Hiking the Appalachian Trail, which runs more than 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia is – for many people – a cherished goal. They’ll take in magnificent views, meet interesting people and sleep under the stars, but it’s hardly what author Bill Bryson called A Walk in the Woods. Fellow writer Earl Swift recalls his latest through hike on the AT.
“It might be the simplest thing I've ever done, which is not to say the easiest, because I was hurting for the first minute and kept hurting through every minute after. Cramps wracked my legs. My shoulders, hips and feet ached even while I slept. I courted hypothermia and heat exhaustion, usually nursed at least one actively bleeding wound and passed my days bug bitten, bruised, chafed and filthy. My beard clumped and knotted into an itchy, feral nest. I spent my waking hours hungry. My body torched the calories I forced down each day and went searching for more, so that I dwindled to a raw-boned shadow of myself, a scarecrow of jutting ribs, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks. I craved fats so desperately that I chugged squeeze cheese from the bottle, and my discomfort, and exhaustion and stink and hunger and homesickness rarely waned, for more than five months.”
His first trek was also tarnished by tragedy – the loss of hikers Molly LaRue and Geoff Hood.
"We hiked together for several days, camped together for a couple of nights, and then weeks later I learned that they had been murdered in a trailside shelter in Pennsylvania."
The crime was deeply troubling, and it took many years and miles to think through what had happened.
"Suddenly free of book projects for the first time in a decade and having hiked regularly since moving to Charlottesville, I realized one way to resolve this haunting that had gripped me ever since that first hike – was to do it again," he explains.
He felt physically ready.
"I thought I was in pretty good shape. In fact, I probably was better prepared physically this time than I was the first time around, just because I knew what to expect, but let me tell you, the past 34 years sneaks up on you in ways you do not see until you test – test yourself."
The trail, for example, can test your mountaineering skills.
"You’re going up near vertical slabs of rock that in addition to just having gravity working against you, they are veneered in slime, and it’s terrifying in places."
You might think bears would be the biggest danger, but Swift says the real risk comes from something much smaller.
"You want to look at something that’s going to do you damage, it’s ticks! Lyme disease and now the emerging nature of alpha-gal , they’re taking their toll on through hikers."
Snakes can also pose danger. Swift encountered a rattler that was especially aggressive.
"It came at me and would not stop coming at me to the point where it had me backing down the trail at a pretty good clip until a peal of thunder hit, and the ground shook and suddenly the snake changed its mind and changed course."
The weather can shift suddenly, leaving you soaking wet or shivering in snow, and things can fall without warning.
"At 12:35 am as I slept in my tent and Greg slept maybe six feet away, there was this tremendous, concussive thud. I cannot exaggerate the sound this thing made — the loudest I've ever heard. It turned out it was a tree that had threaded that six-foot space between Greg and I, missing my head and his legs by about a foot."
Climate change has dried up many sources of water along the way and wildfires sometimes threaten. Still, since the publication of A Walk in the Woods, many more people are hiking the AT.
"Three or four thousand people set out each year trying to do it. Most of them start down south. If you were to venture on the trail in Georgia or North Carolina in March or April , you’d find yourself in a mob."
And with that mob comes the dreaded norovirus and other infectious diseases.
"You have this huge number of inexperienced backpackers, all showing up at the same campsite, overloading the privies, using the same picnic table. You touch any surface that's been exposed to norovirus, and you're in trouble, and the picnic table is just a viral breeding ground."
Those prospects aside, there’s lots to like on the trail. Hikers burn 5 or 6 thousand calories a day making it necessary to eat like a pig.
“I could very easily sit down and polish off three cheeseburgers and be ready for dessert.”
Thanks to new materials packs are lighter now than they were when Swift first tackled the trail. In 1990, Swift carried 55 pounds on his back, but in 2024 the full load was about 40 pounds. And there’s one fairly light device that’s made everything easier.
"Of all the changes that have occurred over the last 36 years, I would have to say Sandy that the advent of the smart phone is the main driver for pretty much all of them. I mean there are long stretches of trail where you don’t have a signal, but for the most part you can use your cell phone with GPS apps and not only will it map the trail ahead for you, but it shows you exactly where you are on the trail at any given time. It’s pretty handy."
It also allows hikers to summon shuttle drivers who can take them from the trail to the nearest hostel, restaurant, laundromat or hospital. You can also keep in touch with so-called Trail Angels – people who enjoy helping hikers to achieve their dream.
"A lot of people don’t get the chance to take five or six months off and do this, and they want to experience in vicariously, and so they want to become part of your life. It might be with a meal they’re cooking trailside. It might be with a ride into town or a ride to the post office to pick up your mail drops."
In the course of his hike, the author paid a visit to the memorial built for his friends – Geoff and Molly – and he saw the place they died. He had met the victims’ families and attended the killer’s trial. Over the long miles of hiking, he tried to answer the nagging question – why them and not me. He closes his 329-page account with eloquent answers.
The book is Up On Cove Mountain by Earl Swift.
