Troll's 2010 AT Journal

When I retired from the Navy and got involved in the AT community I had not received a trail name. On one of my hiking trips I was sitting at a shelter one evening and talking to some thru hikers about how they got there trail name. One was retired Air Force. He looked at me and said you should be called Navy. They called me Navy for the remainder of the night and into the next morning. When we departed our ways I was walking with my friend and told him that I do not want to have the trail name ...

There are not to many worries and concerns that I have that known serious issues on the Appalachian Trail. I will voice a few concerns tha I have though.

Even though I have talked to literally hundreds of hikers that have thru hiked in the past and they assured me that the first two are nothing to worry about. I still have some other concerns.

1. Rattle snakes. Hiker says they are rarely ever seen and when they are seen they are out in the sun sunning themselves and nothing ...

I recently purchased the Solio Hybrid 1000 Solar Charger. My purchase price was $49.95. I bought this for the purpose of recharging some of my electronics items during my thru hike in 2010. These items included my cell phone and two other items.

I plugged the Solio Hybrid 1000 into my USB port on my computer as the instruction stated and let the unit fully recharge. I waited until my cell phone got low and then plugged the unit into my cell phone and initiated the recharge process. ...

At this point I have decided not to have any planned food or mail drops for the entire thru hike. There are enough road crossings where I can hitch into towns and get my supplies. I do not want to have to depend on the post office and it hours for anything.

I will start out with a few mail drops at the beginning to see if I can get my wife involved in my thru hike and see if it will get here active and sharing in on the excitement of it. I was figuring to have two to test the waters ...

I am going to head out to Eastern Mountain Sports this morning and look at backpacks. I love the backpack I have not but it is just not large enough to hold the cold weather gear that I will be starting with. I should rephrase that a little. I can fit all my cold weather gear in my current backpack but it is a very tight fit. I do want to have to struggle every morning in the cold to try and squeeze everything in the pack. I am going to try to find a bigger pack that I like that will fit everything ...