What I ate on the Appalachian Trail.

I'm vegan. This should be obvious to anyone reading this (if it's not, then god help your miserable soul). Also obvious, food was an incredibly important part of my thruhike, and being vegan somewhat altered the experience I had, what I took with me, what was available for me in town restaurants and grocery stores, etc.

Food (or hot chocolate, coffee, soda) is and can be some major motivation. But being vegan means that you won't necessarily have those motivations readily available to you. Ask any thruhiker on their way into town, I promise you they're most looking forward to "a burger and a beer". This can put a damper on things, but honestly, you can prepare similar motivations for yourself. How? Mail yourself cookies and coffee and all sorts of fun shit. Trust me, the knowledge of having access to these things will give you superhuman strength and you'll suddenly find yourself hiking 30 mile days whilst fantasizing obsessively about dunking said cookies in said coffee.

Okay, so beyond being vegan, I'm also gluten free (wah wahhh). This also significantly decreases what I can eat, especially in terms of vegan junk food readily available at gas stations and trail towns. To those you reading this with special diets, fret not, your experience will not be diminished at all if you take the time to prepare. Trust me.

Let's talk about calories real quick. To keep the weight down, I wanted a very high calorie to weight ratio. This basically means high in fat, high in sugar, or both. So you know, by default, thruhiking food isn't exactly the healthiest stuff in the world...

Anyhow, let's get to the food.

BREAKFAST

1. Cereal or (gluten free) granola with powdered nondairy milk.

This is definitely my most favorite of breakfast meals. I experimented with different types of nondairy milk, and dehydrated coconut milk was undoubtedly the best. It's extremely dense in fat and therefore dense in calories and tastes damn good. This is the brand I used. You gotta help it dissolve some, but that's all good.

Soy milk was pretty hit or miss, honestly. If you're going to go with the powdered soy milk route, just make sure you actually experiment with different brands before you hit the trail. Some are very... healthy, ya know what I mean? The taste and texture is reminiscent of the smell and feel of being in an all vegan store owned by seventh day adventists with a name that includes at least two of the following words: mother, earth, and/or natural.

Other hikers have had good luck with rice milk, so maybe go with that.

As for cereal, I typically went with the big Nature's Path brand bags. Favorite flavor: Mesa Sunrise. So dope. And granola? Kind granola typically. It's cheap, gluten free, and has a lot of calories, and doesn't have too much sugar. Just make sure the granola you're buying doesn't have honey!



2. Instant oatmeal.

It was rare that I made oatmeal in the morning as oatmeal requires cooking (unless you've achieved thruhiker level 9 status, in which you are okay with eating cold oatmeal), but sometimes, on cold, lazy morning, a hot meal is dope.

Once again I mostly went with the gluten free Nature's Path instant oatmeals.

3. Bars.

So you don't want to have to prepare a real meal (i.e. eat anything that requires a spork)? You don't have time to get a pot messy or the water to waste cleaning it out? Bars are what you want then. I ate mostly Macro bars. The flavors with peanut butter have the most calories, but I ate mostly cashew flavors cause I got them from a discount grocery store before we left. They were stale as fuck by the end of the hike, but I long ago learned not to care. I'm also a big fan of Luna bars since they taste like straight up cake. White chocolate macadamia is probs my favorite flavor. Clif bars are a favorite of most hikers, but 1) I spent the first few years of being vegan living off Clif bars and learned to hate them and 2) they're not gluten free.

4. Chia seed pudding.

Chia seeds, sugar, chocolate, dates, raisins. Whatever you feel like adding really. I got sick of this eventually, but chia seeds are crazy nutrient/calorie dense and because of their omega fatty acids, are anti-inflammatory, and guess what fools, you need to eat things that are anti-inflammatory on the AT. If you don't then god have mercy on your knees. Or if you decide to ibuprofen your way all the way to Katahdin, then god have mercy on your liver.

SNACKS

1. Bars, part deaux.

You know, the ones I just told you about.

2. Chips.

Potato chips. Tortilla chips.

