Angry clouds were rolling in by the time we reached the famed hiking hut known as Lakes of the Clouds in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. But we weren’t here to sleep in style. Instead, we found ourselves directed to “the dungeon”, behind an iron door at the back of the building; inside were six spartan bunk beds, no mattresses and a strong smell of damp. The £8 nightly rate was a steal compared with the hut’s usual £115 for a bed, and given that I had trekked 40 miles since my last shower and had no clean clothes left, staying away from full-paying guests felt like the right thing to do.
By now my boyfriend, Derin, and I were four and a half months into our attempt to hike the 2,198 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and this wasn’t the worst place we had slept. “There’s a 50 per cent chance it won’t thunderstorm all day tomorrow,” I joked with my fellow hikers before we went to sleep.
In the morning Derin and I would set off to complete the final nine miles of the Presidential Range, including a climb to the top of Mount Washington, the 1,917m (6,289ft) peak where the world’s second-highest wind speed was recorded. It was going to be tough. Still, it beat sitting at a desk all day.
This was the mantra I returned to over and again as I walked one of the world’s longest hiking trails. The inspiration for this trip had come many months earlier, when we realised a drastic change was needed to recover from our overwhelming feelings of work-related stress — we were burnt out. I had all the classic signs: after four years as a self-employed writer and a pandemic to boot, my sense of where work ended and I began was shaky. I was a workaholic, mentally exhausted and stuck in a cycle of catastrophising, fearing that at any minute I would drop the ball on one of the many projects I had been juggling, bringing my hard-earned career down with it.
Three million people set foot on this trail each year, with the vast majority covering short sections at a time. But about 3,000 of them try to walk the entire thing, and a very long walk in the woods — with no emails — sounded to me like the perfect antidote.
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It took two years of careful planning to make the dream a reality. We had to save enough money to cover the trip — the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) says that the average hiker spends about £1,000 a month — plus our mortgage and other bills during our time away from home. A good friend agreed to house-sit (and cat-sit) for us. My boyfriend quit his job; I told my clients that I wouldn’t be around for a while and hoped that they would remember me.
Last March we flew to Atlanta and set off for Springer Mountain in Georgia to take our first steps on the six-month journey northwards. Inside my backpack was only 6kg of equipment — mostly clothes, my sleeping kit, a mini stove, a water filter and a 60ml bottle of Dr Bronner’s biodegradable soap. By early September we were standing on top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, touching the sign that marked the finish line.
The Appalachian Trail is no small undertaking. It snakes along America’s east coast, through 14 states, with an elevation change roughly equivalent to climbing Mount Everest 16 times. Known as the Green Tunnel, it traverses the forested ridgelines of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, the grassy meadows of Virginia and the notoriously rocky footpaths of Pennsylvania.
Once hikers make it to New England, about two-thirds of the way along, the terrain includes more challenging alpine areas, bogs and rock scrambles — including Mahoosuc Notch, a mile-long boulder field in Maine that is more like a naturally formed jungle gym than a hiking path; it took us more than two hours to haul ourselves and our backpacks through it. That took us to the foot of the Mahoosuc Arm, a vertical-looking rock slab that rises 1,500ft in one mile. In our tent that evening, my legs, arms and shoulders throbbed, but while my body was exhausted, I felt wonderfully relaxed.
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It took a month of hiking — by which time we were 350 miles in and starting to see the wild rhododendrons of Tennessee bloom — before I stopped compulsively opening the email app on my phone. My obsessive habit of scrolling on Twitter (rebranded to X) while I was in the wilderness began to feel boring soon after that. By the second month the anxious knot in my stomach had unwound. I experienced blissful, full nights of sleep on my three-inch-deep mattress, inside a sleeping bag getting smellier by the day.
A trail of this length is a mental challenge as much as it is a physical one. According to the ATC, only one in three hikers who set out to complete the full distance of the trail manage to do so. Some sections were brutally hard; I remember little of Massachusetts but the relentless humidity and swarms of mosquitoes. I reminded myself how lucky I was to be doing this, and that being wet, cold, sore or tired were temporary states.
For Derin, food, and the impossible task of carrying enough of it to cover the calories we were burning, was a challenge. Occasionally we bickered about hiking paces (I am fast uphill) and who was pulling the most weight (he was carrying our tent). Far more often, though, we operated as a strong team, with our shared joys and miseries bringing us closer. It was all part of the adventure. And it was always worth it — every view, lake swim and animal encounter I got to experience because I had walked to get to there.
Those highlights also included the discovery that volunteers leave canoes by the secluded ponds in Maine, meaning that we could paddle out of the shade and bask in the sun. Unforgettable sights included the “triple crown” of rock formations (McAfee Knob, Dragon’s Tooth and Tinker Cliffs) in Virginia and the rambling expanse at the top of the Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire. Close encounters with wildlife were plentiful, from black bears, snakes and chipmunks to the hundreds of tiny red eft newts that swarm the trail after rain.
Our sleeping arrangements were rarely as dismal as the dungeon, either. One night in North Carolina we set up camp in a disused fire tower from where we watched the sun rise and set; another, we camped in the grounds of a 19th-century farmhouse in Virginia and ate noodles on the porch swing.
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Then there were the people — not just our fellow hikers, but generous locals who always seemed to be handing out beers and hot dogs whenever the going got too tough. I will never forget stumbling across the secret Cinco de Mayo party that a group of Virginians put on in the woods every year for hikers; I’m afraid there’s only one way to find the exact location of that — by hiking the trail.
Work wasn’t the only source of stress in my life, but it was a big one. Removing it from the equation for six months gave me the mental space I needed to contemplate what I wanted my life to look like when I returned to the UK. In the woods, there’s often not a lot else to do but think; my perspective was changing too.
Now that I’ve been interrogated in Tennessee about my political beliefs, chased bears away from our campsite in New Jersey and navigated flash-flooding in New York, I know I can handle any work problem that is thrown my way. I’m better at accepting discomfort — enduring a quiet month on the freelance-work front is easier once you’ve dealt with wearing the same pair of slimy wet socks four days in a row. And having achieved a level of fitness of which I could only previously have dreamt, my priority is no longer working all hours and saying “yes” to as many projects as I can, but maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
The day that we left the Lakes of the Clouds dungeon was my most challenging of the entire trail — a gruelling 12-hour slog in swirling fog and rain with boulders, mud and tears along the way. We made it to the road crossing 20 minutes before sunset and got a lift to the mountain town of Gorham. The only places still open when we got there were a McDonald’s and a petrol station, so we loaded up on burgers and beer to take back to our motel room. Cheers to another day not in the office.
Sarah Drumm travelled independently. For more details, see appalachiantrail.org
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