by Jedd Ferris

Thirty-eight-year-old Anthony Pisarra had enough of being a corporate attorney in Washington, D.C., so in May 2002, he threw on a backpack and headed for the Appalachian Trail. His intention was to take a few weeks and figure out a new direction for the rest of his life.

Six months later, Pisarra returned home 70 pounds lighter with a full beard, a scar from removing his own stitches, and 2,173 miles of hiking under his belt. He’s now part of an elite group of A.T. thru-hikers.

An estimated four million people set foot on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail every year, and over 2,000 attempt an end to end hike, but out of that number only about 400 complete it. These thru-hikers trek through 14 states and ascend numerous 6,000-foot mountain peaks.

It’s more than a physical accomplishment. For many like Pisarra, it becomes an inner quest, a challenge of mental endurance. Not just “a walk in the woods,” thru-hiking tests the human will to drop societal comforts and embrace the vagaries of the wild. All those that attempt the feat do it for different reasons, and no one that completes it comes home the same.

Facing the Journey

Thru-hiker statistics are compiled and maintained by the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC), a volunteer-based, nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and maintaining the A.T. According to the ATC, 7,830 hikers have reported completing the trail since 1936, but well over 5,000 of those have finished since 1990.

The completion rate of those that attempt a thru-hike has also risen in the past five years. Where it used to hover around less than 10 percent, it increased from 14 percent in 1999 to 22 percent in 2003.

Lori Potteiger has been with the ATC since 1988, one year after completing her own thru-hike. She says the biggest reason that less than 25 percent finish is because most people underestimate the terrain.

“The biggest misconception is how difficult the trail is,” she says. “Very little of the A.T. is just a wide, gentle, smooth footpath.”

Courtney Masters of Gallatin, Tennessee, who hiked the trail at the age of 29 in 1996, agrees. He says he saw spirited packers give up before even finishing the eight-mile hike to the trail’s southern terminus at Springer Mountain in Georgia.

“The first challenge is getting your trail legs, just getting yourself to where you can hike 12-18 miles a day,” says Masters. “Then as the trip goes on, mentally you become bored. People don’t make it because it really becomes a job. It can be difficult to get up and hike all day, everyday.” Masters, like 65 percent of thru-hikers, did the northbound route, starting at Springer in late March and finishing at Maine’s Mt. Katahdin in October. Six months is typical for the journey, though some do it in less.

Like Pisarra, Masters was also looking for a life change. He was unhappy with his job in construction and needed to do some deep self-exploration, so he decided to go back to a place of happy childhood memories.

“As a child my family used to go to the Smokies a lot, and my dad used to say, ‘If you get on this trail you can walk all the way to Canada.’ That just blew my mind, so I always had this mystique about it, but I never thought it would be attainable,” says Masters. “I really wasn’t happy with what I was doing, so I wanted to drop all of the comforts of life and figure out who I was as a real person.”

Masters remembers getting some perspective in Vermont when a vicious storm came rolling through the Green Mountains. With no time to even pull out his pack cover, he huddled on a mountaintop and-for the only time on the journey-experienced genuine fear...not from the flashing lightning or pounding rain, but more from the realization of his smallness in the world.

“Spending time on the trail, often at the mercy of nature, makes you see the big picture of everything.”

Social Butterflies

Although most thru-hikers start the trail by themselves, nearly all agree that a thru-hike is not the completely solitary experience that they expected. In fact, one of the reasons Pisarra actually stayed on the trail was the encouragement of other thru-hikers that he met in the first few weeks.

“People get to know you through the trail registries that are in each of the shelters,” says Pisarra. “I had a regular group of friends, some of whom I saw once a month and some of whom I saw day in and day out. The community is an amazing part of the trail.”

Shelters along the trail play a big role in fostering the thru-hike community (even though most thru-hikers also carry tents). Most of the shelters-which have been built every five or ten miles along the trail-are simple, three-sided wooden huts with a tin roof and bare earth floors. They offer a convenient alternative to keep pack weight down, and the majority of them are intentionally placed next to water sources.

