Upcoming Plans

Hi everyone! This post is going to be a little different from my normal posts. It's not a trip report, but instead it is a news post to let you know about my upcoming hiking plans. I have two major hiking plans in the works right now, both of which further my long term goal of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail.

The first hike is going to be next week. It's going to be a short section hike on the Trail in Massachusetts. A section hike is where one hikes only a piece of the AT instead of the entire thing, whereas a thru-hike would be a hike of the entire trail. I anticipate this section hike being about 75 miles. It will connect back to where I started the Long Trail back in 2018. I anticipate going over Mt. Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, as part of this hike. This will be my first April backpacking trip since 2017, and I am excited about it. I only hope that the weather will hold out. Early reports don't look great.

The second hike will be a much longer section hike this summer. Last year my friend Crick and I hiked the Hundred Mile Wilderness from Monson north to Abol Bridge. This year, I intend to start from Monson and head south. That will take me through the Maine High Peaks region, through the challenges of the Mahoosucs in southern Maine, and finally into New Hampshire. Once in New Hampshire, the hike will only get more challenging, as I will have to tackle the Carters, the Wildcats, the Presidentials, and Franconia Notch, and that's not even mentioning a lot of other four thousand footers. This hike will be the most difficult hike I have ever undertaken. I am looking forward to joining the southbound AT thru-hikers for their first couple states, and hopefully making some new hiking friends just like I did on the Long Trail.

Section hikes are kind of like a puzzle. You have to fit them together piece by piece. Right now the only AT sections I have are the Hundred Mile Wilderness, the southern Long Trail, and a small NH section from Hanover to Glencliff. If I am successful, then at the end of this hike I will have completed all of New England from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, up to Abol Bridge, Maine, except for a short section between Killington and Hanover that I hope to finish later this summer.

I will be posting daily journals here on the blog during these hikes, so please feel free to join me here as I recount my adventures. These hikes will be a great challenge, but as I always say, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!



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