It will take you almost 5 months and around 5 million steps to walk this trail from end to end. The Appalachian Trail in USA was completed on 14th of august 1937 and it got no press attention at that time. It is the biggest volunteer-run undertaking on the planet and it is amongst the longest trails in the world.
THE SHORT REVIEW OF THIS BOOK
The first person that hiked this trail from end to end in a single summer with no tent and only using a roadmap was Earl V. Shaffer in 1948. It took him 123 days, so he walked an average of 17 miles/day (27.35/day).
This book written by Bill Bryson called A walk in the woods.Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a hilarious travel memoir. I admit that this can be the book that will either make you admire the hiking hobby or completely fear it. It is about the ultimate fail of two friends who really wanted to do this trail. They succeed and fail miserably in the same time. It is very easy to sit, read and laugh with the book in my hand, but I admit that maybe if I were them, I could have been the one suffering and giving up. Only the danger of being murdered in these forests ( we are in USA, so crime is as normal as getting bubble gum from a shop) can be enough to scare anyone away.
The Appalachian trail goes from Georgia to Maine and it is covering 2.100 miles/ 3379.62 km. You think that hiking it in 123 days was awesome… let me tell you that in 1980 there was another man War Leonard who managed to break the world record and hike this in 60 days and 16 hours.
Bill wanted to do this hike alone but as the days went by he realized he wanted someone to come with him. Stephen Katz, a friend he hasn’t spoken with in 20 years rises to the challenge after Bill has sent requests to multiple individuals. Fat, out of shape and craving for doughnuts, this man proves to be a tough companion. They give up repeatedly and the hiking journey becomes more of a hilarious fail and a delicious humorous literary cake that is a pleasure for the eyes to read.
Stories about mountains, animals, plants, murders and fails that happened along the Appalachian Trail are the spice of the book. Every 20 minutes spent walking on this trail is more than the average american will walk in a week.
Amazing history facts told by Bill will spark your imagination. In Centralia, a deserted town, there was a big fire that lasted for decades because of the huge coal deposits under it. There is enough coal under Centralia to burn for 1000 years. When the mining industry in Pennsylvania began people were stoked about discovering anthracite (a material which is very hard to lit yet impossible to put out) and because of a human error in Leligh a fire was started and it burned itself out for 80 years. The town became deserted, like a no man’s land.
The maps you will find for this trail are useless and pretty much confusing. Some of the shelters along the road are infested with rats. Stephen and Bill even went on a killing spree in one of the shelters where rats were everywhere.
I enjoyed a lot the part about the Smoky Mountains and the extreme variety of plants one can find in here. This spot in the USA has 130 native species of trees while the entire Europe has only 85. To have so much variety on a single mountain is amazing. This mountain also has 25 varieties of salamander, more than anywhere else on Earth. 101 miles (163 km) of the Appalachian Trail are also in the Shenandoah National Park, a place where the you have the highest density of black bears in the world.
If you want to do this hike prepare for strong winds in some areas. In Mount Washington there was a world record when it comes to speed recorded on 12th of April, 1934, showing a staggering speed of 231 miles/hour (371.75 km/h).
The book ends in a hilarious way : the two guys give up and ask for help. So this is not the typical “This is Sparta, I will conquer this mountain” kind of a story. Nevertheless I think that one can learn a lot from the hiking experience of two highly unexperienced men. This book is also about the way a hike can transform you spiritually and make you ponder about life. It is also about friendship and about testing your own limits. You never know how strong you can be until being strong is your only option.
The audio version of this article:
THE LONG REVIEW OF THIS BOOK, AN IN DEPTH ANALYSIS:
TheWriter 