The shelters also become communal meeting spots, where thru-hikers get to know each other and share stories. Often new friends will hike together for a while, then disband and set a meeting place at another shelter further down the trail. Pisarra particularly remembers a trail buddy named Brother, who was with him for more than 1,000 miles of the journey.

“Brother” is not an unfortunate parental decision, but actually a trail name, another aspect of the secret culture of thru-hiking. Hikers often brand themselves with a new moniker (or are branded by other hikers), which they use in trail registries and with other thru-hikers. Pisarra became known as Faceless, because, at the begin of his journey when he wasn’t planning on doing the whole trail, he would tell other hikers, “You don’t have to get to know me. I’m just another faceless section hiker.”

On the trail thru-hikers are free of previous identities and social status, which is another reason that hikers with wildly different backgrounds are able to create strong common bonds.

“One thing I learned out there is that there is no perfect job and everybody has the same frustrations,” says Masters. “I met lawyers, chefs, and all kinds of people that had the same complaints that I did. You’re all out there with the same common goal, so the social barriers are dropped and you can meet some really great people that you wouldn’t otherwise meet in the real world.”

Masters, a suburban Tennessee native, made friends with a girl named Ursula from Switzerland with whom he hiked with for over 400 miles and has since gone to visit.

True Love and Trail Magic

Thru-hiking is often the test of many relationships. Masters says he saw many couples start together and split up before reaching North Carolina, but some love birds have also found that spending six months in the Appalachians strengthened their bonds.

Jacob and Tricia Cartner, 23 and 22, were married this past January. Less than a month after saying their vows, the Greenville, South Carolina, couple hit the trail. Recent graduates of Clemson University, they used the thru-hike experience as a stepping-stone into the real world.

“A lot of people said to us, ‘If you can get through this, you can get through anything in life,’” says Tricia. “I didn’t really look at it that way. We weren’t worried about anything, so we weren’t stressed out at all. We never had anything to fight about. There were no bills to pay, so I didn’t see it as a challenge as far as our relationship. I never felt like our marriage was being tested.”

The Cartners, who took up the clever trail name “Sole Mates,” maintained an impressive pace and finished the trail in almost exactly five months. Much of the success they attribute to the generosity of people in the towns that intersect the trail. In trail-speak, receiving gifts (tangible or otherwise), especially from locals, has come to be known as trail magic.

For example, when Tricia went to the hospital with stomach problems in Vermont, the nurse that cared for her was coincidentally a former thru-hiker. She let Jacob and Tricia take her car and go to her house for the night while she worked the graveyard shift. They also had another couple take them in for home-cooked meals on two occasions. “It gave us a renewed faith in people,” says Tricia. “We really started to see how blessed we were. We always had a place to stay at the end of the night. People that we didn’t even know would go out of the way for us and put a lot of trust in us.”

Grime and Grub

Besides the physical pounding that the body endures from daily hiking, thru-hikers must acclimate to limited backcountry food options and a layer of dirt coating their skin most of the way. Randy Moore of Black Mountain, North Carolina, is one of only 25 people to have completed the trail three times. He did it solo in 1987 and 1993, and then with his soon-to-be wife Janie in 2000.

Expectedly, his shower regimen increased on the latest trip, but he says on the first two he would only get Zest-fully clean about once every two weeks, not uncommon for thru-hikers trying to save money and conserve the cost of trips into towns.

Money is a major issue to consider in thru-hiking. According to the ATC, it takes an average of $3,000 to $4,000 for the hike itself and generally another $1,000 to $2,000 for gear. “The low end of the spectrum is like $1,500,” says Potteiger of the ATC. “But that takes a huge amount of discipline.” The best way to save money on the trail is to spend more time on the trail, and that means eating more meals on the trail. But people can only take so many sittings of freeze-dried beans and minute rice.

“The food always gets monotonous,” says Moore. “I’ve seen enough granola bars for the rest of my days.”

Pisarra says he became notorious among thru-hikers for his terrible food. Being what is known as an “ultra-lighter,” he was intent on keeping his pack weight under 25 pounds, so he spent nine out of ten nights eating what he called “Ramen Surprise,” a mixture of ramen noodles, instant rice, Parmesan cheese, and textured vegetable protein.

