AT Thru-Hike (2011)

As a child I spent a considerable amount of time outdoors, be it building forts going for hikes, exploring new places you name it. Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia placed one foot near the city and one foot near the woods. After graduating from college in 2010, I spent a year working and saving money wondering like most new grads where do I want to go and what do I want to do. I got in contact with a few friends from college and we all shared a collective idea: thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. So the plan was set. In the spring of 2011 I'd set out with a few friends to spend the next few months in the woods. Having done some hiking previous to the AT i thought I had a general idea of what I was getting into. Totally Wrong!!

One Hell of a Beard

I started out on Springer Mountain in the middle of nowhere Georgia on April 8th. Along the trail I learned so much not just about hiking but about myself and others as well. Around Tennessee two of my friends were done with their thru-hike and the other took off racing for a deadline. I hiked solo for most of Virginia. Concurrent with crossing the Mason-Dixon line I gained new friends to hike with. Along the way to Maine new friends joined along and others hiked ahead or fell behind. The weather for 2011 was pretty intense ranging from nearby twisters in North Carolina, droughts in Virginia, record heat waves in New York, tropical storms in New England (which closed the White Mountains for the first time in their history!), and to top it off a nasty blizzard-like cold front when I submitted Mt. Katahdin on October 5th almost six months later. It was a hell of a journey with a varying range highs and low, good times and bad. I grew one hell of a beard on the trail, reached new levels of understanding and appreciation of the small things in life, and learned to live simply. I could ramble on and on and on about my experiences on my first thru-hike and the tremendous impacts it has had on my way of live. Unfortunately I did not journal or blog during my thru but I did take plenty of pictures which you can scroll through below which in a sense is a photo journal of the people, places, and things experienced along the way.


AT Gear List



Click in the Bottom Right Corner of the Slideshow to Access the Album and Photos!!