Flash Forward One Year

August 6, 2015 / jim fetig / 13 Comments

Aug. 6, 2014. I took summit photos in two different shirts.

Home Sweet Home, August 6, 2015 — I wasn’t going to write a one-year-retrospective. Most of them are boring and trite. As I have often said, being a successful thru-hiker doesn’t make you special. It only means that you were fortunate enough to have a special experience.

Okay, so what happens when it’s over? You go home and then what? Post hike depression is well documented. Of course, I thought it could not happen to me.

When your hike is over, if you’re lucky, you have to get back to work. That’s true for most hikers. If you have something lined up – say going to grad school – you’ve got it made. But even if you have to job search, you’ve got a defined focus for your time and a purpose to pursue.

If you’re retired, that’s another story. Recently retired people are the second largest, albeit, small category of thru hikers. A lot of them shut the door to their offices and open the front door to the AT with little transition time. I met a hiker in Georgia this year whose time lapse was four days!

I prepared for ten months, but it’s almost the same. I’d done nothing to prepare for retirement itself other than to know that I’d have to “keep busy.”

Boom! The hike ends. You take a victory lap. The the crowds stop clapping. For months on end you’ve had a routine. Wake up, eat and hike. Following the white blazes was my job. Where is the next white blaze?

Aside from the daily trail routine, hiking is heavy exercise that bathes your brain in a heavy flow of endorphins all day long. Like distance running, the craving doesn’t stop when you end your journey.

Endorphins act like opiates. These chemicals, manufactured by your body, make you feel really good. When they go away, the funk can get very deep indeed.

I thought that returning to a strenuous exercise routine and increasing my volunteer activities would help me avoid endorphin withdrawal and the mental depression that goes with it. NOT SO!

I did all these things, but in between, I sat in my easy chair and stared out the window or zoned out with ESPN on the idiot box. My reading habit evaporated. In the past year I have completed exactly one book; that compares to my 3 to 4 per month lifetime average. My motivation meter was pegged at zero.

There’s more. My weight began to creep up. I did switch back to healthy foods from the ultra high calorie trail junk, but I ate a lot and drank more beer. I’ve regained about 75 percent of my lost weight.

After my voluntary stint as a ridgerunner in Georgia this spring, my mind began to get a grip. Maybe returning to the scene of the crime helped.

I remembered why I retired in the first place. My retirement routine couldn’t replace my previous career as an adrenalin junkie. The 60-hour plus work weeks needed to be left to history. The new normal needed to be new.

Now my volunteer time is structured around specific goals. I’ve found opportunities with much more responsibility – to the point where I supervise five paid employees in one of the gigs. Best of all, I’m beginning to have a lot of fun.

For now, one year after my hike, retirement has become a never-ending process. I’m contemplating more hiking adventures, but I’ll tackle them differently. For example, I’d love to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. (“Wild” by Cheryl Strayed is set there.) But if I do, it will be over three years in sections rather than all at once.

If I learned one take-away from hiking the Appalachian Tail it is that thru hiking takes a long time. While I loved my hike and would do it again, I got tired of being out there “forever.” Moreover, making “forever” so is not a reasonable expectation.

Looking ahead, I’m hoping to better use my time because at this stage of life, you truly have to do more with less.

Post card I sent to those who helped along the way.

One of the best parts of my final day on the trail was to share it with my friend Karen (Tie) Edwards.

Here’s a link to a one of several videos I’ve made in support of speeches I’ve made this past year.

https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D3624411_94596663_12582

A Romp in the Woods?

July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 / jim fetig / 16 Comments

Harpers Ferry, WV, July 7, 2015 — I was privileged to see a sneak preview of “A Walk in the Woods,” a knockabout comedy staring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. The show opens in 1,800 theaters on Sept. 2.

Redford. Slapstick. No way!!! Indeed, it’s true. The movie was a delightful midnight snack adding a light touch to Redford’s rich acting career. If you recall, Redford and Paul Newman always had a comedic touch.

To my delight, the humor was practically nonstop. The jokes kept coming. Anyone would get them, but there was enough hiker and AT double entandre to evoke knowing nods and smiles from the audience.

