Appalachian Fail

[tpool33]

I love hiking, but I just couldn't make it as a thru-hiker. Read about my ill-prepared failure on The Nightly Feed by clicking the link below:

http://www.thenightlyfeed.com/home/a-walk-to-forget

[dzierzak]

Not a fail.

[egilbe]

The only failure is in not trying. You barely tried. Try it again.

[Venchka]

Oh good grief.
You coulda, woulda, shoulda bought a copy of The Complete Walker before you graduated.
It's not too late either.
Wayne


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[rocketsocks]

Oh good grief.
You coulda, woulda, shoulda bought a copy of The Complete Walker before you graduated.
It's not too late either.
Wayne


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now that's some solid advice right there!

[RockDoc]

You didn't fail, you just became a section hiker, which is a very underrated status.
When is your next section hike?

[rocketsocks]

You didn't fail, you just became a section hiker, which is a very underrated status.
When is your next section hike?

...and this!

[jeff_in_MD]

You did something that over 300,000,000 people never tried or achieved. You'll doing better than most.

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[Lnj]

That wasn't a fail. It was just a practice run, a shakedown. No biggie. You just needed a good night of sleep and you would've been fine. But that story though.... hilarious! I really enjoyed the story. Please give it another shot, with a little prep this time, and do a trip journal. I would love to read it.

[Another Kevin]

Your post was charming! But I disagree with a lot of its conclusions.

You mostly suffered from a lack of self-confidence ON the trail together with overconfidence OFF the trail.

But at least you got Out There! That already puts you in about 1% of the population. (Yeah, millions of people use the Trail. Hundreds of millions don't.)

"Just Taylor" is a fine trail name. Whenever I hook up with a group, they always seem to have a Kevin already, so I'm Another Kevin.

Charging off with what looks to have been a 25- or 30-mile day when unprepared is going to take a toll on the body, and that takes a toll on the spirit. So Don't Do That. If you do make that sort of mistake, heal up and get back on the horse.

The overweight body is much less of a problem than the overweight pack, because you're already used to carrying the body weight around 24/7. Sure, your chances are better if you can get into shape first, but lots of hikers start out with some extra poundage and let the trail beat them into shape. Doing it that way makes it doubly important to ease into things - discipline yourself to take 8-12 mile days at most until you are sure you can handle more and not wreck your body.

"Don't want to be alone" is one that I find hard to identify with - usually I head out to the woods because I do want to be alone, or with a very small number of simpatico companions. But that means that I tend actively to avoid the AT when the thru-hiker bubble is coming through, because I'll surely not be alone, and in fact, there will surely be someone who's going at almost exactly my pace and whom I see at just about every stop.

Now, it could be that you've decided you simply don't enjoy backpacking, but if what you describe is your only experience with it, I'd say that you have no idea whether you enjoy it or not. You burnt yourself out on what turned out to be an overloaded day trip, and never got to experience the peace of sleeping in the woods or the delight of starting out in the cool of the morning, with all of the logistics already attended to and just a few camp chores to do before you can get rolling.

The good news is that you've made just about every newbie mistake that it's possible to make - and learnt enough not to make them again. If you came around to doing it again, you'd have a damned good chance of succeeding. You're already through, "I didn't know what it would be like," "I brought way too much stuff, a lot of which was inappropriate," and "I succumbed to peer pressure (or personal pride) and overdid until I got hurt." You've gained enough wisdom to avoid the other traps of, "I ran out of money" and "I lost interest." There are always the possibilities of "I got hurt/fell ill" and "I had a family emergency", but people come back from those.

Newbie mistakes should be cause only for mild embarrassment, because believe me, all the old-timers have made most of them. The grizzled old coots (I resemble that remark!) that you hear expounding on this site know how to avoid some of the mistakes, but also know that the advice won't be taken, and are reconciled to the idea that people need to make their own mistakes.

If you were motivated to write that piece, I bet you still have the hiking bug. The bug can sleep for years, and wake up when you can afford the attention. I know. Like you, I was off trail for years, attending to wife and daughter and job and church and community. Even now, the most I can manage is the occasional weekend, or now that my daughter is on her own, the occasional short section. And for years, the weekend trips had to be planned to my daughter's ability, not mine! (Somewhere in her teens, she discovered the ability to outhike Daddy, and the tables turned.) Bringing the kid along was great - it made some great memories, and really helped fetch her up right. She made me proud of her when she was caught right in the path of Hurricane Sandy. She dealt so well with the disaster that some of her buddies still call her 'Katniss' (after the kid from The Hunger Games). So there are worse things to do than dragging kids off to the woods.

