I have the Appalachian Fever

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#1

Hello there.

I must before this year I have never had much intrest in the eastern side of the country before but I seem to really been hit hard lately with the Appalachian Fever-

My symptoms include:

*Obsesive-Compulsive Map Gazing and Internet Searching
*Vivid dreams of backpacking on the trail- night and day
*Very Itchy Feet
*Nervous Energy
*Narrow minded focus in conversations to the point friends and family, not to mention co-workers and strangers on elevaters have begun to avoid any topic that could lead to “hiking the at”
*Voleenteering Husband to go on weekenders without allowing him a say so. He really has no say so any more :stuck_out_tongue:

As you see I have a serious case, and need 30 CC’s of pensylvania rocks STAT to keep this in control.

4 years…

I have 4 years before I can quit work and hit the trail…

How do ya’ll handle the anticipation?

Nikkie

#2

Nikkie…I have been waiting for 5yrs. to do the AT… and still have 11 months to go…the anticipation is a killer…my suggestion is to read a lot of journals…

Unk

#3

I have two more years before mine if I can last that long. maybe college can wait!

joey

#4

This is a chronic condition and builds over time. As the time approaches for you to actually get your act together and take that first step it reaches a fever pitch. With less than 3 months to go I can barely get a nights rest and my waking hours are spent doing something, anything related to the AT.

Fortunately there is a very quick cure. They say staring at the plaque on Springer mountain with a fully loaded pack on your back does wonders. :wink: Or is it sober’s you up?

Conductor

#5

I’ll probebly start foaming at the mouth and need to be institutionalized if it gets any worse.

I’be been readin’ up on gear and since I am a cold sleeper, I was thinkin’ of takin’ my 15* down or a 20* synthetic and a fleece liner…when I get too hot I can just use the liner, all this in a bivy with a tarp as my shelter. But I am torn between down and synthetic. Down-it compresses easier and smaller, and its cozy, its small so it fits me better but I think the temprature rateing is a little low on it. Synthetic because my hubby is certain somehow i’ll get my bag wet, although in all the years I have used down it has only gotten damp one time (last year) during a freak tornado when I was out backpacking and even then it was not bad for having survived a tornado with nuthing but a tarp to roll up quickly into! (I was cowboy camping and the sky was clear when I went to sleep, woke up when I was being pounded by walnuts, BRING IT ON, WOHOOO!) Only my foot box got wet even though I was laying in puddles. I guess the outside is slightly water resistant.

Anyway I guess I will just have to expiriment with the bags and see which I prefer in wet conditions (Going to do the Adena Trace trail in march, that should be a great time to expiriment:nerd .

As for stoves, no brainer for me. A homeade alcohol stove (I have 3). I prefer to do all my cooking in plastic baggies, no messy pots then except for the occasionaly hot cocoa to wash up, normally when I pack its either easy one bag meals or cold foods. Boil a cup of water or two and I’m through.

Hiking boots- I will break in a back up pair incase the terrain is worse then I thought on my ankles. So they can be mailed to me in case I need them. When I hiked sections ot the pct trail runners were my prefered footwear and sometimes my tevas were fine too. Out here in the midwest flatland tennis shoes work fine for me except in winter. So I will probebly start with hiking shoes or trail runners instead of boots…
The question is how many pairs should I have? will one pair last me the trip or should I have a back up pair broekn in and ready to be mailed out?

nikkie

#6

Waiting is hard. I’ve had three and four year waits on a couple of my hikes - ones where I knew when and where I was going, but just couldn’t do it yet. Best ‘cure’ is to get out and hike all you can. Go out on weekends and one week and two week trips. It doesn’t have to be the AT - anywhere you can experience the reality of hiking and camping is good. Books and videos may help, or may make the wait harder. Learning about the reality to come is fun, but it makes you want to be there NOW not next year. I’ve been reading CDT journals since we got off the trail - it has been driving me crazy because I want so badly to be there too.

