Hikers take an average of 165 days, or between five and six months, to complete the journey. The journey requires approximately 5 million steps!

Typically only about 20% of all people who attempt to thru-hike the trail succeed. They start in late winter or spring and finish in the late summer or early fall. Mount Katahdin closes to hikers in early October, so sometimes it is truly a race to arrive at Baxter State Park in Maine before Katahdin closes for the season!

By far and away the most common way to hike the AT is from south to north — 89% of hikers start in Georgia and plan to finish in Maine.

The vertical ascents on the AT (all 464,464 feet of them) combine to the equivalent of hiking up Mount Everest sixteen times!

Unsurprisingly, most hikers will go through 4 or even 5 pairs of hiking shoes on the journey!

Mount Washington is NOT the highest point on the trail; that particular honor goes to Clingman’s Dome in Tennessee.

The trail is marked by 165,000 white blazes. That is the equivalent of one blaze every 70 feet! These markers are vital for hikers, but maintaining them is obviously a painful process. I hate to even think about how much paint and how many man-hours are involved!

Hikers can stay overnight in one of the 262 shelters along the path. Other overnight housing options for hikers are setting up their tent in approved locations and going off-trail and staying in a hostel in a nearby town. Over the course of the journey, most hikers do a combination of all three.

The number of people attempting to hike the AT has risen dramatically in the past few decades. in the 1970’s, 778 people successfully thru-hiked the trail; the 10,000th recorded hike completion was in 2008. Nowadays several thousand hikers attempt the trail each year, though typically less than a thousand complete it.

While about half of hikers are in their 20’s, many are much older. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy says that about 750 people in their 60’s have thru-hiked the trail. The oldest known thru-hiker was 86 at the time of his hike!

Thru-hikers are a diverse group. Blind people, amputees, and people with organ transplants have all successfully hiked the trail. Multiple couples have done it with a toddler in a backpack. A 5-year-old has completed the trail. Other successful thru-hikers include a family of six, a man who carried his tuba with him the entire way, and a person with type 1 diabetes.

And I intend to give this 2,193-mile journey a try!

To stay updated on my crazy journey, please check out my blog!