I'm a crazy person and sent myself chips in resupply boxes even though chips are available literally anywhere. So if I got a box, I was probably eating Earth Balance sour cream and onion chips, dope. If I didn't and I could find them, I was eating Kettle chips, probably sea salt and vinegar but maybe maple and bacon (they're vegan I swear!). Also dope. If I couldn't find either then I was probably eating Lays or Fritos (so many calories, jesus christ). I don't like doing these things, but you kind of go into survival mode and just eat what you gotta eat when your drop box doesn't show up in fucking Nowhere, VA and you gotta resupply at the Grocery Xpress where the car tools aisle is the same as the produce aisle.

3. Dried fruit.

Do yourself a favor. Eat some fruit. No, sugar does not equal sugar. Fruit sugar is different than corn syrup and your body will be a lot happier if you just eat some fucking fruit.

4. Nuts and seeds.

Cashews and pumpkin seeds were my most consumed. Cashews cause they just taste good and I'd rather buy cashews than peanuts if cashews are available and cost pretty much the same amount. Pumpkin seed because what did I just say about omega fatty acids? Oh yeah, they're anti-inflammatory. Dope. Also, pumpkin seeds have this weird ability to paralyze parasites so they don't take hold in your gut, and if you already got 'em then pumpkin seeds help get rid of them. Don't believe me? Too bad.

5. Peanut butter.

I honestly didn't start eating peanut butter until way later in the trail, and then at some point it became basically all I ate. That and chips. Peanut Butter & Co has the dopest flavors, like White Chocolate Wonderful, Cinnamon Raisin Swirl, and Dark Chocolate Dreams. Plus it's cheap and can be found at basically any grocery store. And they're all certified vegan so there.

Let me tell you, dipping gluten free cookies in dark chocolate peanut butter is an incredible morale booster after seven straight days of torrential rain.

6. Candy.

Yeah, candy is right. There's this company called Go Max Go and they have a shit load of vegan candy bars that seem incredibly similar to some of the more... mainstream candy bars... My personal favorite is the Thumbs Up (which is supposed to be a butterfinger... get it?). But if you're just sooo stereotypical and you just gotta have the real thruhiker experience (but you're still vegan), you should probably eat about ten Jokerz bars as day, as they're the snickers equivalent.

I also ate quite a few sour jelly beans from the company YumEarth.

There's a variety of gross candy that's "technically" vegan that you can find in most gas stations, but I won't get into that because I don't want to endorse it, and I don't recommend eating trash, regardless of whether it may or may not be vegan. Plus, well, I just don't think a lot of it is vegan... *cough* oreos aren't vegan *cough* everybody stop saying that *cough* *cough* what does the ingredient "chocolate" mean, y'all are lying to yourselves *cough*.

7. Faux jerky.

Primal strips don't have a whole lot of calories but god damn do they taste good. Only one flavor is gluten free, but at least I get to have that. There's also this brand, Butler's, and they have this product called Sam's Harvest Jerky, and god damn! This shit is amazing! Unfortunately it's not such a popular brand and you won't be able to find it most anywhere, so ordering online is recommended.

8. Energy chunks.

You know what I'm talking about right? Those weird squares of dates plus whatever other ingredients they wanted and maybe a superfood or two? You know, they have them at literally every health food store in the world in bulk? Anyhow, these are dope and I'm surprised more people don't use them on the trail... I mean, they're chunks of "energy", isn't that we all need whilst thruhiking?

9. Dates and figs.

With or without coconut shreds. SO GOOD. SO MANY CARBS. SO MUCH HIKING WILL BE HAD.

10. Cookies.

Gluten free cookies? Gotta have 'em. There's a bunch of brands of gluten free vegan cookies, Lucy's, Enjoy Life, Mary's Gone Crackers... once again, figure out what you like most and go for that. Or go for variety, that's what I did and I literally never got sick of cookies. Honestly you can probably just thruhike on cookies and peanut butter. Do the damn thing.

11. Dark Chocolate.

Bars and dark chocolate covered everything. Peanuts, almonds, espresso beans. Honestly, you can find dark chocolate just about anywhere but like always, watch out for the companies that hide "less than 2% milkfat" up in that shit. I probably ate more chocolate than any human being has a right to consume, but chocolate is healthy! It's got antioxidants and shit!