From a potty trowel Christmas ornament available on line at www.appalachiantrail.com

Potty trowel Christmas ornaments are available on line at http://www.appalachiantrail.com

Potty humor on the trail isn’t new and this movie doesn’t disappoint. The ubiquitous and sometimes maligned potty trowel makes more than a cameo appearance.

Redford with toilet paper in hand may have been added for shock value, but more likely, the potty trowel scenes are subliminal Leave No Trace messages using a subject not much discussed in polite, read the non-hiking, society.

Yup. Bears aren’t the only ones who do it in the woods and wanna be’s need to know that and prepare to pull their pants down around that and other deeply personal subjects in advance.

To recap for the unfamiliar, author Bill Bryson penned a best-seller in the late 1990s entitled, A Walk in the Woods. It was a semi-fictional and somewhat autobiographical story based on chunks of the Appalachian Trail that Bryson sampled in preparation to write his story. His sidekick, Steven Katz – played by Nolte in the movie – is the foil and comedic counterpoint as their adventures unfold.

This New York Times best seller is credited with driving up the number of AT thru hike attempts by logarithmic factors since.

The screenplay differs a fair amount from Bryson’s original story, but the essence is there. Two old comrades with diametrically opposite personalities reunite after decades of estrangement for one last adventure.

Neither this film, nor the recent movie “Wild” (based on Cheryl Strayed’s best selling memoir) are about hiking per se. In each, hiking is the means to the end. In this case, Bryson confronts career burnout and the remedy is a romp in the woods with his old buddy Katz. Our treat is to go along for the ride and enjoy the laughs.

Kristen Schaal.

The cast is fantastic, especially Longmont, Colorado’s own Kristen Schaal who is brilliant. Her character plays off a classic AT stereotype and the reappearance of her character could have been a hilarious punctuation point near the end of the movie when Bryson and Katz have to be rescued. In stead, the dynamic duo are saved by other stereotypes they first hate but come to love. In reality, it doesn’t happen that way on the AT. No spoiler alert here.

As with any movie about subjects we know intimately and love dearly, this movie has its share of nits to pick and quibble about. Among them, in the movie: Gooch Gap comes after Neels Gap. McAfee Knob appears after Shenandoah National Park. The duo has trekking poles strapped to their obviously empty packs, but never use them. The social aspects of the AT experience are mostly AWOL. The bears that steal Bryson and Katz’s food are grizzlies, not black bears. (We know bears will do almost anything for food, but hitchhike from Montana? That’s a bit much.) Much of the movie was not shot on the AT. That’s dramatic license. So what?

The $64 dollar question is how “A Walk in the Woods” will affect the number of hikers in the future. History is clear. Major media events drive numbers up.

Given that most Millennials barely know who Redford and Nolte are, it may not have much effect on that demographic. Large numbers of Boomers, on the other hand, missed out when they were in their 20s. Like me, they had to wait until retirement to find the time. Could be that this will remind them to get off the bench and out in the woods.

More likely, we may expect the number of weekenders and short-distance backpackers to increase along the trail. After all, Bryson himself didn’t hike the whole thing. For those without the where with all or inclination to thru hike, sampling chunks of the trail is a viable alternative.

Hordes of uninitiated hikers can have a disproportionate impact on the environment. That’s why the potty trowel metaphor is an effective vehicle to communicate the larger Leave No Trace message. It creates awareness and opens the door to a broader discussion of appropriate behavior and practices.

Viewers come to movies like this with a truck load of preconceptions. They’ve read the book, tramped around on the AT or other trails, and have their own inventory of intrepid experiences. Hikers want a hiking movie with which they can self-identify and reinforce the attributes of the hiking experience as they understand it.

In other words, hikers will tend to want a certain label and vintage of fine red wine, e.g. perfection. For some, this won’t that movie, and I’ll submit that there’ll never be one. So, this flick may not be what you hope for, but it will still make you laugh because if you haven’t been there and done that, at least you’ve seen it.

