Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

Tom Kennedy hasn't been a hiker all his life; indeed, he came to it relatively recently. He has found a way to foster his love of hiking and hikers by raising money for those suffering from mental health issues. When he discovered the various trails of America he took on the Florida Trail, completing the whole thing other than 20 miles south of Miami. As he says, he spent WAAAY too much time slogg...

Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a daunting undertaking for people with no medical issues. For those who rely upon their medication, the AT can be logistically challenging. Cathryn Pugh didn't let that get in the way once she decided to do a thru-hike in 2017. Her sunny disposition and can-do attitude are inspiring–even to the extent of convincing somebody else to tackle the trail next year. We'll...

There are many reasons to want to hike the Appalachian Trail. Few have the history of the trail literally in their blood in the way that Kim Shaffer does. The family have all been hikers and Kim harboured the desire for a thru-hike years ago. The fact that her Great Uncle was the first EVER thru-hiker of the AT, added to that desire. She started her Flip-Flop (or OBO) at Penn Mar Park to avoid the...

Anna Jones wrote to me a few months back to thank me for the various shows and our guests. Anna and Branden were planning a flip-flop, starting in May, so I asked her if they would like to be interviewed for the show once they had 500 miles under their feet. They are now in Vermont, getting ready for the AT's biggest and, in my opinion, best challenges–New Hampshire and Maine. Our interview was a...

Mike Piatt is a LASH, which is an acronym that Mike will explain in the show. He is shortly to complete his third full thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, done in 500-1000 mile sections over the years. He is a very sociable guy, relishing his encounters with a wide variety of hikers and tells many stories of his adventures over the years. He doesn't look like he intends to slow down anytime soon....

George Andrews has a deep love of hikers and hiking so, when he retired, he wanted to involve himself in the community. He had always been keen to keep the weight of his pack and everything in it as low as possible, so this led him to start a company in that field, AntiGravityGear. He refers to himself as a "tinkerer," teaching himself to sew and make gear for hikers since 2003. He has spent time...

Buddy Wier is something of a late bloomer. He became interested in hiking after his retirement, accumulating gear though not immediately getting out to hike. He had always been a traveler and soon combined his love of travel with the various opportunities that arose to hike. Having traveled extensively and hiking when and where he could, Buddy was inspired to hike the AT when he heard the inspirat...

Linnea Van Manen struggled with Lyme Disease as a young girl and felt the effects through her teens. Lyme manifested itself by intense bouts of bursitis in her knees, so much so that a year before heading out to the Appalachian Trail for a solo thru-hike, Linnea was confined to a wheelchair for some of the time. She was a flip-flopper (or OBOer) and spread her hike over an eleven month period with...

Kayla McCarthy, her father, and her mother set out to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014. Only Kayla and her mother reached Katahdin as her father injured himself and had to leave the trail. As Kayla told her story I was struck by how much the dynamic of their hike had to change, with Kayla stepping up into a partnership with her mother, as opposed to being the daughter of a couple. The trail thro...

This week's guest, Tom Healy, is somebody who I hiked around for a while in 2014. He seemed so comfortable out in the woods that I assumed that he had been a lifetime hiker. It turns out that, like me, this was his first long-distance hike. Since he completed the Appalachian Trail, Tom has spent more and more of his life hiking longer trails and regards it as his lifestyle. As we spoke in this int...

This week, Eli Best tells me about the journey she took on the Camino De Santiago back in 2004. She had suffered a heart attack and organ failure several years before and the Camino was her way of testing herself in a life that had almost been written off. She shared the journey with an old friend of Steve's. Colin Bowles had moved to Australia as a teenager and found fame as an author while there...

Spencer Leebolt and Blaike Bateman have almost reached the halfway mark on the Appalachian Trail. Spencer is Blaike's stepfather and, although he had originally intended to hike the trail on his own, he took the opportunity to introduce Blaike to the trail for the adventure of his (early) lifetime. Blaike is just 14 years old. Steve found them to be very much a team, with each having the other's b...

For a hiking show, Devan Horn wouldn't normally belong. Yet this extraordinary woman, a long-distance runner and rider, chose to hike the Colorado Trail while her party of five other women did it on horseback. She was able to draw distinctions and comparisons between the two modes of transport and provides great insights. She also took part in two Mongol Derbys , with a third coming this year. Cli...