“I had some variations of it,” Pisarra jokes. “Sometimes I would add cheddar cheese, which would make it English Ramen Surprise.”

Still, when hiking near 20 miles a day, the human body craves a lot more than instant meals. When thru-hikers do go into town, it’s important to stockpile in the stomach. “I would go into town and spend $15 at McDonalds on cheeseburgers,” says Masters, who lost 40 pounds on the trail. “You eat up for a couple days and then head back out on trail and go back to pasta. It’s the only time in my life when I’ve craved butter and fatty foods.”

Climbing Up, Breaking Down

For a successful thru-hiker, concerns about bathing habits and caloric intake can never override the natural wonders that shape the experience. The A.T. passes through what is undoubtedly some of the most spectacular scenery in the country.

From Springer Mountain in north Georgia, it heads into North Carolina and runs 70 miles through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where hikers soak in majestic views from Newfound Gap or a sunset on 6,625-foot Clingmans Dome, the highest point on the trail. It rolls through the heart of the Virginia Blue Ridge and into the vista-filled Shenandoah National Park. Then it’s on through the mid-Atlantic to the glacial hills of the Hudson Highlands, before hitting the Berkshires and Green Mountains of southern New England. Finally, it ends with the rugged steeps of the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the wild country of the Mahoosuc Range, culminating in a final climb up Mount Katahdin in the Maine woods.

Thru-hikers often find inspiration in unexpected settings. Pisarra was affected most by walking the Blue Ridge, because although it was always in his backyard, he never stopped to appreciate it.

“It was really an intense personal thing for me, because I live 38 miles east of the Blue Ridge and had never been much past Skyline Drive,” he says. “Much more meaningful to me than the idea that I walked the Appalachian Trail was the idea that I walked the entire length of the Blue Ridge.” He agrees with most, though, that the toughest section is in Maine, where the trail becomes an up-and-down roller coaster. Potteiger is quick to cite Mahoosuc Notch, the hardest single mile of the trail, located just over the Maine border. The final five-mile climb to Katahdin’s summit is also among the most difficult stretches.

It’s not just the terrain that is tough. The final stretch of a thru-hike is also when the body is at its weakest. It’s completely depleted and exhausted, and it starts feeding off muscle in the absence of fat. Pisarra admits that he thought about giving up everyday for the last 400 miles.

“The biggest challenge is that it takes so long to walk 2,000-plus miles. By the end you start to get homesick, your injuries have mounted up, and you’ve gone from getting in better and better shape to watching your body start to break down.”

Beyond the typical blisters, shin splints, and knee and ankle problems, Pisarra slashed his leg with a knife near Shenandoah and needed 10 stitches. He also contracted E. coli from water in the Smokies.

“There was no fat left on my body and my immune system was gone,” he says. “But I just kept going because I had to finish.”

Back to Reality

A lot of thru-hikers say the hardest thing about hiking the entire A.T. is getting back to the real world after it’s over. Suddenly, carefree life in the woods is replaced by schedules and bills. The goal for most is to try and implement some of that transcendental soul-searching into the daily grind. But Tricia Cartner says it’s not always easy.

“I thought it had changed me a lot, but when you get back home it turns back into rushing to get places and worrying about money,” she says. “On the trail I was in the best shape of my life and experiencing amazing views, and feeling like I was always accomplishing something. I was hoping that was the way I could stay, but now I am definitely worried about finding a job.”

Pissara has definitely changed. He says it took him almost six months to get readjusted, but when he did, he changed his course and started practicing public interest law. “I’ve turned into a bit of a hippy I guess.”

Masters believes his trail experience will help him as a parent (his first child is due later this year) and in his everyday work as a construction contractor.

“The trail is kind of like anything in life: you get out of it what you put into it, and takes a lot of hard work and dedication. When I’m having a really bad day I try to get out in the woods and get some of that energy back. Despite the stress of the real world, some of the trail magic always stays with you.”