[at-l] But!

[Art Cloutman]

Back in the olden days -when Backpacker Magazine sponsored a chat 
room with AOL -  some one of authority defined a long distance hike 
as one that required the hiker to resupply at least once.  So two 
weeks sounds reasonable for  section hiker to be on a par with thru 
hiker.  Although, I did many resupply stops within 3 days on my thru 
hike as per Baltimore Jack's suggestion and a month long shake down 
hike the previous spring.


>I was always taken aback on the trail when section hikers looked in 
>awe on thru-hikers. They're always doing the first two weeks, the 
>hardest two weeks. And talk about persevering - all I had to do was 
>follow white blazes for 2,000 miles and I was done. They had the 
>logistics of trying to set up the transportation loop every year, 
>getting to the trail, arranging shuttles, etc. Not to mention taking 
>10 years or so to complete the trail (I don't think I have the 
>attention span for that!).
>
>Somewhere near Damascus we were leapfrogging with a crew of four or 
>five section hikers, for most of a week. One night we were sharing a 
>campsite, and one of the section hikers threw out a question along 
>the lines of "At what point do you consider a section hiker on a par 
>with a thru-hiker?" (I wish I could remember the exact wording - it 
>came out much better than my rough approximation there).
>This wasn't something any of us had ever considered. So we threw it 
>back and forth for a bit and decided that if you were out for two 
>weeks or longer, and not hiding from the weather in town or motels, 
>you were hiking what we were hiking, eating what we ate, hurting 
>like we hurt, and worst of all, smelling like us too! ;-)
>
>skeeter
>
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-- 

Life is Good!!!
Art Cloutman