Hiking the Appalachian Train - 2015

Bill Sauber, Rotarian from the Sebastopol Sunrise Club, gave a presentation on hiking the Appalachian Trail.

 

Bill is an avid athlete and has completed hiking the entire 2100 miles of the Appalachian Trail starting in February 2015 and ending in August, 2015. He did this with his son Pete, who had a lifelong desire to take this hike. Bill has been a very active athlete all his life, being a runner for over 40 years and has participated in hundreds of road races, several marathons and a few triathlons.

 

The hike started in North Carolina in early February 2015 and concluded in Maine in mid-August, 2015. The total distance was over 2100 miles and included over 510,000 vertical feet of climb.

 

Proper equipment is a necessity for such an undertaking including a properly fitted backpack that rests the weight on one's hips, rather than on one's shoulders. In fact, Bill purchased a new backpack roughly 1/3 of the way into his trip, which made a huge difference. Trekking poles, antiskid clamps for his boots, silk sleeping bag liners, and Tyvek sleeping bag covers were all essentials. Overall they travelled between 15 and 25 miles a day, sometimes hiking well into darkness.

 

Along the way they did a great deal of foraging to add a little zest and spice to their diet. They ate wild onions and a multitude of berries including wild blueberries, tea berries, blackberries and mulberries. A particularly interesting form of food was rock tripe, a form of leathery algae that grows on rocks. They ate mushrooms, including chicken of the woods, morels and chanterelles.

 

They met people from every state in the union and from several foreign countries, particularly as they got on the northern part of the trail. They reported that roughly 25% of the hikers who start the trail at one and completed. It typically takes between five and six months to complete the trek.

 

He enjoyed the trip, but when asked if he would do it again the answer is no. It was a wonderful opportunity for him to reconnect with his son, who was in his early 40s. You really get to know a person when you spend nearly 6 months with that person hiking 15 or 25 miles a day and sharing your meals in the evening.

 

It was nice to have our own Bill Bryson speak to us about his walk in the woods