourage our hastily-eaten Dominos pizza to digest and make way for the onslaught of GORP, beef jerky, and water that we would soon be subjecting our digestive tracts to.

We built a small fire and immediately got to drinking. We made our bunks in the rustic cabin and laid down to sleep, not knowing what hell was in store for us the next morning.

Waking up to a gloriously sunny morning, we returned our packs to the car and ventured up towards the AT. We made a wrong turn and eventually found ourselves in the middle of a steep ascent - when it was all said and done, we had risen 1000 vertical feet in .4 miles and lost somewhere around 5 pounds of water weight. The views from the vista were respectable, but didn't seem to do the effort justice. We got on the AT and hike another 11 miles into Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. We crossed through an area of forest infested with bark-eating caterpillars, endured a knee-busting downhill hike into town, then subjected ourselves to the tedium of walking 2 miles along a flat-ass path. My arthritic knees were not happy. The freakiest part? When our friends' never-ending barrel of energy golden lab laid down in the dirt from exhaustion. IN THE DIRT.

We made it back with our pride still in tact - enough for us to talk boastfully about our experience.

Flickr set is here.