As a feature film, this treat is tasty, but definitely lo-cal. It never intended or tried to be an opulent double Dutch chocolate delight. In other words, here’s little to satiate the uncontrollable urge known as hiker hunger in “A Walk in the Woods” the movie, and unfortunately the lack of high caloric content may be unfulfilling to a few of the usual suspects out there in hiker land who never seem to be satisfied anyway.

By its end, “A Walk in the Woods” is a light comedy based on our favorite pass time with a sprig of deeply personal revitalization for the two main characters garnishing the end. They all lived happily ever after.

When you think about it, isn’t that a big chunk of why any of us lace ’em up and grab our trekking poles?

Walking in the Woods

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015 / jim fetig / 12 Comments

Kensington, MD, April 1, 2015 — Bill Bryson wrote a wonderfully humorous book entitled A Walk in the Woods almost 15 years ago. It is a story about two totally unprepared old pals attempting on a lark to thru hike the Appalachian Trail. When I read it, I thought it was humorous fiction. After ridgerunning in Georgia this March, I know it’s not. It is as true as true can be, and Bryson was an astute observer.

The movie of the same name, starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, will be out this summer. I can’t wait to see it, but I worry about those who do and then think they’re going to jump on the trail without a care in the world and hoof it up to Maine. Not that there aren’t plenty of folks hiking this way already. I just worry how many more of these unprepared innocents will join in the frolic over the next few years, and more importantly, what their impact will be on the trail and its environment.

This blog has noted the incredible number of clueless hikers observed last month as they attempted to foible themselves through Georgia. How anyone could jump into the woods having never set up a/their tent before, or show up with packs stuffed with so much that they can barely carry them – with all their gear still hermetically sealed in the original boxes – is beyond any level of sanity I can conceptualize.

How people can forget that the sun doesn’t always shine, that the days and nights are not always warm, and that rain or snow can be bitterly cold is beyond me. Misery does not love company on the trail.

Under the wrong weather conditions – cold rain sleet for example – you could become hypothermic and cease to exist or be seriously injured in the southern Appalachian spring. It’s happened recently.

Four components of success defined themselves as I observed both the prepared and unprepared go about their business. I thought a lot about them, comparing what I saw this March with my previous experience on the trail and elsewhere. Some may disagree with my priorities here they are anyway.

FITNESS. Being fit, especially cardio fitness, can cover a wide range of other deficits, particularly in older and female hikers. I couldn’t count the number of late middle age guys (mostly) who, for decades had been chained to their office desks until the week before they started, when they were suddenly paroled to pursue their retirement dreams on the AT. Too many of them went from zero to 60 and back zero in less than a week.

Guys, your high school sports days were close to 50 years ago! Take a year to get yourself in shape. Couch potato millennials fall into this same category. What did they think would happen when they rushed to Springer Mountain with little or no prep? That’s why about a third of hikers don’t make it past the first 30 miles.

As I hiked my patrol route, I’d watch the out of shape hikers sweat their way up hill chipping tiny step by tiny step up the trail, their wheezing breath hissing like dying steam engines suffering from leaky piston seals. Pure panic defined pallid faces as the harsh realization sunk in that they were in for more than they bargained. Their knees quivered under both the oppressive weight of their bodies and the clutter of unneeded gear strapped to their backs. Their fun meters were pegged at zero. So much for a walk in the woods.

Some folks are old school, but they’re in shape and prepared to go.

Being fit helps prevent common orthopedic injuries, not to mention that you can hump more weight on your back. Would anyone think that it might be smart to at least attempt lose some weight and/or get into shape before day one?

EXPERIENCE. Knowledge. Know-how. Call it what you will. Knowing how to live in the woods, and what to do if and when, can be priceless. Traditionally we might consider learning what’s in the Boy Scout Handbook a good starting point, and it is if you have an up to date copy, not the ancient one with which I grew up. Excellent information is available on line or in a range of recent how-to books. Then there’s the confidence born of having been spent a little practice time living outdoors.

