It’s been 10 years since we spiraled down the rabbit hole of long distance hiking. The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) proved to be infectious. Since then we’ve embarked on quite a few lengthy walking adventures. It is now time to fire back up the long distance hiking legs and finish the last leg of what is called the Triple Crown of hiking. Having completed the PCT in 2014, the CDT in 2021, we are now set to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (AT) this summer in a flip-flop fashion.

Since finishing the CDT in 2021, we’ve been pretty busy. We’ve (Dee and friends actually) have taken several “short” backpacking trips, our son got married, and we started a seasonal hiker business in 2022 (PCT Southern Terminus Shuttle) that has allowed us to keep our finger on the pulse of the thru-hiking world. In 2023 we had intended to hike the AT SOBO after our PCT Shuttle season (March – May), but a plethora of catastrophic events and reasons created a “failure to launch”. As of this writing, we are finally set to leave for the east coast, and begin this long awaited adventure.

I have not decided as to whether I’ll post daily or weekly. I suspect it will be weekly for the blog and daily for Instagram posts and stories…so stay tuned. (If you don’t already follow our Instagram, it’s @2moremilesadventures .

As we are several weeks behind in our training for this trail, we are going to do our best to adhere to our own advice, as to beginning mileage. Hence, the flip-flop as opposed to a straight SOBO from Katahdin. We are hoping by starting in Pawling New York and heading north, our true hiker legs will have arrived by the time we ascend Katahdin. After which, we should be able to push the daily miles in order to finish at Springer Mountain, Georgia, by November. We’ll see. We do however have excellent incentive, in the fact that we have our first grand baby to get back to. She should be “on the move” by the time we get back…just in time for the holidays.

As this will be our first time hiking east of the Rocky Mountains, we hear we’ve got some tough terrain ahead of us, in that the AT is devoid of switchbacks. The footing will be challenging. They have more than one kind of poisonous snake to be wary of. Numerous biting bugs, to include ticks (of which we have mitigated agaist with permethrin). Black bears who want our food, and a literal angry bird, that will attack us if we happen to traverse that section of trail during their nesting season. While it may be the “shortest” (2190 miles) of the Triple Crown of hiking, it may be the hardest.

Wish us luck!