Detroit Free Press - 2,175 miles of ups and downs

[Matteroo]

JOEL THURTELL
2,175 miles of ups and downs

Canton high grad hikes the length of the Appalachian Trail in 7 months

October 28, 2007


I read Bill Bryson's book "A Walk in the Woods" a while back and couldn't help thinking the guy cheated. I mean, he hiked the Appalachian Trail to write a book about it, and that's fine. But the way he did it!

See, he'd go at it a while, then he'd quit. Not for an hour or a day or a week, but for long stretches of time. More than a coffee break, if you know what I mean.

I'm not saying he cheated, exactly, but ... compare his approach with that of Kara Christenson of Canton.

In the end, Bryson and Christenson each could say they'd tallied the same 2,175 miles from starting in Georgia to ending in Maine.

But none of those long, drawn-out breaks for Christenson. She started her walk on March 11 and a bit shy of seven months later, on Oct. 2, she was done. Seven pretty long, pretty exciting months.

I got wind of her achievement a few days later, when she e-mailed me, "I just completed the 2,175-mile hike from Georgia to Maine that is the Appalachian Trail." I was hearing from somebody who had just achieved the same feat as Bryson, the famous author. And by doing it in one long lap she made it tougher. Christenson's not planning on writing a book, either. She's looking for a job in magazine journalism while editing Adirondack Review, a fiction publication.

Christenson told me she trekked alone for the first two months, arguably the toughest because the weather was the coldest. Two months into her journey, boyfriend Matt Mioduszewski joined her. Mioduszewski was motivated to go walking because Christenson was doing it and he decided it was a neat thing to do.

But why, I wondered, did Christenson want to do this difficult and potentially dangerous thing? I figured she'd read Bryson. "That's the first question people ask me, if I read that book, or if I took a gun with me," Christenson said. No, she didn't take a gun. As for Bryson, she read his book -- years after she decided to walk the trail. She decided to do it when she was a Girl Scout, she said. "I'd wanted to do it since I was 12 or 13."
OK, but the Appalachian Trail is more than a walk in the woods. You climb mountains. You inch along trails so narrow there's only room for a foot and there's a long, deadly drop if you misstep. You walk across creeks and rivers. You squeeze between rocks. You spend nights in tents sometimes in below-zero weather.

If you screw up and don't plan right, you run out of food. You could freeze. You could drown. You could fall to a broken, painful doom. It happens.

"Part of it was I like the backpacking, but I had only done little hikes like a week. It sounded so simple -- just living and being outdoors every day. And I needed a break from school," Christenson said.

She bided her time. She graduated from CantonHighSchool in 2002 and from AlbionCollege in 2006. She had two majors, English and German. (She studied at Heidelberg University in Germany her junior year.) After graduating from Albion, she came back to Canton and worked as a secretary.

Two weeks after she finished, the excitement was still very much with her. "I did the whole thing straight through," she told me. "The longest break I took was three days at my uncle's house. Once a week, I'd hitchhike to a town so I could get some more food and sometimes stay at a motel or a hostel."

Hitchhike? Not a problem, she said. "It was mostly rednecks in pickup trucks. You sat in their truck beds and it was OK. Everyone was totally friendly. It was down south that everyone was really friendly. Up north, everything was expensive and the people were wary of hikers. In the South, they seemed really aware of hikers being around and when they picked them up they wanted to tell you about their uncle or son who did it, too."
Mioduszewski showed up after two months. He'd read her letters and followed other hikers' online accounts. Christenson had her mom mail care packages to post offices along the way with packaged dry food. I wondered if she ever was tempted to do what Bryson did -- quit for a stretch, then come back to the quitting point to start up again. "No," she said. "There's something about just walking from Georgia to Maine, just straight."

Mioduszewski said it crossed his mind to pull a Bryson. But Christenson had her plan.
"She had lived alone for two months, so she's the one who should get most of the glory," said Mioduszewski, 25, a graduate of St. John's Jesuit High School in Toledo, Ohio and the University of Michigan. He walked with Christenson for five months, after meeting up with her May 7 at a road crossing 20 miles from Pearisburg, Va. What was the most exciting thing that happened?

"Finishing," said Christenson. After seven months, though, hiking had become a way of life. Other hikers knew her as Bucket, for the fabric container she used to fetch water to her campsite. When Mioduszewski arrived, he'd carry the bucket. His nickname was Water.

At the end, she said, "I had mixed feelings and wanted to go home and did not want to go home."

The scariest thing? Hiking up a mountain in a storm, she said. "The wind blew so hard it just blew me off the trail. Either that or the night it was really cold. Somebody had a thermometer and it said negative 5."

She didn't bother with fires. "I didn't even build fires before he came. It wasn't worth it to me. I just wanted to sit still after hiking all day."