Experience is the best teacher and makes for fewer goof-ups in the woods. AT hikers should know how to hike in the rain and stay dry, stay warm and above all, stay clean. How about pitching a tent in a storm so it won’t be flooded or blown down? How big a knife does one need, not want, but need? First aid anyone? What do you do if you tear your ACL or impale yourself on a protruding branch? You should know ’cause 911 response is several hours, if not a day or more away. Leave No Trace anyone?

How about them bears, anyway?

GEAR. You can buy your back weight down if you can afford it, but more folks are on tighter budgets than I would have thought. They simply can’t afford to equip themselves with hyper-light gear.

The reality is that most of us cannot afford a $600 – $800 Cuben fiber tent weighing mere ounces, much less the full boatload of gear made from this miraculous fabric – rain gear, food bag, pack, etc.

So, what do people do? A good set of lighter weight gear costs between $1,000 and $1,500 depending on how much of it you can buy on sale. This type of gear, with five days food and a liter of water, will get your total winter pack weight under 35 lbs. or less depending upon what you think you need to bring.

Properly fitting light weight and flexible boots or trail runners along with dry feet help prevent blisters, the scourge of any hiker.

Unfortunately even that much money is too much for many people. Their alternative is to buy heavy gear from Walmart or army surplus, either that or they repurpose older but much heavier gear from previous generations. They pack canned food because they cannot afford the lighter dehydrated meals. This route alone doesn’t deny success, it just makes everything harder.

Some hikers don’t know what to buy, even if they can afford it. That’s what produces the over sized 70 lb. packs stuffed with all sorts of useless trinkets.

Binoculars, camp chairs, bear bells, heavy stoves and stainless steel cooking pots, Carhart canvas jackets and other detritus is what finds itself strewn along the trail. Folks start sinking under the tremendous weight and desperately heave it overboard in hopes of staying afloat as did Bryson’s sidekick Katz in A Walk in the Woods. Remember: Are you on the AT to camp or to hike?

ATTITUDE. Like the Little Engine in the storybook, if you think you can, you can. Self-confidence and a bit of bravado can take you a long way. Yet, self-doubt racks too many hikers. The most common question is: “What have I gotten myself into?” That’s when I want to roll my eyes and intone “Duuuuuude! What were you thinking – that is if you were thinking at all?”

Positive attitude!

Being trail ready on day one is priceless. Showing up on the starting line fit, knowledgeable, properly equipped and confident isn’t a guarantee, but it gets you off to a great start.

Trail Ambassador

February 22, 2015 / jim fetig / 10 Comments

Role playing exercise

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, February 20, 2015 — I’ve spent the past week gettin’ ready for love. Oh, not THAT kind. I’ve been with a group of people training to assist hikers on the Appalachian Trail this year. We love the trail and the people who hike on it.

Our base camp is a modern style house from the late 50s or early 60s owned by the National Park Service. During the summer it is basecamp for the trail crews that work in the park.

Our mission is to educate hikers primarily on “Leave No Trace”™ principles, encourage them and help them in practical ways.

An estimated three million people walk at least some distance on the Appalachian Trail each year, so Leave No Trace is a big deal. The national scenic trails, of which the AT is only one albeit the most famous, are being “loved to death. The number of users continues to increase at a high rate. Therefore, the impact on the environment from human footsteps alone is enormous. Add their feces and urine, toothpaste, dishwater, dropped litter, abandoned gear, fires, animal disturbance and all the rest together and the sum is enormous.

Unfortunately, individual hikers fail to appreciate that their impact is additive to all the others. That’s why Leave No Trace is more than Pack it in. Pack it out. Hikers are expected to plan and prepare for everything they might encounter on their hike. Understanding how and where to camp prevents erosion and unsightly scars. Knowing how to dispose of human waste properly is critical to preventing water contamination and disease. Respecting wildlife, fellow hikers and campers, leaving what you find undisturbed and generally being considerate round it out.

Here I’m demonstrating how to hang a food bag in a way that is not tied to any tree. Bears have learned to break ropes tied off to trees and feast on what falls to the ground!

