AMC Outdoors, May 1997

By Karen Berger

In 1989, Roland Mueser, a thru-hiker and retired physicist, conducted a survey of 136 AT thru-hikers. He found that of the non-finishers (85 percent, in his study), 35 percent lost interest or became homesick. Time commitments to jobs or school forced another 25 percent off the trail. Sickness and injury derailed 17 percent. Ten percent couldn't stand the weather. And another 10 percent ran out of money.

It's the aches and pains that form the basis of thru-hiker dialogue during the first couple of hundred miles. According to Vernon Vernier, a retired physician and two-time thru-hiker, medical complaints range from blisters to broken bones, giardia to Lyme disease, and all manner of scrapes and gashes. In the first days, the most common complaints are blisters (when unbroken-in feet meet unbroken-in boots) and muscle aches (when formerly sedentary bodies haul an overstuffed pack up and down mountains all day).

Of course, you don't have to be a thru-hiker to slip and fall or drink bad water. Where a thru-hike differs from a shorter trip is in the day-in, day-out stress, and this is especially true on the AT, which is, mile for mile, tougher and steeper than its western cousins. (The Pacific Crest Trail, for instance, is graded for stock use. Just imagine riding a horse through Mahoosuc Notch!) I don't think I could have completed the AT had it not been for a pair of adjustable, shock-absorbing walking sticks to ease the stress on my beleaguered knees.

Aches and pains accompany many hikers all the way to Maine. But somewhere, usually in North Carolina, bodies adapt to the new regime. Prospective thru-hikers start thinking of themselves as thru-hikers. You can see it in the way they pack up in the morning, knowing just where everything goes. Bodies that staggered up Georgia mountains now move comfortably through the North Carolina-Tennessee Balds. Packs that were stuffed full of "just in case" items have been stripped to the bare essentials.

And now, they're also the ones whizzing past you, flying uphill, fit and trim with leg muscles bulging.