With the holiday weeks close at hand, Alex just getting back from some work travel, and Casey getting over a three week sickness, we thought it about time for an update. This post will focus on the day-to-day planning for the hike.
In order to help with the day-today AT plan, we’ve been using the 2015 A.T. Guide Northbound by David Miller (AKA AWOL). It’s a fantastic mile-by-mile guide that include all the information you could ever want when planning a thru-hike. It includes mileages between water sources, shelters, and towns, mail-drop info, and resupply info.
Being an engineer, I used an Excel spreadsheet to do our day-to-day plan. I focused on keeping a reasonable number of miles per day, based on an average hiking speed of 2.5 miles per hour (what we usually average when we’re backpacking), and taking into account the elevation changes for each day. I also added in some zero days, and tried to time stops in towns for resupply and rest. Here’s the stats for our day-to-day plan:
- Total Miles: 2196.9
- Average Daily Miles: 14
- Average daily hiking time: 6.4 hours (based on 2.5 mph pace)
- Total Planned Zero Days (no miles hiked): 19
- Total Days: 158
After doing this detailed planning, we’ve picked a start date for our Appalachian Trail through hike of March 28. Based on this, we anticipate finishing the hike a little after labor day, barring any injuries or extended stops. Of course, our detailed day-to-day plan is really just a guideline to help us plan out meet-ups with family and friends along the way. Our general month by-month locations should be as follows:
- March-Georgia
- April- North Carolina and Tennessee
- May- Virginia
- June- Maryland and Pennsylvania
- July- New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont
- August- New Hampshire and Beginning of Maine
- September- Finish up Maine
Again, this is a general plan, and we’re giving ourselves plenty of extra time in case of injury, bad weather, or even to just spend an extra day or two in a town that we like.
Very excited for you.