Human food kills bears. Once they become unafraid of humans, bears have to be trapped and moved, or worse, destroyed. They are magnificent animals. Being thoughtless has sad consequences. The AT-wide bear statistics weren’t encouraging. Bear territory is shrinking and the animals are only trying to find food.

Had a small bear encounter at the outfitter in Gatlinburg, TN.

During the week, the Forest Service taught us a lot about hiker/camper psychology and methods to be persuasive without confrontation. Nobody wants to hear that they are a screw-up. Above all, we learned to count small victories.

Then there’s the weather. Minus 23 at altitude in the Smokies! Holy frostbite Batman!!! My gear will get me to -15F at best with a miserable night. I’ve experienced and slept outside in -50F in Alaska and northern Minnesota. I can’t carry that kind of gear over these mountains. Best to stay in town when the weather forecast looks like this.

Today I drove to Hiawassee in north Georgia to visit a couple of hostels and assess trail and weather conditions. There weren’t that many hikers around. Several had been driven back to or into town by the subzero temperatures. They said the snow wasn’t a big deal, but that there were a lot of downed trees to impede progress.

Ridgerunners/trail ambassadors carry large pruning saws to attack blowdown up to about a foot in diameter. At a minimum, we can trim away the branches from a large trunk. The going will be slow next week. Can’t wait.

Tuesday the Georgia crew meets with the Forest Service and the local trail club for coordination. Let the games begin!

Dick’s Creek Gap today.

Same rock. Better weather!

Danger Will Robinson … and everybody else.

April 8, 2013 / jim fetig / 1 Comment

If you’ve been following the AT class of ’13, you know that the weather has been record-breaking cold and wickedly brutal. It’s also extremely dangerous to be out in those conditions, especially if you’re a rookie. Otto von Bismark’s aphorism seems to apply (with a twist). God protects drunks, fools and AT hikers.

As I’ve been doing my homework in preparation for next year’s hike, I’ve been stunned by how many profoundly unprepared people attempt to hike the AT – in winter! Whoa!! Winter hiking requires specialized skills and gear. Of particular concern is the number of people who worry about the weight of their pack in fear of being rediculed. It’s an AT cultural artifact that should be exterminated. Sure, knot heads show up carrying 50 lbs. and wonder why it’s hard and they fail. Conversely, account after account describes how the gram Nazis have intimidated people into carrying light weight but inadequately warm jackets and bags, or insufficiently insulated hammocks and bull-shit rain gear. Some have compounded this with zero winter camping experience, or in several cases, not hiking or camping experience whatsoever! Hello. Dead person walking. Too many zombie shows…

I hold two people from this year’s class in especially high regard for being candid, for their honesty, and for trying to educate others. They are Hobo and the misnamed Stupid. The latter definitely isn’t.

Stupid described how he got caught out in the ice when tree limbs began falling all around him like shrapnel from air-burst artillery. He recognized the immediate danger to his life and sought shelter under a fur tree with a low-slung and big wing span. He was safe for the duration.

Hobo put it in the larger context, and I’m going to paste in this entire post. It’s worth reading. I wrote back to him that even experts are but one bad decision from death in killing weather. The danger of hypothermia, frostbite and dehydration represented by conditions represented by driving rain at 34*F rapidly changing to single digit temps just after the sun sets is profound. I’ve experienced all of the aforementioned, so this is experience talking.

Here’s Hobo’s tutorial. Read and heed:

Hobo’s post Trail Journals.com April 5, 2013

“If you are a worrier (Mille) I would suggest you not read today’s journal entry . . . or you may just want to skip to the last paragraph.

I awoke at 5:00 and checked my shirts to see if dry, but they were still damp. I put them in my sleeping bag because its better to put on warm and damp clothes than cold and damp clothes.

The shelter had the usual snoring last night that Mallet has dubbed the Sore’chestra.

One person decided to return to Gatlinburg. Everything he had was wet and and he’s concerned about hypothermia . . . wise decision

It is still bitter cold and all the trees are covered with ice. It’s harsh but beautiful – a crystal forrest.

We got a late start because there were so many people trying to take down wet clothes from the lines we had strung in the shelter and packing up. Eventually Quaker, Trouble, Son Driven, and I hit the trail.

