Hiking the Appalachian

Couple revisits their memorable 2,147-mile trek

By Bill Vossler

Other than Linda breaking her arm, and John stepping on Linda’s glasses, the Pecks, of Rockville, said they would have done nothing different on their 141-day trek over 2,147 miles of the Appalachian Trail, starting in March, 1993.

Walking the trail came about in two ways.

“We grew up out east, so were well aware of the Appalachian Trail,” John said. “And we’ve always walked a lot, and enjoyed backpacking.”

“As we got closer to walking the trail, we ran up and down a long stairway at St. Cloud State University.” said Linda. “That was good preparation.”

Plus, walking the trail every day prepared them for walking the trail further on.

“From the starting point at Springer Mountain in Georgia, the walking gets harder as we go north,” she said. “which helped us deal with the more difficult sections that came up later.”

A blizzard in Georgia with two feet of snow caused them to hike backwards the first day, he said.

“We hiked three miles south, and then 10 miles north on the official trail. We hiked in snow off and on for a month. That was discouraging, but no matter what happened, we never wanted to give up. Every day was a new adventure, and a great time.”

Every walker gets a trail name, John said.

“We chose Toe for Linda, who was always ahead, and Heel for me, usually behind. Anybody between us we called them ‘Instep,’” he laughed.

If walkers didn’t choose a trail name, they got one put on them.

“One guy was ‘Cyclops’ because of what he wrapped around his head, another ‘Chainsaw’ due to his snores, another ‘Sneakers,’ because he hiked in sneakers. A brother and sister were ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ and a married couple was ‘Mr. and Mrs. Going Home.’ A lot of fun names.”

Pecks wore hiking boots, socks, and layers, Linda said.

“A t-shirt, vest, flannel shirt, and raincoat. We traveled light.”

John said he had to buy boots twice.

“They got worn out during the 2,147 miles we walked. Two weeks in, I also bought a better raincoat.”

Linda washed things as they got dirty.

“We used water from a brook, for example. Things were often wet in the mornings, and if it rained a lot, we had to put on wet boots and wet socks to get going.”

“We walked pretty steadily,“ Linda said. “Some younger hikers walked fast so they could visit some of the towns and get beer, and they ended up with blisters. We saw how horrible some of the kids’ feet were and didn’t want to be like that.”

Linda said changing something on one’s feet helped avoid blisters.

“When our feet got too warm, we changed socks from one foot to the other. We loosened our boots, or changed into sneakers for a while. Just changed something when problems were starting to appear. That worked. We had to be careful, and think about things, and not be stupid about them. We were very lucky.”

Though they walked carefully, “The trek was still hard on our feet. We never used the moleskin we had,” John said.

John said a few hikers had dogs.

“I pitied them. Most people don’t realize a few dogs die hiking the trail, because it’s just  too much work for them. It’s not kind to the dog.”

Linda enjoyed meeting some Amish.

“The boys had straw hats and the men had their beards, and they were very friendly. They were surprised a woman was hiking the trail.”

Some parts of their long trip proved dangerous.

“Going up Mt. Rogers in Virginia,” John said, “the weather changed suddenly from nice shorts weather to real cold. We started to have hypothermia. Our hands no longer worked properly.

We had trouble untying our shoes, getting our shorts off, and getting long pants on. We finally reached a recently-built shelter, and we put up our tent inside the shelter. We were hypothermic by this time, and it was lucky no one was hurt.”

Another scary time was on top of a bald mountain.

“It had nothing but grasses and bushes,” John said, “and it started storming.”

“It was raining hard, and the markers that showed the trail sank into the ground and moved in the wind, so we didn’t know where the trail really was. We finally crossed the bald and were happy to be in the woods again,” Linda added.

Another dangerous time occurred on a mountain when rain froze, followed by snow.

“Rocks lined both sides of the sloping path, with ice under the snow. I could feel I was going to fall,” Linda said. “You’re told to fall on your pack, which isn’t natural, but it’s natural to put your arms out, which I did, and rammed my left arm on a granite rock. I knew it was broken.”

At first Linda worried more about hypothermia than the broken arm.

“But the arm had to be taken care of at a hospital, so we hiked out to a highway, and some people from the Netherlands stopped and took us to the hospital in Elizabethton, Tenn. on this Friday. Unfortunately, no doctor was available until Monday.”

They watched TV at a local hotel.

