Hike Starts March 1

Up until now, our answer to when we are starting our thru hike was a vague “sometime in early March”. Well, we have now firmed up our plans and we will arrive at Amicalola Falls State Park on March 1st. We will spend the night in the lodge and attack the approach trail on March 2nd.

For those that don’t know, if you start your thru hike at Amicalola Falls, you need to hike about 8 miles before you get to mile 0 of the Appalachian Trail at the summit of Springer Mountain. Many hikers call this day 0. Our posts in this blog will always include which days it covers and what miles of the trail we covered. Mile 0 is the summit of Springer Mountain in Georgia and mile 2194.3 is at the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine.

This blog contains a page that will be useful if you want to track where we are and when we expect to reach the next 2 or 3 road crossings. We are using a Garmin InReach mini on our hike and Garmin offers a service called MapShare that allows us to share our location. The map will contain pins of places we stay for the night and other milestones. The map can be reached from a link on the tracking page as well as from a link on the menu bar.

I will also be posting quick updates on Instagram. My account is @mooseboy62 and there is a link to it on this blog as well. There will likely be overlap between Instagram and this blog, particularly in the media (photos and video). I will use the blog for more details and Instagram will likely be updated more frequently. We will know more as we get into the rhythm of the trail. Sorry for the lack of photos on this post. I’m sure future posts will have plenty.

We look forward to your encouragement as we hike and if you are curious about anything, don’t hesitate to post a question. The next post on this blog will likely cover our trip to the trailhead and maybe our first day or 2 of hiking.