You will be amazed at how quickly the time passes. Soon it will be 1000 days. Then 500 days. Then 100 days–at which point you’ll be in full panic mode, wondering where the time went.

Ginny

#7

Desire. Excitement. Obsession.

 I know the feelings.  As do others who came before you, and others yet to come.  I could not stop thinking about the trail in the year prior to my hike.  I told everyone.  The only books I bought were AT related.  I took a side trip to Harper's Ferry when I was near DC visting friends.  I even looked up any songs that had, in the title, any of the 14 states through which the trail passes.  

 My God, I'm excited FOR all of you.  I need to find a job that pays me to hike.

Leki-Less

#8

I’ve got all the symptoms too…I ended up moving my hike up to next year because I can’t stand it. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll have the $$ by then…
I wondered if I were the only one with the dreams!! I seem to be dreaming about the trail nearly every night. Some of them are hilarious (I dreamed a group I met on the trail had ‘talked’ to a deer named Warden…wtheck?) and some of them sort of bring out my anxieties (I dreamed that it was dark and I was blindly trying to put up a tent for hours.)Everyone is already totally sick of hearing about 'my hike’and I still can’t shut up. I make massive numbers of posts here and on the WomenHikers yahoo group. I’ve been to every gear/hiking site I can find and read tons of books. Anyway, if you ever want to talk trail, feel free to email me long, rambling letters and we can compare notes on everything. mindij818@aol.com
:slight_smile: Mindi

Mindi

#9

I envy you, only a year!

In a lot of ways getting married really slowed my dream of the hike down. I had planned to do the PCT a few years ago but I met a guy backpacking in Kentucky and well…long story short we have a house, critters and bills, UGH. In a way I wish we didnt have the house and the animals. I really thought I was settling down, that I could just live with the occasional weekender on the trail and for a while I delved into new hobbies, and then disaster struck and I was in the hospital for two weeks and had a surgery on the cusp of life and death…with a several month recovery from my illness and that put a damper on any thru hiking drams. But I dreamt of the trail at night even then…about the 12 day I was in the hospital I dreamt I was on the trail (it resembled a spot on the PCT in Castle Crags) and I was trying to reach the mountain, the top of the mountain, and I jsut couldnt and a saddness overwhlemed me…if I died I would never reach the mountain top…that was the turning point. A few days after that I was actually able to sip a little broth…and I began to start feeling better…I had lost over 30 lbs since the start of my illness just in the hospital…(Ive gained it all back and more due to the medication :mad :mad )
I HAVE to reach that mountain top. Its in my soul. Right now I have a broken toe, or I would certainly be backpacking every weekend I could. I am starting to work out at teh gym and its tough but my mantra in a particularly hard work out I chant “For the trail, For the trail, For the trail” and it gives me the strength to get healthy:)

nikkie

#10

I’ve been waiting three years. now I only have to wait till march. I’ve got all my gear, I’ve got enough money and time. All I have to do is walk.

matt

#11

I know the feeling Nikki. I decided a few years ago that the earliest I could do it was when I was 50 when my youngest was in college. A little over six years and counting for me but while I can’t wait, I really do not want my baby to grow up any faster…

Keith

#12

What is crazy is that even after hiking the trail the urge to return wil slowly but surely creep back. After a year or two of returning to the real world that voice starts in the back of your mind. It will continue to grow to the point that every path reminds you of the trail, each mountain you view - even if it is just a picture - brings back some pleasent memory so that you find yourself wondering how you can position yourself to walk those 2100 miles a second time. Talk about the un-hiker world thinking you have fully lost your mind - just tell them you have done it once and are now wanting to do it again. The voice remains.

Crockett

#13

has A.T. Fever? Hollywood. :mad

That’s right, in just a short years or two there will be lights, cameras, action, followed by droves of Bryson wannabees from everywhere crawling over every square inch of the trail 24/7/365, developers buying up every bit of property and turning it into $$$, bulldozers, new roads and highways, well you get the picture.

