Katahdin, a granite massif forged by heat and carved by ice, so dominates the central Maine landscape that it first comes into sight for the northbound Appalachian Trail hiker from seventy-two trail miles away in the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.  Fifty-seven miles closer, when emerging from the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, comes the view of the great mountain standing […]

AT hikers do not know the meaning of “rocks” until they have hiked Pennsylvania.  Brick and cinder block sized rocks jut up from the ground at every conceivable angle side by side for hundreds of yards making it impossible to land a level step.  Quite appropriately an older hiker’s handbook identified these long stretches as

“I look like a mom!” my nearly fifteen year-old daughter Hannah declared in horror as we stood at Winding Stair Gap in the heart of the Nantahala Mountains to head north along the AT for a three-day hike to Wesser, North Carolina.  I had made her wear a pair of my quick-dry shorts with pockets

“Hike the AT in the Grayson Highlands, you’ll see the wild ponies, too,” said a fellow backpacker we met at North Carolina shelter.  Three months later in early August, my then-husband Bill and I headed to the AT in southwestern Virginia not far from the Tennessee border.  Our first afternoon presented us with two surprises. 

     Little did I know that preparation styles for a demanding hike along the Appalachian Trail in the White Mountains’ Presidential Range could differ so completely between two people.  When I discussed a trip to the Whites with a family friend named Scott, I agreed to plan our trek by studying the guide books

I wanted an AA meeting but got Jesus and grace instead. Gray skies threatened that entire August afternoon and Maine’s forest humidity pressed sweat from every inch of our bodies.  Six University of Virginia women and I were hiking the fifty northernmost miles of the Appalachian Trail in the famous 100-Mile Wilderness as the finale

It started with an older man named Sam Waddle who drove ten miles, five of them bone-rattling, in his old jeep up a deeply rutted, pot-holed dirt road to reach the three-sided shelter he maintained on the Appalachian Trail.  The Jerry Cabin shelter, built on the remaining foundation of a cattle herder’s cabin, sat 24

Three years later my husband and I planned to go to New Hampshire and hike the difficult Presidential Range in the White Mountains. We decided that we had better hike one of the toughest parts of the Appalachian Trail while we were still relatively young and fit.  I had the trip planned day-by-day and had

I had never backpacked solo before, but here I was hiking the entirety of Massachusetts alone.  My husband no longer backpacked with me, and hiking with my New England hiking partner had ended for the season, but I had the chance to do this stretch of the trail with support from extended family and friends

Reasonable people do not find a taxi in the remote wilderness of Maine’s Baxter State Park, but I desperately needed a ride both times after my respective companions and I finished  our climb of Katahdin, known among AT hikers as “the Big One” because its summit, Baxter Peak, is the AT’s northern terminus.  At a