I recently retired and am (for the first time ever) giving some serious consideration to my longtime fantasy of hiking the AT. I have no illusion that I could ever do a thru hike, so I’m trying to figure out how to break it up into sections that make sense.
By “make sense” I mean that Inwould like to break it into segments that start someplace that’s easy to get to and that end somewhere it’s easy to get home from. So for example since I live in northern KY I could take the train from Cincinnati to Harper’s Ferry and start there. Easy, and I could use public transportation to get there. But once I get there I’m not certain which way to go so that I find myself at a good exit point. I’m tentatively thinking of breaking it into one month segments, then coming home for a month or so before heading back out, and either skipping the worst parts of winter or spending them on the south end.
It seems like I can’t be the first person who wanted to do the trail this way, so is there a good blog, book, guide or other resource that can help me figure out how to segment my hike to make maximum use of easily available transportation options?
All help is appreciated. TIA.