S. Matt Read - Appalachian Trail

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#1

Anybody meet S. M. R. hiking the AT a few years ago?
Don’t know no trail name; but he was just featured on the “Eyes of Texas” hiking the 3,000 mile perimeter of TX with his dog Raisin, an emaciated runt that he picked up along the way, probably near the MX border… I was surprised that he said it would take him 9 months or more, without mountains to climb or trail to find…he probly is back in Corpus Christi by now, where he lives & where I assume he started his hike down the beach etc…he followed lots of roads.

gingerbreadman

#2

There are mountains to climb along the borders of Texas (the highest peak in Texas, Guadalupe Peak - near the TX/NM border is over 2000 feet higher than the highest peak on the AT, at 8700 feet), not to mention beach walks in the sun all day, tricky wetland maneuvering, and then probably some decent flat, easy lands to hike in North Texas. By the way, he’s already finished this hike - and it looks like it took him 359 days to do so.

He has a blog that seems to give a detailed account of daily mileage and stops: texasperimeterhike.blogspot.com.

Hiking 3000 miles, regardless of the terrain, is not a small task.

It looks like he thru-hiked the AT in 2003, in case anyone was wondering.

bearbait

#3

I was wrong, he was on the Texas Country Reporter show recently… read half of his blog post, & it is a fairly fast read, becuz it seems like he pretty much skips over the entire East side along the Sabine river. He took a hell of alot of breaks, some to recover physically from road pounding… I had thought he would do more beach walking, but perhaps that is not as doable as one would think. Also, it was a bit ill advised for him to do the southern beach towns in summer & the Blue Norther border in winter!!! What was you thinkin, SMR???

gingerbreadman