DINNER

1. Premade dehydrated meals.

I, unfortunately, made the mistake of placing a huge order through Outdoor Herbivore, thinking that I would at least enjoy most of their products, if not all of them. This was a huge let down and I would never recommend that anyone eat these meals for any extended length of time. Why? It doesn't matter what you get, they all pretty much taste the same... kind of like clif bars. It doesn't matter what flavor you're eating, you're eating a god damn clif bar and it tastes like a god damn clif bar. Same principle applies to Outdoor Herbivore. If for some reason you decide you just gotta order something from these guys, then let it be the blackened quinoa or the lickety split lentils. Everything else is whack and I hate that they have a monopoly on the vegan backpacking food market. Someone please remedy this!

However much Outdoor Herbivore sucks, Backpacker's Pantry does not. There's a reason this is a popular brand. The best part is that these are pretty much anywhere. Only a few of the flavors are vegan, but the pad thai is amazing and has like a thousand calories.

2. Dehydrated beans and corn tortillas.

Once again, I got sick of beans pretty quick, but it was a good idea for awhile. Pack out an avocado from town, carry a little bit of hot sauce, and god damn you got a badass meal. There's a variety of dehydrated bean flavors, so once again, figure out which ones you like best before committing to eating them for 5+ months.

3. Noodles and sauce.

Gluten free macaroni noodles. Probably of the corn or quinoa variety. These cook decently fast, but make sure you dump that starchy water as it will ruin whatever else you put in your pot with your noods. I used some powdered marinara mixes and cheese mixes, but honestly I wasn't a big fan of either. Maybe just olive oil and nutritional yeast is your best bet here.

Rice noodles cook fast. That makes them worthy of thruhiking in my book. Thin noodles work best (duh). Pair some noodles with a "sauce" and you win. My favorite was powdered miso, which is fairly easy to find, but watch out for fishy (literally) ingredients in that miso! Pad thai and peanut sauce packets are fairly easy to find in most grocery stores as well, but once again, check those ingredients y'all.

4. Thai kitchen.

Cheap, but not very calorie dense. You gotta use like three to get a decent meal out of the deal, but I loooove eating these things on the trail. Only a couple of the flavors are vegan, but who cares, the spring onion is the best and it's all you need. Or get the garlic flavor, mix it with a spring onion, go nuts, it's your hike and you deserve it!

IN TOWN

1. Produce.

Eat produce! Just do it! You have to! You're a human being god damnit! Pack out some bananas and avocados and you'll be so fucking happy you did, I promise. Maybe even eat a salad in town, I don't know, get crazy!

2. Pickles.

Let's face it. You're gross and sweaty. You've lost more sodium through your pores than you've consumed in the last ten years of your life. Get it back. Eat those damn pickles.

3. Soda.

You know the routine, it's liquid calories dude.

4. Nondairy ice cream.

Mostly coconut milk, but sometimes those new cashew flavors. Once upon a time in the "Daleville/Troutville Metropolitan Area" I ate two pints of cashew milk ice cream then watched Mad Max at the Roanoke movie theater. My gut was literally on fire for the duration of the movie, but I have no regrets and I'm still alive, if just barely.

5. Coffee.

Strictly for morale. Also, I don't drink alcohol so I had to spend money on something in town, right?

6. Chinese food.

If you're on the AT, you'll notice that most trail towns have at least one Chinese restaurant. If you're really desperate for some town food, hit it up. They should have tofu and at least one thing on the menu that's vegan. Should being the key word here.

SUPPLEMENTS/OTHER

1. Powdered greens.

I used Healthforce Nutritional's Vitamineral Greens. This was a good idea in terms of staying healthy, but it was hard to adhere to. I just didn't have an incredible amount of extra containers to get all nastied up with greens. Is nastied a word? Doesn't seem like it. Who cares. I'll try to do greens again on the PCT because I'm a fucking hippie and I don't believe in not eating them.

2. Magnesium powder.

Early on in my hike, this was a good idea. Magnesium powder makes a huge difference in whether or not your legs are going to cramp hard as shit in the middle of the night. After a few hundred miles and a couple months of routine exercise, your body adjusts and you find that you no longer cramp, ever, for any reason. You've transcended into some other realm and you're a deity who no longer experiences muscle soreness.

