Bonus Edition!

As you can imagine, there have been many things I have wanted to talk about in our blog along the way, but just never seemed to have the time to get around to it. So, now that I have a bit more time and energy to spend, I thought I would go back to some of the thoughts I previously skipped over.

Trail Funk

Let’s start with the first and single-most important issue we had to deal with on the trail, trail funk. Oh yes, the stench is real, and worse than anything we have ever experienced in our backpacking. Living without access to a modern-day hot shower is one thing, and it is a thing with which we have never had a problem. Even if it is ice-cold snowmelt waters, we have always been able to regularly wash up and keep ourselves relatively clean. The Appalachian Trail was different for several reasons. First, there are so many more people on the trail (specifically at shelters and water source areas where through-hikers come together at the end of the day), which makes privacy to wash up a rare luxury. As a female (representing only about 25% of through-hikers), privacy can be even more challenging. Secondly, by the time we were finishing a 15+ mile day all I really wanted to do is get the tent up so I could lay down—Jim had to remind me of the importance of eating on these days as I was so exhausted that I didn’t even want to eat (anyone who knows me, knows that this is something very out of the ordinary). Needless to say there was no hiking around trying to find a secluded spot to wash up on these days. Most days we did our best, but it was not nearly enough.

But the real problem wasn’t our odor; it was the smells trapped and growing in our gear and clothing, which were much, much worse. If you have been following our blog, you know that the AT is a very strenuous trail; so even in cooler temperatures we sweated—a lot. And on the trail you basically have one set of clothes: a short sleeve, a light warm layer, a heavy warm layer, a rain shell, and an extra top, bottom, and extra pair of socks that you always keep dry. Those of us that are really into luxury also carry an extra pair of underwear. These clothes are typically a technical polyester for wicking moisture and drying quickly. Unfortunately, these fabrics also tend to hold in some body odor even after washing. We washed our clothes every week, and hand washed in streams in between (weather permitting), and yet the smells persisted. Even that wasn’t the worst of it. Back sweat soaked into the back of our packs and hip belts, which could not be washed.

And the smell kept growing and ripening! Did I mention all the rain and humidity? Nothing ever seems to dry out on the trail. It all stays damp and warm—the perfect conditions for growing your very own bacterium born trail stench. Your shoes, socks, and feet are horrendous from stomping through muddy, stagnant water all day and never drying out. Imagine having to crawl into a damp and humid tent and snuggle into your damp sleeping bag with your smelly partner and your smelly, damp dog every night. For a month we struggled (well, it is still a struggle, only a manageable one now). Me: “What is that smell? It’s awful! Is that you? Oh my god, is it me?” Me after passing a day-hiker on the trail smelling delightfully of soap and shampoo: “Oh my gosh, they smell wonderful. Oh no, do you think that they can smell us when we pass on the trail?” We often laughed at how the thing that was going to force us off the trail was going to be our own body odor!

The solution? We spent a few days in a motel to sort it all out. Jim had to break down and hand-wash his pack in warm water and vinegar. One pair of trail shoes had to be thrown out. The others we washed in warm vinegar water and baking soda. All this was set in the sun to dry. We also now add vinegar each time we wash our clothes. The laundry soaps that work best are the ones for intense odor—they tend to have more and longer lasting perfumes in them, but also seem to clean the smells out not just mask them. We also add in Oxi Clean odor blaster. But the biggest help (besides the vinegar), is Funk Away. It is a small black and blue spray bottle we found in the laundry section of a Wal-Mart that we decided to try (we’d tried everything else). It works great! We spray it liberally on our packs, clothes, shoes, and sleeping bags—everything where odors linger, and let them dry. At first it has a perfume odor, but that quickly fades away and seems to take most of the bad odors with it keeping it away for al longer period of time.

Now that I’m off trail and we are staying mostly in campgrounds with showers, the trail funk is less of an issue. However, I continue to use these methods as Jim’s clothing and gear in particular are still getting a hard workout. Also, as the rain and humidity persist here in the northeast, I take our sleeping bags to the laundry mat regularly and pop them in the dryer.

