What advice would you give to someone wanting to complete the AT as a section hiker?
- Don't leave gaps in the trail
- Use a credit card to earn air miles (you'll need them down the road)
- Don't wait on others to go with you in order to complete a section
- While using common sense on the first bullet point, Have 2 areas of focus - Close to home completion and your 1-2 week trip completion area of focus. In other words If you live in Virginia, don't invest a whole week of your time hiking in Virginia, go up to an area of trail that you cant access on a shorter trip and leave the miles for close to home for weekend trips.
- Use your ability to design your trip to what works best for you. Be flexible to hike 1 section northbound, and another section southbound.
- Set yearly goals
- Set up shuttle rides at least 2 weeks in advance, and call to confirm the week before your trip. Everyone's calendar stretches out for a whole year, so it cant hurt for your name to be written down well in advance of a trip instead of last minute.
- Never make a shuttle driver wait, keep your shuttle driver up to speed on your trip.. "Hey I'm looking good on time see ya at 12!"
- When planning a trip, look 1 - 2 trips in advance and see how your end point is going to set you up for the trips to come...May need to make this trip a 32 mile instead of 26 so that the next one is 34 instead of 40 kinda thinking. You cant always help where the roads cross a lot of times you can walk on to that next road 5 miles down the way and make the next trip a little easier for yourself.
- Start in the spring or fall for your first year of completion, where the weather will be a little more forgiving and anyone who can skip the "I carried too much" phase of hiking, I am jealous...If you know your going to love it, or you already have some backpacking experience and have the extra bucks for lighter gear, go ahead and bite the bullet and lighten your load.
- When others say they want to go on a hike with you, and they are not backpackers.. Keep in mind that this is their maybe 1 trip every so often so they would more then likely prefer to go somewhere great like Roan Mountain or Grayson Highlands, maybe the Smokies! Instead of a 30 mile stretch of green tunnels in Virginia that you just so happen to need to complete still.
Interested in what advice the more experienced folks have here as I will be starting a second Map from Springer to somewhere in Virginia for 2018 while I wait for my 1 week and 2 week trips to roll around again.