I still find that long-distance hiking doesn't appeal very much, simply because I do have a life that can't just be put on hold for half a year. Nevertheless, in years of weekends and short-sections I've managed to put in more trail miles than some thru-hikers have, bag a bunch of peaks, do some trail mapping, thru-hike a 130+-mile trail, learn some winter mountaineering, develop some bushwhack skills, take a lot of pictures, catch the occasional fish, and have a grand old time on my short outings. When the time comes for me to retire, my wife will probably send me off on a long hike just to get me out of the house!

You had a great experience - if it sticks in your memory for this long, it was surely formative - and for a decade you've been taking away some of the wrong lessons from it. There are lots of ways to enjoy the trails. I bet you'll be back doing one or another of them. And I look forward to seeing you write about it, since I got rather a chuckle from the story you posted.

[Teacher & Snacktime]

FAIL? YOU CALL THIS A FAIL?

In 2013, the very first section hike that Snacktime, Strife and I undertook was a 2 week trek from Harpers Ferry to Pine Grove Furnace State Park. Obviously our goals were a little less ambitious than yours, but given our dynamic they were respectively lofty. Yes, we were well equipped, full educated, and completely unprepared.

On Day One we also went the wrong way and continued an extra mile down the C&O and had to backtrack and re-find the AT. The worst "fail" however was that in the 80* April heat, I forgot the water....ALL the water...for 3 people! No bottles, no reservoirs, nada. We muddled through our 7-8 miles to Crampton Gap chewing bubble gum to keep mouths moist and whining. The next two days were full of overcompensation (8lbs of water was a weary load!) and second-guessing until clumsiness and injury took us off the trail. We'd only made it 24 miles. I had to call for a ride home....8 hrs each way...and I had to admit to the family and friends that their predictions that the old lady would fall off the mountain came true. How embarrassing.

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/entr...tter-Home-sigh

A complete failure? NO WAY!!!! We were right back at it a couple of weeks later, screwing up a hike in Connecticut, then Pennsylvania, then New York, then Virginia, Georgia, NC, TN, etc etc etc.

I have yet to actually complete a hiking plan, and have had to bail or be rescued from each and every one because my hiking eyes are so much bigger than my hiking stamina.

I consider every attempt a complete success though, as I got to go out and play in the woods

[Miner]

People today are too afraid to say they fail at anything. You learn more from failure then success. If you change your original goal or purpose to say you didn't fail, you likely won't bother to learn anything from the experience.
The only thing wrong with failing is if you don't learn anything from it and never try again.

I learned nothing from my successful hike of the PCT. I did learn a few things from my failed AT hike.

[OldGringo]

Your post was charming! But I disagree with a lot of its conclusions.

The good news is that you've made just about every newbie mistake that it's possible to make

Great post Kev.... I would agree with everything you said and only add for the OP's benefit that "giving up" is the ultimate newbie mistake...




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[Lnj]

I've only ever completed one thru hike and it was only a 24 mile trail end-to-end (PMT-Pine Mountain Trail) in south Georgia, and it absolutely nearly killed me. I cried like a little baby when I finally saw our truck at the end. We've been on a few trips. I am like teacher, my eyes and mind are stronger than my trail legs and body, so I don't ever get as far as I planned.

[Another Kevin]

People today are too afraid to say they fail at anything. You learn more from failure then success. If you change your original goal or purpose to say you didn't fail, you likely won't bother to learn anything from the experience.
The only thing wrong with failing is if you don't learn anything from it and never try again.

I learned nothing from my successful hike of the PCT. I did learn a few things from my failed AT hike.

I didn't fail at one 140-ish mile hike that I attempted. I simply took a lot longer than I anticipated, with a whole lot of zeroes.

