Well, almost all of them.
She did get horrible blisters and systemic poison ivy - which got nasty enough to turn into cellulitis - after her first week out and had to lay off a week then grab a ride to catch up to her group, so she technically has about eighty miles still to hike, but who's quibbling?
She speaks of the journey as one of the happiest times of her life, a time when she had no responsibilities other than to put one foot in front of the other and make sure she made it to her self-assigned checkpoint each night.
She wasn't totally alone on the Trail at all times, though. The AT creates an informal community of hikers each summer, a community that communicates with itself via hiking log books and messages passed by way of hikers along the trail. Initially, she set out with a group of three other women, none of whom she had ever met in person before the hike and three of whom actually finished the journey - though only two of them did so at the same pace. Each night, she was expected by her hiking companions, and had she not shown up, they would have hunted her down - or at least I hope they would have.
I mention all of this because I read a story in the Hamilton Journal News - the local paper - about Jerrod Bley who thru-hiked the AT this past summer, summitting Kathadin a scant four days before they close the Trail's northern terminus for the winter season. Along the way, he tried to fundraise in honor of his father who passed away from heart disease after suffering from kidney diseases all his life.
He and his hiking companion - who wasn't as successful in his trek - set up a website to track their progress and to which they planned to blog each week or so. They weren't as successful in the blogging bit, but they're close to being totally successful in their fundraising, so I'm going to drop a few bucks their way.
If you have a chance and a few spares in your pocket, do the same.
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