3. Electrolytes.

The AT is hot. I mean like, really fucking hot. You're going to sweat. So much. Gallons. Every day. There's no avoiding it. Unless you want to struggle for the entire summer, I guarantee that you'll want to use electrolytes. I used Ultima and Vega most of the time. They were both messy and annoying, but hey, you do what you gotta do.

4. RAW meal.

This was the hardest of the supplement routine. I figured I could use a high quality protein source since I was getting pretty physical out there on the AT, you know, using my muscles and shit. But it was messy and just didn't work well and blah. I eventually started ditching all of my RAW meal powders into hiker boxes and never once regretted it.

5. Multivitamins.

I took a couple of different brands. Again, find what works for you, it's just a multivitamin. I will definitely continue to use multivitamins on my thruhiking ventures. Read all about why, here.

6. Starbucks VIA coffee.

For anyone who isn't familiar, Starbucks VIA are little coffee sticks that you just add to water and voila, a delicious coffee drink. In "real life" these aren't the greatest, but as soon as you hit the trail and you/re forced to cope with the sudden absence of caffeine in your life, you'll be reaching for the VIA sticks and praising jah that they exist.

7. Tea/hot chocolate.

These are the two reasons that I refuse to go stoveless on the PCT, I just love my hot drinks too much. I made my own hot chocolate mix ahead of time, and it was incredible. I sent myself a variety of teas in every drop box and probably only made half of them, but who cares, the weight was negligible and the tea was delicious.

8. Veggie bouillon.

Get the cubes and put them in literally anything and it's suddenly worth eating. Par boiled rice? Add some veggie bouillon and you win.

9. Condiments.

Mustard, ketchup, hot sauce. Whatever tickles your fancy. If you hate what you're eating, squirt like six mustard packets on it and just try to disguise how gross it is. I'm looking at you Outdoor Herbivore...

THINGS I DIDN'T USE BUT MY FRIENDS DID

1. Ramen.

With and without MSG. The "natural" brand is Koyo, and the in-no-way-natural brand is Top Ramen. You know, the one from walmart? Well only the "oriental" flavor is vegan... but what the fuck kind of flavor is oriental? On the plus side, these cost jack shit. On the not so plus side... these may literally kill you because I would never actually qualify them as "food".

2. Probars.

These have the most calorie content of any vegan bar on the market, to my knowledge. They're decent and there's a million flavors. Unfortunately they're made with oats (contaminated with gluten), and I'm a big enough baby to care about that kind of stuff. They're also hella expensive, so, try to find a sale or something.

3. Gatorade.

I don't deny that gatorade is pretty delicious, especially the flavor glacier freeze. I just adhere to stricter standards about these things, and I already had ultima and vega playing in my electrolyte game. Gatorade does have a lot of calories and doesn't taste like shit, so there's that.

4. Tortillas.

I was very jealous of other's ability to eat gluten whilst on the trail, and nowhere is this more apparent than bean burritos. I don't think I would have gotten sick of beans, or at least not nearly as fast, if I had had the burrito option. Plus you can just get weird and make trail mix, peanut butter, cookie, chocolate burritos and honestly that sounds like a damn good meal on the trail.

5. Couscous.

So cheap, so easy. Cooks literally instantly. Also has a good nutrition profile comparable to quinoa. Honestly if you're going on a thruhike, regardless of diet, you should be eating couscous.

WHAT I TRIED AND DIDN'T LIKE

1. Outdoor Herbivore.

I already explained this one. They're just bad, but don't take my word for it, go ahead and buy a couple. Ha.

2. Coconut oil.

Too messy. Hot and then cold and then hot again so many times that it probably went rancid. A lot of people used coconut oil on the trail, but it just wasn't for me. I may come back to it someday.

3. Little almond butter packets.

So annoying. Don't ever do this. It seems like a good idea at the time, but it's not.

4. Raw meal.

Like I said, this just didn't work out. I'll try to find some other powdered protein mix that I like more.

Day 139: Meese is plural for moose.