Started around Columbus Day a couple of years ago.
1. Third night of the trip. Woke up in the wee hours coughing my head off and short of breath. Managed to stumble to the next town. Several days off and a course of Zithromax to get over bronchitis. 38 miles down.
2. Back on trail. Got an early snow. They started pulling the barriers on the park roads. I didn't fancy a six-day food carry with traction gear and no good bailout route. Bagged it for the season after about thirty miles. Just under half the trail.
3. Back on trail come spring. On the third afternoon, faceplanted on rocks and trashed a knee. Fifteen miles from the highway - the shortest way out was forward. I managed to hobble that far over the next day-and-a-half, but after that it was six weeks before I could walk again unaided, much less hike. Another 46.5 miles, call it 116.5.
4. Back on trail, in late summer. A little over thirty miles finished the planned hike, including quickly heading back to redo about three-quarters of a mile that I'd skipped on the first bailout.
5. By then they'd done a twenty-mile reroute, so I'd no longer done the then-current route of the trail. I went back and slackpacked that part.

So, I walked every step of the planned trip (including a quick return to grab about 0.7 mile that I skipped on the first bailout). My goal was to hike that trail, and I did. My plan was to hike it in one go, A plan is only a plan. Besides, breaking it up into four sections like that leaves my 'clueless weekender' status intact! Five failures make one success, or something. Nobody's going to tell me that I didn't hike that trail. What did I learn? Not a lot. Anyone can get sick; anyone can fall down and break something; and when there's enough snow to impede progress, but the beaver swamps aren't really frozen over, is a crappy time for long-distance travel. But I knew that.

[Another Kevin]

I have yet to actually complete a hiking plan, and have had to bail or be rescued from each and every one because my hiking eyes are so much bigger than my hiking stamina.

Or in one case, because your trip leader didn't know that Snacktime was terrified of heights! (I'd certainly have chosen a less scrambly route, if I'd known. And by the time I'd learnt, the #1 priority had to be "get everyone off the damned mountain.") That shelter was pretty luxurious, though, and the views were terrific!

[Dogwood]

People today are too afraid to say they fail at anything. You learn more from failure then success. If you change your original goal or purpose to say you didn't fail, you likely won't bother to learn anything from the experience.
The only thing wrong with failing is if you don't learn anything from it and never try again....I did learn a few things from my failed AT hike.

+1

Once again WB is similar to YouTube comment forums. People don't listen. They don't consider. They are overly concerned in only expressing themselves. It's obvious here as they ignored reading and considering the OP's link as the OP clearly states in his link his objective was to hike the AT from VA to MA. He failed in achieving that objective no matter how one attempts to spin it.

[Pringles]

I had a job where I had a summer off. I was going to start at Delaware Water Gap and go to the northern terminus. I'd already done about 500 miles in the south, but this would let me get to the hard northern sections "in shape." (Never mind that "round" IS a shape.) I lasted a whole week. I have since done a number of section hikes and day hikes and I have done 40% (FORTY PERCENT!!!!!) of the trail. I just keep plugging, a bit at a time. It's always there, and I can always get a little more... just a couple of miles or maybe 10. When my mind wanders, it wanders to the trail. I'm a failure at long distance backpacking, but I'm not a failure at backpacking. It's ok. I revel in what I have done, not what I haven't done. :-)

[Time Zone]

"Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."

Plan the hike, and hike the plan.

Hey man, nice storytelling. Bill Bryson would be proud. I have my own AT-Fail story, different duration and details but one theme in common: footwear! In my case, I got some unfortunate advice and ended up in borrowed rigid alpine boots that ended up nearly wearing completely through my Achilles over a fortnight. The few good days I had at the end were solely (no pun intended) because I had given up on the boots and instead wore my soft, light camp shoes - a foreshadowing of the trend toward lightweight mesh trail runners.

I too didn't look back for a long time (decades!), but in recent years I have resumed hiking, having learned some lessons the hard way, and also having been able to learn from the mistakes of others (finding advice online) and it has been wonderful. I'm still learning. I hope you can experience hiking again in a positive way someday.

[egilbe]

+1

Once again WB is similar to YouTube comment forums. People don't listen. They don't consider. They are overly concerned in only expressing themselves. It's obvious here as they ignored reading and considering the OP's link as the OP clearly states in his link his objective was to hike the AT from VA to MA. He failed in achieving that objective no matter how one attempts to spin it.

Pfft, its not a fail to set a goal and try and not achieve the goal. Its only a fail if one gives up trying. The trail will always be there. So will the goal.