Twice, they came upon mama bears with three cubs. The bears were fine. They found a dead moose that had apparently suffered a broken leg.

Partway through the trip, Christenson needed a new backpack. She weighed 137 when she started, but dropped to 125 pounds. "I had lost so much weight, the waist belt was too big. I then started eating 6,000 calories a day and went back up to 132.

"Every time we went to town, we tried to do laundry," she said.
They carried rain suits, a light fleece, a long-sleeved shirt, short-sleeved shirt, convertible pants and running shorts for really hot weather, two pairs of socks and hiking shoes. They also used hiking poles, sort of like ski poles, for keeping balance and locomoting the trail.

I asked Mioduszewski if he would ever go back and start the trip in Georgia so he could complete his walk in the woods?

"Everybody asks me that," he said. "It will be a long-term goal." He thought a minute, adding, "That's not happening."
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CORRECTION/WATER/MATT'S NOTE: "That's not happening anytime too soon"

[minnesotasmith]

1) Bryson did NOT hike the entire AT, or even half of it. I think I read he did around 1/3 of it.

2) Subzero weather is rare to nonexistent for thruhikers on any kind of normal schedule. During my thruhike last year, I was in GA in mid-Feb, the Smokies in late March, the Whites in Septemember, Maine in October, and MA/CT in November. I saw snow in every one of those except MA/CT, but it never got below zero *.

[Blissful]

Congrats to the hiker!!

I must say though I get worried when I read an article like this. The hiker did have a great achievement, for certain. Hiking the AT is HARD and she deserves an accurate article. There's a newspaper article coming out on our hike this weekend with a full photo spread and I just pray sensationalism will not be a part of it. As a writer, I am really particular about accuracy. I know for a fact it did not get that cold this year. Some snow yes. Wind, you bet. But never did it get to zero March to Sept unless you were above treeline with the wind chill factored in (that happened on Franconia Ridge, but we elected to tent at Liberty Springs and not be out in it). Maybe it was the Smokies in early April - I know there was rough weather there for a time with bad blow downs, but did it get to zero? Nor was I worried about drowning on the trail (I took the ferry at the Kennebec, but that is another thread, ha ha). Nor did I or other hikers "screw up and (didn't) plan right, you run out of food" We did run out of food because of weather situations that were unpredictable, like high winds, causing us to stay an extra day at a shelter. The characterization of this is not true and actually rather insulting. Sure hikers eat a lot. Somehow the hiker in the article was able to eat 6,000 calories a day. Not sure how she did that. maybe lots of power bars. I know our food bags would have weighed a ton if we carried a combined 12,000 calories. (this is more my own curiosity point though).

Anyway, what the hiker did was great. Many points in the article were right on target, for sure. I just hope reporters endeavor to portray the AT for what it was this year. And I'm praying too for our article due out this week. Yikes.

[Matteroo]

No, I would have prefered if we could have read over the article before it was published. I feel like I sound like a bit of a boob in it, which while I'd willingly admit to being goofy, this portrayal is kind of slappy.

Indeed, Bryson didn't hike the whole thing, the writer got that wrong on his own accord. And, while it was below 32 degrees on some nights in early April during that storm/weather system, I didn't think it was -5. I was using NOAA.GOV's site to check temperatures while Bucket was down along the Tenn/NC line, past the Smokies, and I saw temperatures on NOAA as 8 and 12 degrees at their nadir. However, Bucket claims a fellow hiker's thermometer said -5. You know maybe that hiker was exaggerating, mis read his thermometer, or it was a crappy little one that wasn't accurate--or they were in a particular spot that really really got the chill. I don't know.

Eating 6,000 calories a day - that was a goal the hiker aimed for each time she was IN TOWN, after she lost a bit too much weight. Again, this could have been clearer on the part of the writer.

Whatever, for the most part, only the niche AT enthusiasts like bucket and I, and folks here, are going to have a problem with the article. It wasn't written for us, it was written for a news paper that caters to the 4th grade reading level.

Thanks for reading though

[Blissful]

Yeah, my hubby gently reminded me that there were a few times it did get down near zero - single digits at least twice, but we were in a motel room both times. (we lucked out!)

Anyway, it's still great what you did. A HUGE feat. Congrats!

[Lilred]

nice article. Congrats on finishing. I section the AT and I always get that gun question too. It's either the first or second question. The other is 'aren't you scared???'

[High Life]

i had fun meeting water and bucket on my first day on the trail ..

[Cuffs]

Great article and congrats! I grew up "Down river", nice to see others from the area having such great accomplishments!

Will Bucket up date her trailjournal?

[Matteroo]

Cuffs,

one day, day by day, bucket indeed will transcribe her paper journal into her trail journal! thanks for the read. We moved out to Portland Oregon now--so the PCT slumbers to our East about 55 miles...