I sleep poorly because I never closed up the footbox on my quilt and my body heat escaped all night. The nights are getting noticeably more chill. Not chill as in Mathew McConaughey but chill as in my face is frozen so I cover it with a bandana.

The first four miles down into the notch are smooth sailing, a little victory lap for jumping up and down treacherous, sharp boulders for the last week.

Along the way I run into Haulin' Oats, a quirky thruhiker with strange mannerisms who I honestly like a lot more than most. She's standing down the way exaggeratedly mouthing "MOOSE" at me.

Oh dang, I pause my Neil Degrasse Tyson podcast and sneak forward, and sure enough, a moose momma and baby, meese if you will, are basically eating trees. It's mega loud which makes sense since they're megafauna. I mutter a silent prayer for all of the megafauna that humans have forced into extinction, take a few blurry pictures, and head out before momma moose decides I'm too close to baby.

Out of the notch is our last section of the Whites, referred to as the Wildcats. Why? I don't really know, but the first climb out is mean as hell. Sometimes "rock scramble" just doesn't cut it. The trail is, at times, a straight up hand over hand, pull your body weight up with your arms, rock climb. But I love it.

I'm feeling pretty good and I've learned to really appreciate these moments. I just want to be healthy and injury free, I could give a damn how hard the trail is, just get me back to 100 percent and I'll crush anything you put in my way.

Obviously whatever is going on with my stomach isn't affecting my athleticism too much because I literally run up the side of the mountain, and all the way up I'm wondering if there's a foot race like this somewhere in the world, more vertical than horizontal. That'd be fun. I should look into it.

I get to the top and find a bunch of tourists just milling around. God damnit. There's a gondola ride to the top, and I'm actually standing at the top of a ski resort. Ugh.

I wait around on top, listen to the soothing narration of Neil Degrasse Tyson talk about science and science related humor and at some point, I fall asleep.

Hours later I wake up to find Stevie standing over me. Shit, it's already 3:00 and we've got a ways to go.

We make it another five miles, the trail never lets up on us, and it doesn't look like we're gonna make it much father than the next the hut. So we hobble in wondering whether or not we should try to stealth or do work for stay. Then they feed us potato dill soup and it's decided. Y'all got some more of that? We'll definitely do work for stay.

This time though we actually have do some real work. Dun dun dun! So what do we do? Clean the range. Well shit, I've only been a line cook for most of my adult life. I'm so pro at cleaning commercial stoves that I actually enjoy it. So we go beast mode on the range, steel wool held akimbo before me and the process is therapeutic. I miss the rituals of real life, especially those related to food.

After, we go beast mode on some soup, broccoli, and salad. The black bean soup isn't as good as the potato dill, and the broccoli is half steamed/half raw, but I can't say anything bad about the salad and regardless of whatever, real food is tasty.

Turns out the dudes working this hut just finished the trail and they shoot the shit with us for a little bit about AT related crap. How hard the trail is in Maine, how the hell did Scott Jurek hike on two hours of sleep every night, never listen to a southbounder, etc.

Then, we sleep, once again blowing up our pads between the dining room tables, swearing that tomorrow we'll make up for our "low" mileage today.

Day 138: Presidential tint.

The Yellow Deli drives us back over to Pinkham Notch the following morning and it's up to us to figure out how to make it back up to the top of Washington.

The bad news is that we're going to have to attempt to hitch which is still hella illegal (because then the AMC won't make any money off of us, big freakin' whoop). So we sneakily walk past the auto road gate and over to a convenience store where Stevie starts slyly soliciting rides from people who literally just paid at least 30 dollars to drive seven miles on a road.

A nice older couple has a pick up and we explain our situation to them, to which they decide, yes, they will give a ride. But first they have to ask permission from the Gatekeeper. Oh no, we're so gonna get in trouble. But luck is smiling on us this day, and the old man says, "Oh no, they aren't soliciting rides, I just offered to help them out" and then we're in the back of a truck on a dirt road climbing about five thousand feet.

The weather is perfect. It's super clear and this is quite possibly the most badass way to ride up to the top of Mount Washington.

At the top the couple takes pictures with us, gives us a business card, and tells us to stay in touch. Damn, sometimes people are just insane nice.

Back to business. It's time to do the Presidential Peaks, and I'm hella stoked.