While there are some hikers that embrace it, everyone on the trail faces the same problems with the stench of body odor and mildew. We are truly fortunate to have a car with us. This gives us so many more options to deal with and conquer trail funk.

A Day in the Life of a Through-Hiker

Now that I am off trail, our days have changed slightly as we are driving daily to and from the trail; however, our basic schedule remains the same. When we started our hike, we approached it in the same way that we have hiked in the past—a leisurely stroll in the woods. We took time to enjoy our coffee in the morning, and took pride in being the last one to leave camp. However, as we increased our mileage and the days got warmer and the trail got more challenging, it became clear that we were going to have to adjust. While we still made our hot oatmeal or grits and coffee each morning, we no longer took them time to savor them. We had to get on the trail early to take advantage of the cooler weather and get into our next camp before bedtime.

The through-hiker day starts at 5:00 a.m. give or take an hour. Most through-hikers don’t take time for a hot breakfast, opting for pop-tarts or the like to eat on the run, but Jim is a breakfast person and I am a coffee person, so we take the extra time to use our stove. Then we pack all our gear into our packs (most through-hikers get quite good at packing up quickly and quietly each morning), and begin our walk.

For a time we didn’t stop for a lunch break, but again as the days got longer and harder (and our bodies feeling the wear and tear), we would stop at least once a day to take off our hiking shoes, soak our feet in a cold stream when available, and rest while enjoying a snack. Some of the hard core hikers putting in really big miles will take at least an hour break and even nap. We usually spent 20-30 minutes (or less if it was cold), but on longer days we would often stop several times.

How many daily miles hiked differs for each hiker, but in general, camp is set up somewhere between 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. After tent or hammock is set up or a space is secured in the shelter, it is time for dinner. Those of us who carry stoves will have some kind of instant potato, rice, noodle, or dehydrated backpacker meal. The ultra-light fast paced long mile hikers don’t typically carry a stove. Many opt for meals using tortillas, peanut butter, tuna or spam packs, and pepperoni. One of the biggest benefits of my being off trail has been my ability to provide some fresh fruits and vegetables to our meals. It is not uncommon for the entire camp to be in bed by 7:00 p.m. and rarely is anyone still stirring after 8:00. There is rarely time or energy to enjoy sitting around a campfire as no one has the strength or energy to make one.

Eat.

Walk.

Eat.

Sleep.

Repeat.

It’s a strange thing, this through-hiking. While everyone has their own reason for hiking, pushing through pain, difficulty and exhaustion seem to be central element in the enjoyment for most. Personally, I don’t have the mental or physical makeup to be one of these extreme athletes—and that is truly what they are. My enjoyment comes in much less rigorous and agonizing pursuits. Having suffered through almost 2 months and 500 miles, I absolutely appreciate those super-humans persevering including my own super-hero who I drop on the trail each morning.

Why is the AT So Hard?

I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much harder the Appalachian Trail is than we expected it to be, and how we felt mentally and physically prepared for it. But if asked to give advise to a perspective through-hiker, I would confidently say that there really is nothing to prepare you for it—just do it. You cannot be prepared for the toll a long distance hike will have on your body or spirit. “Roughing it” for a week or 100 miles at a time is an experience you push through then go home to a hot shower and a soft dry bed and go on about your life while your body heals its stressed joints and muscles. (Dare I say anyone can live through that?) But the AT is 2,190 miles, which is at minimum a 4-month endeavor assuming you hike 20 miles every day without any days off. Most of the hikers who complete the through-hike do it in 6 to 8 months. That is a really long time to be pushing your body physically while mentally dealing with all the struggles of living outdoors.

I’ve notice that to the successful through-hiker, the hike becomes something very different than the joy of a hike. It seems that it is all about the miles and pushing through as many of them as they can as fast as they can to get it done. It’s more about the joy of accomplishing an extreme task. I can totally respect that—even if I don’t have that kind of strength. Now that Jim is hiking without me, he has talked about how it has changed the hike for him. How it has become more of the “pushing through the miles” that we noticed in others. He doesn’t think that is good or bad (he does have that kind of strength to push through), it is just different.

