Their expectations, in order to receive the certificate, 2,000-miler rocker bar, and publication of your name in AT Journeys the next year is that you make every good faith effort to hike by every white blaze.

ATC doesn’t care if you carry 50 lbs. or a fanny pack. Don’t care if you do it all the same year or over 30 years. Don’t care if you do it in geographic order. Don’t care if you slack pack or heavy pack. Just that you honor the trail they manage by doing all of it, on the honor system. Being a thru-hiker is fine, as is being a section hiker or weekend warrior, or dayhiker (tho the latter is nearly impossible to accomplish for a few parts of the AT).

ATC acknowledges and actively recommends exceptions for trail sections that are closed for safety or other reasons when you encounter those. Sometimes there are pre-defined alternative high water routes to bypass flooded streams. Likewise, alternatives to hiking exposed ridgelines during thunder and lightning. ATC wants AT hikers to be safe, and survive.

There is a kind of hierarchy on major trails that thru-hikers (however one defines that) are revered more than others. Fine, if one wants to buy into that. I’m glad ATC doesn’t. And also glad that some folks you meet every year at The Gathering who have 10,000 miles or more hiking the AT and other trails are humble enough to proclaim they don’t buy into it either.

Just be proud of your accomplishments, whatever they are, and have fun while doing it.

1. Set out to thru-hike. Got a horrible case of bronchitis and had to take a few days off.

2. In order to fit hiking into my remaining vacation time, I leapfrogged and did the other end of the trail, and went back to work

3. Over the winter, they moved the goalpost on me, so before I got started again, I did a loop including the 7 added miles as a day trip.

4. I started on the remaining middle section, and sprained a knee about 25 miles into a 40-mile roadless section. Managed to hobble the remaining 15 and went home. No hiking for at least six weeks, ordered the doc.

5. Finally managed to get back and finish on a 3-day weekend. Sent away for the patch.

6. A week after the patch arrived, they moved the goalpost on me again by cutting the ribbon on another new section. It would have bothered me not to have done it, so I hiked those twelve miles as another day trip.

All of these escapades were completed less than a year from the start date. Two of them requred resupply planning, and in fact my bailout points with the illness and the accident were my planned supply stops. On the other hand, I didn’t complete the trip in one calendar year, because I started in October!

So. did I thru-hike it? I don’t care. I hiked all of it, and got to see it in a variety of seasons, which was terrific. The club doesn’t care. The patch is for end-to-ending, not thru-hiking. The change it made in me was to change my thinking from ‘gee, I’d like to try thru-hiking someday’, to ‘gee, I’d like to try thru-hiking AGAIN someday and see if my luck will change.’

Egg-zactly. So, why do people spend so much time debating it? Or commenting on it? 😉

I just like going outside and going fast. I like going fast not because I’m pushing for a certain time or distance, but because I like the way it makes my body feel.

I’m squarely in the outdoor demographic. I’m 40, white, male, have multiple degrees, a job that pays pretty well, etc. but I’m also extremely not goal oriented, so I’m an outlier that way. I just want to be outside and enjoy it. Call it whatever you want. I just call it “fun.”