My initial thought, is he a non-hiker, as in he doesn't hike at all, or is he a hiker who is not interested in doing a thru-hike?
The summer of '07 I wanted to hike but my girl friend (curly fry) didn’t want me to go. Note: she hikes a lot but didn’t have the confidence for a multi-month hike. So she eventually decided she would hike two months with me bc she was graduating from college and had a job lined-up for later in the summer. That’s important bc she didn’t have to quit her job and had a secure job to come back to. That eliminates a lot of the stress in planning.
The first month of the hike she was mixed, she liked it sometimes and didn’t like it other times. She was thinking about an early exit from the trail (PCT). But the second month she came around a liked it and didn’t want to go back home. I would stress though, from my experience it’s just a matter of chance, you can never know how someone will like a long distance hike. My first thru-hike I started with my hiking partner from back home. We lasted 700 miles together and he decided to spend the rest of the summer hitch-hiking. Long distance hiking is more of a mental challenge for most people. I would be carefull about asking your partner to sacrafice a lot (job, etc)to do something he may not want to do.
If you want hiking inspiration, check out videos on youtube. There’s one called ‘the way west,’ I think, thats about the PCT.
_banjo boy (hiker miker)_
