Appalachia, Summer/Fall 2010
Warren Doyle’s rules for long-distance group hikes
Christine Woodside
Warren Doyle, age 60, has a crush on Little Debbie, the snack cake girl. His favorite thing to do is to eat a Little Debbie cosmic brownie as he sets out on a cold morning to walk one of his 20- to 30-mile stints. The brownie won’t melt and tastes so good when he is in motion. The memories of those trudges while chomping are so strong that any reminder of Little Debbie snack cakes excites him. “I think the sensation of seeing a Little Debbie truck go by me on the highway—it makes my heart beat faster. I drive a little bit faster,” he said.
Cosmic brownies—flour, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, sugar, dextrose, cocoa, and fluorescent “candy toppers”— are his staff of life. They fuel his college teaching, the mountain adventures he does solo, and his self-styled guided trips of the Appalachian Trail. He seems to operate in a series of energy bursts beyond what most people could stand. Until 2008, when he began to slow down a bit, a typical weekend road trip for him would be to drive in one stretch to Maine or New Hampshire from Virginia or North Carolina (where he lived more recently) or the mountains of Tennessee (where he just bought a house). Without pausing to sleep, he would then walk dozens of miles in the mountains, then pick up some junk food and drive home after a few hours of rest.
All this joie de vivre brings on a smile. But there is another side of Doyle that has made me shake my head, and last winter I set out to understand it. Along with his fun-loving nature, Doyle is one of the most demanding group leaders most people would ever see in the backcountry. He is also one of the most successful, in that almost no one he leads on longdistance treks gives up. Doyle agreed to try to explain to me his firm rules that, since 1975, have helped fervent disciples from age 19 to 60-something complete seven group hikes of the entire AT, 2,100-plus miles from Georgia to Maine. Spring and summer 2010, he was planning to take an eighth group on the journey. The long distances he can inspire new hikers to achieve are practically unbelievable. He motivates them to do what he has been doing himself in the Sierras and along the Eastern seaboard since the early 1970s. That is, to go all out, covering 20 to 30 miles daily for months, far more than most people think is reasonable.
I met Doyle in Connecticut through the coincidence of timing of one of his super road trips. Last New Year’s Eve, he and his wife, Terry, drove from North Carolina to Connecticut to visit her family. Doyle too has roots in Connecticut, although his father, Warren Doyle Sr., a retired toll taker on the Connecticut Turnpike, died last year. They had already driven up and back the previous week—spending Christmas in the north and racing home to a contra dance festival. By a few days after New Year’s, he was waiting for me in the library of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association along Route 66 in Middlefield, Connecticut. Doyle was wearing a navy blue fleece jacket, nylon pants, and wingtip shoes. The shoes are his contra dancing shoes. Family needs had led him to cancel a plan to drive to Maine, climb Katahdin, and sleep on the summit. He didn’t suggest that we go hiking and neither did I. I was taking his cue. Perhaps I fell under the spell of Warren Doyle speaking quietly from behind his giant beard.
A short hike wouldn’t have fit the man, anyway. Doyle does not believe in walking a few miles and then contemplating the vegetation while dinner cooks, as Thoreau did. Doyle believes that pushing hard, to the absolute wall where his physical capabilities stop, transforms anyone willing to try, even flabby milquetoasts, into strong people—strong physically, strong of mind— who know what they believe and who will never again mince words, tell white lies, or follow the wrong impulses.
Christine Woodside lives in Deep River, Connecticut, and is a freelance writer and the editor of Appalachia.
This excerpt is from the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Appalachia. To order this issue, visit the AMC Online Store.