There is also no predicting the cumulative effect that the hike will have on your body. I feel that I stay relatively fit and have an active lifestyle. We live in the mountains, so my trail running includes hills. Of course the run is only an hour or two at a time, and I don’t strap 25-30 pounds on my back. We started our hike with about 6 hours of hiking a day. That increased to 8-10 hours a day by the time I quit. And most of those hours were pretty strenuous hikes. It was certainly taking a toll and wearing down my body. My back felt like I was in desperate need of a chiropractor from carrying all that extra weight around every day. My hip and knee joints hurt with every step up or down. I was no longer able to squat without something to hold onto because it was too painful in my knees. (A. An impossible situation for a girl in the woods if you know what I mean, and B. Do you know how many times I’ve done a pain-free plié in my life? It must be at least a million—this was unprecedented.)

My feet were always swollen, which is quite a sight for someone who has Fred Flintstone feet to begin with! Every morning the challenge was to put my hiking shoes on and get up. It was always agonizing, but after walking around like an enfeebled old lady for a while, the pain would numb out enough to begin the hike. After many hours of hiking a deeper ache would begin in my feet that felt like it was coming from the bones. This pain got more intense and came earlier in the hike with every week on the trail. At night, my feet and legs would hurt so much that I was taking maximum doses of Tylenol, Advil, and Benadryl just to be able to sleep. I wasn’t even able to sleep on my side (as I have for my entire life), because I couldn’t stand the pain of having one leg or foot lay on the other, or even touch. Mind you, while my experience may be extreme, these are the kinds of issues that all through-hikers face to one degree or another.

So, why is the AT so hard? I spent a lot of hours and miles on the trail thinking about it. A revelation came after a conversation with someone about how all our hiking in the Sierra’s and the Gila, which didn’t prepare us for this hike. We have mostly hiked on trails that had their historical beginnings as horse and mule trails. Any reasonable animal will pick a trail through the forests and over the mountains using the easiest and safest path of least resistance to get from point A to point B. Even when Jim and I have bushwhacked, being reasonable animals ourselves, we also picked out our path of least resistance. The AT was never meant for pack animals. It was created specifically as a recreational hiking trail. I think that its designers where like the creators of world-class golf courses where the more challenges and obstacles they could include, the better it would be. Therefore, if there is a pile of boulders…you must scramble up them and then down them, never around. Rarely does the trail have switchbacks to ease the burden of a steep climb. Even when rock steps have be chiseled in the mountainsides, they are twice as tall as a step should be for a comfortable step—particularly for those of us less than six feet tall.

All of this may seem like a complaint, it is not (though as I bemoaned about it on the trail it certainly might have been!). It is just my observations. The trail was never designed for just anyone—at least not to do all at once. It was meant to be challenging and difficult. I certainly have more respect and awe at those through-hikers who complete it. And for those of us who don’t, it is a worthy effort to try and sensible to know when to say uncle.

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees

Our experience on the AT has been quite a bit different than most of the through-hikers we meet. What makes it so different is having our car with us. Most hikers, whether they start in Georgia or somewhere in the middle, walk away from everything except the trail and what they carry on their back. If gear is lost or fails, they must walk or find a ride somewhere to replace it. When they need more food, they must walk or find a ride to a store and hope there will be appropriate food items for backpacking. When getting a room and a hot shower they are limited to the hostels and motels nearest the trail (which by the way, tend to be more expensive than those further from the trail). Having a car expanded our options and allowed us to have access to our preferred gear and food. Though many hikers do mail themselves care packages, they still have to get to the post office to pick them up and are limited in how much they can take at a time.

But the most important difference for us is the perspective that having our car has given us. We love to travel and explore. Part of the adventure for us is getting to know a place and what it is like. When you are on the trail, it is easy to get tunnel vision where everything looks the same. Particularly on a trail that is known as the “green tunnel” because once the trees and brush fill out in the spring there is mostly a narrow field of view on much of the trail for the hiker. Having to drive ahead then shuttle back to the trail in the beginning of our trip, and now having to drive to and from trailheads and camping areas, has given us a chance to look around outside the mountains and get more of a feel for the area. We have enjoyed this unexpected and fortuitous outcome.