3/15/2024 0 Comments Take me a to a useless websiteBoots have some good qualities and they have their place in outdoor adventuring, but the prevailing wisdom of modern backpackers (and actual scientific research) in most three season trail situations leans well toward trail runners. I assume this came from a time where there weren’t a lot of footwear options and most people were wearing some sort of leather boot in everyday life anyway, so walking in the woods in them didn’t seem like much of a burden. Ya basic, Purple.įor many years, the chosen footwear of hikers were thick, leather boots. Well, if you read my intro post here at The Trek you know I am always middle of the road and, unsurprisingly, this means I’m hiking NOBO and starting in early April. Flip floppers are the true unicorns of AT thru hikers. An example is someone who starts in Harper’s Ferry (the unofficial halfway point of the AT) and hikes north to Katahdin only to return to Harper’s Ferry and finish going south to Springer. Flip flop hikers are those who do the trail any way other than from one end to another in a continuous direction. SOBOs (those going southbound on the trail) often start in June and cite the solitude from crowds as the main reason for starting in Maine and heading south. Maybe the only way to differentiate yourself in this pack is to choose a starting date with extreme variance, like the first of January or a crazy date like February 29th (2024 is a leap year). Traditional NOBOs (people going northbound on the trail – Georgia to Maine) are a dime a dozen amongst AT thru hikers, commonly starting in March or April. When and where a person starts their thru hike immediately signals to other hikers something about them. In that spirit, I’d like to share with you some of the most commonly debated backpacking/AT topics and the choices I’ve made so you know how to categorize me! We do, it’s just usually exclusively over backpacking stuff. Oh, but that doesn’t mean we backpackers don’t judge each other at all. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s not going to be that one guy spouting off his ideologies at a shelter from time to time or that you and your tramily (trail family, people you end up hiking with on the regular) won’t get into some deep philosophical talks as you walk along, it’s just that overall the ‘judginess’ of the everyday world is lifted a bit when you’re in the backcountry. You know the big ones: political views, religious beliefs, whether or not you’re a ‘Swiftie’. There’s also an unspoken understanding to try and avoid casually discussing the things that often separate us in our everyday lives. People of different ages, from different cultures, with different experiences hang out with much more ease than than in the ‘real world’. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get up the same mountains, we all eat cheap ramen, and we all have to poo in a hole from time to time. The trail doesn’t care if you make a six figure salary, how much you can bench press in the gym, or how many letters you have after your name. One of THE BEST things about the AT (and similar long trails) for me is the egalitarian nature of trail culture.
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