Spoiler

#14

I’ve been trying to decide whether to keep working after this school year and be poor, or retire in June and be really really poor. Postings like this are helping me to make up my mind. (I’ll be the really really poor retired librarian on the trail in 2007! Look for me…)

Sam

#15

The thing is, when you are done, or even MORE SO when you are done, that feeling will never go away. At least for me and a lot of folks I know.

I get Springer fever every late Febuarary/March…Im feeling it already and I cant stand that its just January…I just want to wake up by a lake, or a stream, to hear loons, or owls, or Coyots doing there thing.

I want to wake to a crisp clear, icy blue sky day on top of Cheoah Bald and catch the rising sun while smelling Coffee brewing up in a cheap camp pot over quiet camp stove while I am still partialy wraped in my sleeping bag.

I want to see the steam come off my socks when I take them off at the end of a day. I want to snuggle deep inside my mummy bag with a fleece on and listen to strangers laugh and joke.

The clarity and ‘something’ that long distance hiing gives you is so much a part of what you will become it overtakes you.

Its my favorite vice, even when Im bitching.

Do look forward to it, its worth looking forward to.

Lion King

#16

Your post is magnificant.

The nostalgia caught me by surprise with each memory you listed. My own personal recollections came to mind with every sentence I read. Well done.

I’ll never forget the sound of the loons on Daicy Pond, sitting under the backdrop of Katahdin in the middle of a canoe being paddeled by my fellow thru-hikers, and new friends, Camel and Mountain Man.

I’ll never forget the yips and yaps of the coyotes, a sound I first heard in the Smokies and last heard in Maine much, much closer.

And the feeling inside your sleeping bag when your want to fall asleep, thanks to the fatigue of a 20 mile day, is superseded only by the desire to prolong the moment with the present company, talking and laughing, especially with Honeypie entertaining everyone with his Bob Peoples impersonation.

And Cheoah Bald. Oh, Cheoah Bald. To those of you who will be hiking this year, or any other year, be sure to set aside time to sit on the grass and breathe in the vista from Cheoah.

Thank you Lion King. Springer Fever will undoubtedly be hitting me much sooner now.

Leki-Less

#17

My symptoms began in 1958. In continued to increase in severity until I found the cure in 2004. Hiking is the only cure. I didn’t want my hike to end so I hiked slowly. It took me nearly seven months starting on April 4th and ending on October 25th. It was everything I dreamed and a lot more. I still have dreams about my hike and spend many hours looking at my photos, reading Trailjournals, looking at books and magazines. I guess I never really was cured. I think the condition is chronic.

Gabby Art

#18

It is nice to know that other people have the same symptoms I do. I have only 48 days until I leave for my hike and everyday I get more excited. The only way I can handle the wait is to constantly play with my gear and literally everyday I don’t work I am on the AT near my home.

I work at an outdoor gear shop so everytime I am at work I am thiking about hiking the AT. I am comparing gear, talking to coworkers that have thru hiked and daydreaming constantly.

I think that sometimes my addiction to hiking is comparable to crack addicts addiction. I can’t sleep, I think about it constantly, if I don’t hike I go into withdrawl. Yeah I am definately a crack hiker.

Moleman

#19

You guys who are planning are much better-off than those of us who can’t set a date.Someone said not to overplan, and that’s good advice. At least build alot of freedom into your plan.In response to the Bryson movie, I don’t think it will cause much lon-term harm. At first there will be a few ill-prepared people out there, some of whom will need to be rescued. The greatest effect will be within the first 20-30 miles north of Springer. Certainly there will be a few who are drawn to the AT by this movie, who will become serious hikers/outdoorsmen. Those few will be welcomed into the community. Maybe there will be a (probably temporary) surge in funding for projects along the corridor. Surely any effects will lessen as one moves north.

Carlgoose