“We watched Smothers Brothers reruns until we got sick of them. Monday at the hospital they found I’d broken my wrist, and a forearm bone. The cast they put on me allowed my hand to be free so I could work with a pack. I was told to have the cast taken off in six weeks.”

Another time on a bald area on Mount Washington they got caught in heavy fog.

“We could hardly see,” Linda said. “We were wearing only shorts and t-shirts, and luckily we bumped into the door of a hut. That was very scary.”

But the trail also provided many joyful times. One morning in Virginia a school bus with kids stopped near an old school.

“The kids were set to go to school like in olden times, boys with lunch pails, girls with hats. They asked us to join them, and we did,” Linda said. “The teacher had attended that school, but couldn’t go until her brother was old enough to protect her on the way there. Before we ate, we had to wash our hands in water the boys brought from a nearby creek. Afterwards, the girls played in the rocky area and the boys in the grassy area. If opposite, in the old days the boys would have thrown rocks at each other. We lucked out there, like we did at other events on the trail.”

Linda said every day after they got their tent set up, “I held a little flashlight between my teeth, and wrote what we had done that day. At the next post office, I sent it to my mother, who collected all of them for me. I also did some drawings.”

Fun was a big part of their trip.

“One time John got ahead of me,” Linda said, “and I was trying to catch up with him. I started across this bridge and discovered a troll under it, who yelled, ‘Who‘s going over my boardwalk?’ I said, ‘I’m Billy Goat Gruff, crossing the bridge.’ We did little things like that that added to the fun of the trip.”

Another fun and interesting experience was Graymoor Monastery.

“In the Hudson River Valley the monks took in hikers and fed them, for a donation,” John said. “They have the death mask of St. Francis of Assisi. One monk was a host for hikers. We ate breakfast with the monks. Then we each got to sleep in our own monk’s cell.”

Another fun time included the entire trek, as the Pecks listed all the plants they saw.

“Every day,” John said, “we saw several new ones. Doing green stuff enriched our hike. Near Parisberg, Va., an area was carpeted with spring flowers. That was neat.”

John noted that some started out naïve.

“They want to live off the land, eating mushrooms and ferns. But that doesn’t work.”

“The main food plant was blueberries,” Linda added, “but by the time they were ripe, we were near the end of the trail.”

Would-be-hikers should get a data book for the trail.

“We had the A. T. Guide. Not very big, and it tells you the distances from one point to the next, where there might be water or not, how long to get to a town to buy water and groceries. That is worth having.”

The Pecks procured water in several ways.

“Sometimes from puddles, or water dripping off a rock,” Linda said. “We used iodine as a disinfectant before we drank it. We also carried a quart with us. For food, we supported the businesses in the local towns, the ethical thing to do. I would highly recommend doing that.”

They supported bed and breakfast homes too. 

“Sometimes we slept in a tent, or a hut, and once in a jail. A couple of times, motels,” Linda said. “We were very happy to get out of bad weather and get a nice warm shower.”

“In those ways we met the local people and they were very nice,” John added. “Sometimes if you got off the track, somebody would come along and say, ‘I’ll take you back to the trail for $5,’ so you end up helping them too.”

For the entire trip, the Pecks averaged 15.2 miles per day, Linda said.

“The longest was 24 or 26 miles one day.”

Meeting other people was always a joy, John said.“You’d go to these all-you-can-eat restaurants, which I enjoyed the most. It was fun meeting new people there, and at some of the campsites. I remember a campsite in  Pennsylvania overlooking a ridge, where you could see farms down in the valley. I was happy I didn’t sleepwalk. It was very scenic, and I remember it quite distinctly.”

At Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts, “We we were able to stay in exchange for doing some work, like washing dishes and stuff like that. At sunset a group of bagpipers came over the hill wearing kilts,” John said.

“That only happens one day of the week, so we struck it just right. A woman had art classes with little kids painting. Just unbelievable to watch them,” Linda said.

John said at the beginning of the trail, hikers sign a registry.

“When they check how many made the entire trip to Maine, it’s only 10 percent. Linda was the first woman to make it the entire way during that time.”

John said not many people walk the entire trail at one time. 

“Some people walk for two or three weeks, and then return a year or two later, and do more. I don’t think that would be as much fun.”

Linda said she enjoyed the Appalachian Trail so much.

“The environment is beautiful. There are different transitions, so I recorded in my journal where the elevation changed, the insects and plants we saw, and information like that. I am so thankful and appreciate all the work the volunteers have done.”

“There was always so much to see,” John added. “We went through a huge diversity of different nature sites on the 2,147 miles.”