On the trail we are pushing ourselves everyday. When we first start to head north from Springer Mountain a long day may be 10 miles or so. It took pretty much all day to do the ten miles and you are sore and tired at the end of each day. However, that ten miles slowly becomes 12, and then 15. The longest day I have done so far is 23 miles with my pack and 26 without it (slack packing). It amazes me to think that I can walk that far in a day while going up and down mountains.

We also take days off, zeros as we call them because they are days we walked zero trail miles. These zeros are frequent in the beginning. One every five days or so. But as we move north, and the desire to cover more ground increases, we take less time off…