It didn’t take fancy equipment, guidebooks, training, or youthfulness. It took putting one foot in front of the other—five million times.”
~Ben Montgomery
Thruhikers are an interesting breed. By far and away most thruhikers are in their 20’s, though some retirees also head out to the trail. Few people in their 30’s and 40’s attempt a thruhike, probably due to family and career commitments.
Supposedly about 55% of thruhikers are male and 45% female, though that statistic does not match what I saw on the trail. I would have estimated maybe 75-80% male and 20-25% female. Maybe the percentage varies tremendously from year to year, or maybe the women are still further south, but almost all of the hikers I talked with or saw on trail were guys.
People tend to attempt a thruhike during times of transition, so right after high school graduation, college graduation, retirement, a divorce, and recovery from addiction are all popular times to hike the AT.
Historically about 10% of thruhikers are international, but because of Covid-19 I only met two internationals.
Thruhikers come in all shapes and sizes, but by the time they have hiked to northern Virginia they are in incredible physical shape, lean and muscular and capable of hiking 20 miles with a 20+ pound pack on their back! It is almost impossible to carry let alone eat the 4,000 to 6,000 calories per day that thruhikers burn, so most have lost significant weight. Food is an extremely popular conversation topic!
Thruhikers have interesting hygiene. Since they can’t take a daily shower, and since deodorant is heavy to carry, thruhikers stink. They occasionally have a shower at a hostel or pop into a stream for a quick dip, but otherwise they just smell. Some restaurants along the trail provide outdoor showers and request that hikers make use of them before entering!
Most thruhikers have trail names. Some folks decide for themselves what their trail name will be, but usually a trail name is given because of some personal quality or an incident on the trail. The names “Giggles” and “Braids” are self-explanatory, but some trail names, like “Front Seat” and “No Shit”, are pretty off-beat. “Inching Along” is an older woman who has slowly made it inch by inch up to northern Virginia!
Some names require the back story before you can make sense of them. Salamander got his name because he somehow scooped up a salamander into his dirty water container. Top would attend business meetings by cell phone at the trail locations with the best reception — at the top of mountains! Cinderella acquired her name when she left a sock behind and another hiker made it her mission to find the owner of the sock, racing up the trail and asking everyone if they were the owner of the sock. At the end of this long hunt the sock was reunited with its owner, who was from then on known as Cinderella! French Broad didn’t get her name by being a French broad. She lives on the French Broad River in North Carolina, and when she crossed the French Broad River on the AT, miles west of where she lives, she became very emotional!
At one shelter some hikers were wondering where a hiker named Psycho was since they were supposed to meet her there. I have no idea what she did earlier on the trail to earn that distinctive trail name, but she certainly re-earned it the night I met her— somehow she had gotten off-trail and hadn’t noticed until she was several miles beyond the shelter. Instead of walking back to the AT and then along the AT to the shelter, she decided to take a “shortcut” — she bushwhacked well over a mile through the woods in the dark! All of us at the shelter were very impressed. I would have given her the trail name “Brave”!
I had heard that most hikers hike with others, forming “tramilies” (trail families). While hikers definitely enjoy hanging out together at shelters, almost everyone I saw during the day was hiking alone.
Despite the solitude, news spreads quickly up and down the trail. Most hikers are northbound, but there are enough section hikers and southbounders to carry word down the trail, and hikers are always getting off at hostels and then mixing with a new group of hikers a bit later, so communication up and down the AT grapevine is surprisingly quick.
Generally walking at 2.5 mph along a narrow ribbon of trail, hikers can just miss each other. At one shelter there were two hikers who had left Springer Mountain in Georgia in mid-March only two days apart but met for the first time in northern Virginia. Because of the trail grapevine they both knew of each other’s existence, but despite having walked about 1000 miles within a few miles of each other, they never crossed paths until that June evening!
There has been much speculation about how Covid might have affected the thruhiker population and the thruhiker experience this year. We will need to wait a year or two to get the numbers, but I was surprised by the separation and isolation on the trail. Is that a result of Covid? Who knows.