A member of the Class of 2018, Art Donovan is fulfilling a dream that his mother had 50 years ago. With retirement came the desire to cross the AT off his bucket list, honoring both his mother and assisting her plight by raising funds for Alzheimer's Disease. He's even found the time to leave the trail to become an American Citizen. Art has had quite the adventure so far, sharing time with one of...

This weekend, April 28 and 29, the Flip Flop Festival will be held in the adjoining towns of Harpers Ferry and Bolivar, partly to celebrate the beginning of the outdoor season in Harpers Ferry but, more significantly, it is actively promoting flip-flop hikes as a viable, responsible approach to hiking the Appalachian Trail. James Smyle earned the name of Mayhem when he did his first thru-hike, bac...

Mike Carbonneau loves to play music on the trail. He is a section hiker who fell in love with hiking in his 50s. Since then, he has been taking on large sections as he makes his way towards a completion of the Appalachian Trail. He has combined this love of hiking with a love of music, organizing several trips to the trail with a group of like-minded young musicians. Mike usually uses a strumstick...

Daniel White is something of a rarity on the Appalachian Trail. Black people are unrepresented on hiking trails and Daniel provides us with, perhaps, some of the unhappy reasons for that underrepresentation. He hiked in 2017 and found the trail to be an unexpected source of love and light. Daniel and Steve discuss what it feels like for a young black man to "go into the woods" and Daniel has a few...

With so many future histories being made right now on the Appalachian Trail, Ben Montgomery brings us the story behind the story of Grandma Gatewood. Ben is a former Pulitzer Prize finalist and transitioned from journalist to writer when he discovered the tale of Grandma Gatewood. That she happened to be a distant relative didn't hurt his case. Ben and Steve discuss her life and hike in their conv...

Juan Durer has certainly earned his trail name. Once he had decided that living for now was far better than waiting for retirement, he has been a man on a mission. He hikes then moves on to the next hike. When Steve caught up with him, he was just two miles into another long-distance hike. He is rational, indeed intentional, with the life he is leading and his laugh comes easily and is contagious....

For Maria Wishart, hiking the Appalachian Trail became part of her life and, when she could no longer drive the distances required to get her AT "fix," her solution was to move to a more convenient spot on the trail. Maria and her husband had shared most of those hiking miles but after the move, her husband was constrained by work, so Maria started hiking on her own. But Maria's story is much more...

Curt Ebert was the pastor in his local church when the call came to hike the Appalachian Trail. The remarkable circumstances surrounding that call are introduced in this conversation with Steve. Curt had little hiking experience and, though they were a family who enjoyed the open air and had gone on day hikes on the Appalachian Trail, his decision was, for many reasons, somewhat unusual. Curt's wi...

Bill King has had his mind on an Appalachian Trail thru-hike since he listened to a presentation from another thru-hiker. He is a retired school teacher and has found the inspiration to start his flip flop hike in April 2018. Despite a diagnosis of neuropathy in his feet, Bill has simply battled through the pain, taken the appropriate medication and kept moving forward. Bill has an abiding love of...

Laurie Potteiger came to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to help them out prior to her attempted thru-hike in the 1980s. When her hike was over, Laurie returned to the ATC and found her passion–twice. She not only started a career there, she also found her husband! Laurie's quiet intelligence shines through in this conversation, with her extensive knowledge of the trail and its protocols informi...

Anna Huthmaker was one of my more surprising guests. Her story is inspirational on many levels, not least that she took to hiking when substantially overweight or, as she preferred to term it, "curvy." Her self-discovery on this journey enabled her to see herself in a different light and she felt compelled to share her experiences with others who may have been similarly reticent. Forming Trail Dam...

Jack Jones flip-flopped the Appalachian Trail in 2016, sharing part of his time with two previous guests, Kelly Anderson and Edwin Thullen. He found the physicality of the trail to be relatively easy and, with his military training, he carried a very heavy pack. Here he is in Virginia, with the spectacular view from Dragon's Tooth behind him.  His journey to the trail came via adoption from China...