Has anyone hiked without spending a single cent on the AT only relying on shelter food or donations?
R Stair
Hiking the AT with NO MONEY has anyone done it?
system
#2
I’ve seen it done…I met a guy who did it at least 1 1/2 times…
I’ve only hiked the southern section, so I can’t speak for anything in the north…but in the south you can literally go from hiker box to hiker box almost the whole way in the south…especially early on…at Neels Gap I’m sure they throw away tons of food from the hiker box…people inevitably start with too much food and offload a lot of it when they get to Neels Gap. You could make it at least as far as Damascus without buying any food if you aren’t picky about what you eat.
The guy I met made up some story about a girlfriend who was supposed to be doing maildrops for him, but after I got to know him a bit I realized that story wasn’t true and he had planned to hobo his way up the trail…he had apparently done the same thing in the prior year and completed the thru-hike.
Doing things this way slowed him down quite a bit though…he took a lot of “zero” days off the trail trying to get some odd jobs to earn a few bucks. It took him almost 4 months to reach Waynesboro and I lost track of him after that.
Somewhere along the line one of the odd jobs he had gotten was from a member of the Moose Lodge…he convinced him to join, and that turned out to be a smart move…previously he might hang out in town 2 to 3 days just trying to find some work…once he became a Moose he went to the lodge in every town he came across and had work lined up within a few hours. He did all kinds of odd jobs…as soon as he had re-supplied and had $15 or $20 in his pocket he got back on the trail.
While it is possible, its not a way I’d recommend doing it…you’d have to have enough pride to work a bit along the way but not enough pride that you wouldn’t stoop to being a mooch occasionally.
Bronk
Bronk