The trail is a hellish haphazard piecing together of sharp jagged boulders and talus, but I ignore that. I'm too busy thinking about how much better it is to be above tree line than it is to be below it.

The day is beautiful and we can see about seventy miles in all directions and as we go I frequently turn back and trace our path with my finger.

The real challenge is Mount Madison, a steep poorly blazed boulder scramble and I begin to think of it as a "choose your own adventure" trail since I can't really follow a nonexistent blaze. We up and over and just like that, we're done with the Presidentials. Unfortunately the downhill is wicked steep, a field of massive boulders that seem sturdy enough until you put your full body weight on one, only to feel its 20,000 pounds of mass rock beneath your feet. It was scary y'all.

After going back down thousands of feet in a real short amount of time, we decide to cowboy camp on a tent platform since there's not really any good place to stay. The Whites never have any good places to camp, in all honestly. It's either do work for stay at a hut or pay eight bucks to sleep in a shelter that "maybe leaks" the caretaker tells us. Sweet.

But the weather seems like it's going to hold up through the night, so we take our chances, lay our pads out sardine style on a pad, and hope that moose don't trample us to death in our sleep.

Day 136, 137: Dodgin' rain.

136: 

Our hitch out of Conway is a former thruhiker (AT twice, PCT once). He lives out of his van and I can't help but think my future will be extremely similar to his.

My dad gets off before us to make his way up to Tuckerman Ravine, a shorter, albeit very steep hike to Mount Washington out of Pinkham Notch (4000 feet in 4 miles). We have an unceremonious goodbye, as all goodbyes end up being on the trail even though I haven't seen my dad in over a year and potentially that could happen again. But the trail does that to you. You never know when you'll see another hiker again, so goodbyes are almost nonexistent. It's grown on me.

Regardless, my dad has been a pillar throughout my life. An immutable source of strength, the foundation on which I build all my endeavors. Beyond being intelligent, athletic, and above all capable, he's always been there to instill that same wealth of confidence in me. Having him around for a few days allowed me to silence the anxiety surrounding my unknown illness and just put faith in my own abilities. Abilities that my dad has never doubted, even if I have. So it feels like a loss, but the recoil of the loss will propel me forward these last few weeks.

A few hours later and we're making our way up the not-so-gradual climb to Mount Washington. We've been trying to play the weather, and it seems like it might be in our favor, but with very few options of where to camp, we end up doing work for stay at the Mizpah Hut.

The AMC allows thruhikers to do work for stay on a hut to hut basis, and so you're kind of at the mercy of the employees at a particular hut. This particular hut ends up being very amiable and they have us sweep the basement, which we make quick work of. They attempt to feed us, but we're vegan and I'm gluten free so I basically just end up eating salad with no dressing. Cheyanne and Stevie get some minestrone soup and some bread. Sometimes I'm really jealous of stupid things like this (hiker hunger is real y'all) but the soup is from a bag and the bread was made by some chump with no baking experience, so I'm not so disappointed.

The employees end up trying to talk to us all freaking night (or you know, past 9:00) and I'm falling asleep standing up. They take a hint and we blow up our sleeping pads and lay them down between the tables in the dining room. The cook bangs around in the kitchen until almost midnight with the lights on, and I mostly regret my decision to stay here... But at least we didn't have to pay anything.

137:

It's almost 5:00 in the morning. The cook is back and they sound like they're throwing pots and pans around. I ignore it as long as I can but before long patrons start to wander down to the dining room and I'm forced to break down my "camp" on the floor between tables.

The kids workin' the hut want us to stay and help clean up bunks after breakfast, and that sucks because it means we won't be hiking until after 9:00. Oh well, the chores end up being easy and the forecast says Mount Washington will be clear and almost no chance of precipitation.

They were wrong.

Right about the time we get to Lakes of the Clouds Huts (plural on huts because I think the plural use of lakes is redundant as all get out and it becomes a running joke for us), we're totally immersed in a really dense, really wet cloud. Seriously, the wind is crazy and it's basically sleeting on us. I can only see about 30 feet in front of me as I make the final ascent up to Washington and I hear the tourists before I see them. Wow, what a fucking zoo.

