Hiking

  • The Evolution of My Gear at the Half Way Point

    If you ever want to hear a thru-hiker ramble on for an hour or two, just ask about their gear. Not to overexaggerate, because I’m not, but our gear is our life out here. We literally may live-or-die (okay that is a bit of an exaggeration) by our gear. Mainly though, what gear we choose will define how comfortable we are on the trail, and extreme discomfort can make or break our motivation to stay on and finish the trail. The main things I thought about when initially compiling my gear list were: quality, weight, cost, and quantity (not all are mutually exclusive, for example, higher quality tends to be…

  • Trail Names

    Many of you, my lovely readers, have requested hearing the stories of how thru-hikers obtained their trail names. Well, ask and you shall receive (some of the time at least)! I’ve reached out to some of the thru-hikers I met on the northern portion of my flip flop and asked them to tell the story of how they received their names. Thus, these stories are told from their point of view. I hope you enjoy! The ways in which a thru-hiker obtains a trail name can vary. As you will read, some came onto the trail with names already, either from previous thru-hikes, or life experiences. Others obtained their trail…

  • Between the Flip & the Flop: Acadia, ER Visits, and Washington DC

    This post can originally be found on The Trek, here. Emergency Room visits! I am lucky enough to know someone in Maine who was able to pick me up from Baxter State Park. Remember how I mentioned that I noticed a swelling, hot, and painful feeling in my cheek in one of my last posts? Well by this point, I was convinced it was an infection. So instead of heading home, I was taken straight to the ER from Katahdin. The doctor in the ER diagnosed it as an abscess which needed to be cut opened and drained.  The now hole-in-my-cheek was then stuffed with a packing and bandaged Two…

  • Katahdin

    Day #: 89 Miles Since Last Update: 5 mi. Total Miles Hiked: 1,173 mi. Miles Remaining: 1,025 mi. This post can originally be found on The Trek, here. Going up Katahdin As I wrote in my previous post, my tramily was placed in the Abol campground in Baxter State Park. This campground is ~2 miles from the Hunt trailhead (the official AT trail up Katahdin to Baxter Peak).  Most thru-hikers will opt to slackpack Katahdin, leaving the majority of their things at a ranger station, and climbing Katahdin with a daypack, typically taking the Hunt trail up, and the Abol trail is trail known for basically being a  giant boulder…

  • It’s here: The 100 Mile Wilderness

    Day #: 88 Miles Since Last Update: 112 mi. Total Miles Hiked: 1,168 mi. Miles Remaining: 1,030 mi. This post can originally be found here, on The Trek. It was here. The 100 Mile Wilderness. The 100 Mile Wilderness stretches from Monson, ME to Abol Bridge, which lays on the outskirts of Baxter State Park, where one finds Mt Katahdin. It is called the 100 Mile Wilderness because it is 100 miles in which there is no option to resupply. 114.7 left to go until we reached the base of Katahdin. For me, this marked the beginning of the end of the northern half of my Flip-Flop; 1068.1 miles down.…

  • Northern Maine… it comes with rain and more pain, but also my favorite brewery!

    Day #: 83 Miles Since Last Update: 37 mi. Total Miles Hiked: 1,058 mi. Miles Remaining: 1,139 mi. This post can originally be found here, on The Trek. In comparison to the tough terrain of southern Maine, I was told that northern Maine would be easy. And… well.. yes… in comparison it was easier. But I would not define it as just plain ol’ easy. It was flatter, but that didn’t mean you were any less focused on watching your feet as you rock or root hopped around inundated trails that had simply become muddy swamps. It was beautiful to hike past lakes and rivers and not have to worry…

  • New Hampshire: Where the Going Got REALLY Tough

    Day #: 63 Miles Since Last Update: 70 mi. Total Miles Hiked: 800 mi. Miles Remaining: 1,398 mi. This post can originally be found here, on The Trek After finishing up my isolation in my cousins basemen (where I ate my weight in maple ice cream, watching ALL the new episodes of Black Mirror, and played hours upon hours of online Settlers of Catan with my family), I finally headed back out to the trail with a new set of Altra Olympus 4’s and new trekking poles (Leki Lhasa’s). It had been over a week of laying in bed, sleeping, and pretty much doing nothing, but as I carried myself…