As a future thru-hiker, Lord willing, I am curious to know what section of the AT is the hardest. Most of my hiking has been limited to North Carolina above the Smokies, Eastern Tennessee, and Southwestern Virginia. Are the sections that I have hiked the easy or harder parts?
I have heard that the Whites are pretty tough seeing as how one never knows what kind of weather to encounter. I have seen pictures of Mt. Washington with 5 inches of snow June 1!
Trekking Trav
The beginning, ha! But seriously. The AT has two types of terrain: hard and less hard. Fortunately, as you hike, you will become hardened to the trail and what was once hard will become less hard. (Notice that I didn’t say it would become “easier.”) After you get trail hardened, after about a month, even easy trail can be hard, depending on your frame of mind. Don’t worry about the Whites; they are beautiful. Good luck!
Blackbird
the hardest part is the last 5 miles coming off of mt katahdin,not because its hard but because your hike will be almost over,going back to the “real” world is hard after 6 or 7 months of living on the trail…good luck and happy hiking
old school
If after considering the wise words already submitted you still want an empirical take on what’s the hardest section, the Appalachian Trail Conference has given ratings.
http://www.appalachiantrail.org/site/c.jkLXJ8MQKtH/b.730555/k.96ED/State_by_State.htm
markv
thru-hiking the AT was the hardest work we ever did! (but oh so “delicious”!)…“hard” may depend on weather, attitude, health, water supply, etc(not to mention, too, whether or not you have short legs like me! ha ha)…on our first hike, even sections they told us were the toughest on the trail (like around the mahoosucs) really didn’t seem all that bad to us…we were pumped!..feelin’ good and excited about reachin’ katahdin!..but on our second thru-attempt, we had to come off the trail half way through the whites because we were both sick…we just didn’t think we had the “oomph” to endure what we knew was ahead…(perhaps on our first hike, that little bit of “ignorance” was bliss!)…anyway, i remember the first time, climbing out of lehigh gap was AWFUL for me…second time?..a snap!..mahoosuc notch took us 3 1/2 hours but was fun and beautiful (though tricky)…getting up bald pate in the rain was hard…and katahdin was REALLY difficult in a couple of places going up (coming back down on my rear end was easier!)…i agree with blackbird, though…the whites are awesome, if the weather is agreeable…and if you’ve started out nobo, you should be in pretty good shape to tackle all that difficult northern terrain…hey…if us old codgers can do it, ANYBODY can!..(and you SHOULD!)…we found that many of our fears were unfounded and FARRRRR out-weighed by the MANY wonderful people and experiences…i wanna hike a third time!
maw-ee
I remember the five miles north of the Doyle in Duncannon being very difficult…but had little to do with the easy terrain. Steep can be rewarding, level kinda boring, all up to the little green man in yer head!
fishngame