So, let me just say, this is very serious business out here and I don’t think it would be overly dramatic to say it is a matter of life and death. I didn’t want to post this until I talked to Anita so she would know that I’m ok.

When we were coming off Clingman’s Dome we met 2 guys who were just getting back on the trail after taking a hypothermic hiker down to where the park rangers could get to him. One of the guys had cuts next to his eye from his own fall.

Two days before I hiked Clingmans Dome there were two groups of hikers that had to be rescued and another who was having chest pain.

Several months ago they found a hiker in his early 50’s frozen to death at the shelter where I will stay tonight. The sad thing is he had all the right gear but became hypothermic and disoriented. They found him in shorts and a t-shirt beside his sleeping bag and warm gear. On March 22nd they had to airlift out a 23 yo with hypothermia from the same shelter.

Within the last week they rescued a hypothermic hiker with frostbite who will probably lose some of his fingers. They also brought horses up to carry out a hiker who fell and injured his leg.

So far, I have made wise decisions (like stopping after only 3 miles in the freezing rain), I have the right gear, and I always sleep in dry clothing. I have one set of clothing that I wear during the day, even if I have to put it on damp. I have long underwear top and bottom and a spare pair of socks that I NEVER wear during the day so that I always sleep dry. Nonetheless, I am constantly evaluating the conditions and my capabilities.

The trail conditions are still icy but somewhat better than yesterday. By 1:00 the sun began to peek thru the clouds and we were frequently showered with falling ice from the trees.

I hope you enjoy the picture with this entry because it nearly cost me my life. I told the group to go ahead while I took a picture. I also decided to pee since I was alone. I began to walk down the trail while I was putting my gloves back on and I was looking around (proof that I can’t do 3 things at once) when I tripped over something and went face first off the side of the mountain. I was on a narrow ridge that had a steep drop off and plunged about 10 ft before I could grab a tree. I heard a loud crack and my first thought was I had broken something. I did a quick inventory and all bones reported in as being intact. Then I thought I must have broken my poles but I found them lying beside me in one piece. As it turns out I feel on a limb that broke when it hit it.

Now I’m lying face down a mountain and my mind is racing. Should I take off my pack so I can face up hill? No, I quickly decided – I don’t want to lose my pack down the mountain unless I have no other choice. Eventually I was able to maneuver myself around and crawl back up to the trail. The beauty of this story is that I stood up and hadn’t walked more than 10 ft when Quaker appeared. My buddies were concerned about what was taking me so long and Quaker was designated to come back and check on me.

Thankfully the rest of the day was less eventful. We found a wonderful sunny spot for lunch on top of a mountain (see pic section).

Most of the day was spent hiking ridges above 5,000 ft. The most significant climbs were an unnamed mountain at 5,728 ft, Mt Sequoyah (5,941 ft), and Mt Chapman (6,249 ft).

I started to get cold and restless after lunch so I decided to strike out on my own knowing that I had a safety net behind me. After awhile Sun Driver caught up with me and we hiked the rest of the day near each other.

We reached Peck’ a Corner Shelter but decided to push on even though it was getting late. We wrote a note for Quaker and Trouble telling them we had pushed on and left it on the shelter sign post. We arrived about 6:30 at Tri-Corner Knob shelter. I was really happy when Quaker and Trouble rolled in about an hour later. Trouble said she had never see Quaker hike so fast.

Billy, a ridge runner, was in the shelter and I enjoyed talking to him.

This is a nice shelter with a new privy. Finding water sources is something you are constantly aware of and sometimes you have to hike down a steep trail to get it. This shelter had a water source about 20 ft from the shelter – yeah!

I went to bed excited about tomorrow. I will we going to lower elevations and the lowland forecast is for son with temperatures in the 70’s. I’m sooo ready!!!”

Not all those who wander are lost ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

A fork in the road

Yogi said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." So I'm following the white blazes.

danger

Flash Forward One Year

A Romp in the Woods?

Walking in the Woods

Trail Ambassador

Danger Will Robinson … and everybody else.