Appalachian Trail Hike
In 2024 Jimmy and Sondra (Trail Horse and Lemonade) did a long hike on the Appalachian Trail. It started out with the intention of completing a Thru-Hike which is hiking the entire 2197.4 miles within 365 days. In the end we covered 1673 miles over 157 days, leaving 524.4 miles to be completed some other time.
The Appalachian Trail is a continuous footpath crossing 14 states between Maine and Georgia. The official distance varies from year to year due to changes made to the trail. The typical time to thru-hike the entire trail is five to seven months. In 2024 Tara Dower set the fastest known hike in under 41 days. Only about a quarter of those who attempt a thru-hike complete it.
We chose to hike the trail as a Flip-Flop. Instead of starting in Maine and hiking south (SOBO) or starting in Georgia to hike north (NOBO), we decided to start at a point towards the middle to hike the northern portion first, then flipping back to our starting point to hike the southern portion of the trail. A Flip-Flop allows one to avoid the crowds of the NOBO hikers, milder weather, hiking the most difficult in the first half, less stress of reaching Katahdin before it closes for the beginning of the snow season.
Our hike began on April 21 from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. We flipped from Caratunk, Maine back to Harpers Ferry to begin the southbound part of our hike on July 25. Then we got off trail in advance of the remnants of Hurricane Helene on September 24 just north of the Smoky Mountains, which turned out to be the last day of our 2024 hike.
Blog Posts by State
It was a fantastic adventure that we tried to capture in our weekly blog posts. Each week, Jimmy and I took turns preparing a summary of our experiences. There are 24 posts that captured our hike nearly on a daily basis. The posts below will take you to the first entry for each state, while the bottom of each blog post has links to the previous and next entries. Some day we hope to add one more post to the series that covers the gear we used.