I really wish they'd stop building roads to the tops of mountains. I seriously hate it. Nothing like hiking 1800 miles through "wilderness" to emerge into a faux Disneyland where they sell four ounces of lentil soup for $4. I hate this place, but outside is worse. It's sleeting and feels like it's below freezing.

Clear?! 4 percent chance of precipitation?! What the hell AMC!

We know that the next eight miles are on a really unforgiving, exposed ridge above tree line, so we ask the "rangers" at the "state park" what our best option is. 

We can either hike back to Lakes of(s) the(s) Clouds Hut(s) or pay 40 dollars (each) for a shuttle down to the notch. There's no hitchhiking down the Mt W auto road... But who's going to stop us?

It takes a surprisingly long time to find a ride, but when we make it down we get in touch with a bunch of the others hikers who made the same decision as us. Seems like no one wanted to hike over Madison in sleet today.

So we call up The Yellow Deli (hurrah hurrah!) and they assure us they'll be through the notch later to take us to their "hostel" in Lancaster. In the meantime we hangout at the AMC center in Pinkham Notch and teach all the hikers to play a charades-like game called "poop smoothie". The game basically forces you to guess whatever gibberish someone else wrote down and most of the cards end up being poop humor (hence the name) with a Slender Mane reference or two thrown in. Much fun is had by all and even though I feel like shit and go to the bathroom to sit on the toilet once every 5 minutes, making someone else guess "Stream Clean's naked body" is satisfying.

My best homies in the Twelve Tribes show up late... With lots of other hikers... And what looks like a truck designed to carry hay bales. Dang. Me and Stevie hop in the back of the truck and tuck ourselves under a giant tarp to block the wind then just try to zen out for the long ass drive to Lancaster.

At the Deli we grab some bunks, eat some shitty grocery store food, and pass out with our electronics plugged in to an outlet (what a luxury!).

131 - I don't even freaking know: The Whites with my dad.

First day is a zero in North Woodstock/Lincoln. The weather is shitty and there's no way I'm going above treeline again, so me and my dad hang out in town and he listens to me talk shit on section hikers for most of the day.

Day two is Kinsman Notch to Franconia Notch. Not a whole lot of pay off for a whole freaking lot of really difficult hiking. Probably 4000 to 5000 feet of ascent and descent and the trail is once again, massive boulders. This will be a reoccurring theme for the rest of the trail. My dad quickly realizes that despite his ironman status, this trail is no fucking joke. This will also be the day that my dad gets to witness how bad my stomach problems have become. Although we only do 16 miles, it takes us eleven hours and we end up in Franconia Notch with nowhere to camp. So we head back into Lincoln to camp at "Chet's". Chet is a trail angel with no desire to be in the AWOL guide, so instead there's a secret black dot on the map of Lincoln where Chet's house is. He lets hikers stay, but first he grills the shit out of them about the trail, just to make sure they're true thruhikers.

Day three. Franconia Ridge. God damn. I don't have anything to say really, I've been dreaming of this moment for the last year. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Day four. We each paid eight dollars to stay in a shelter. This will be the beginning of my disappointment with the AMC (Appalachian Trail Club), they maintain (profit off of) the trail in the Whites. On this day we walk through more massive boulder laden trails, slowing us down to less than a mile per hour at times, and end up back at another shelter (where we pay more money to sleep... in the woods).

Day five. Near-o into Crawford Notch. Get our boxes from the AMC highland center, hitch waaaay too far away into North Conway, hit up an awesome natural foods store, eat Thai food, watch Friends at the Quality Inn, and decide that tomorrow we must part with my dad. His schedule won't allow him to make it the full distance back down into the next notch with us, and so he decides that he'll take a side trail up to Mount Washington, just to tag the summit.

Hopefully this adventure has dissuaded him from ever attempting the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.

127: All the errands.

We aren't hiking, so I'll keep it brief.

We go get groceries (several miles from our hotel). 30 days worth of groceries. This is an incredibly hard task. Can you imagine planning everything you'll eat for the next month in one hour? 

We hitch back to the hotel, each with 30 days worth of groceries, laughing at our own stupidity and the absurd notion that we were somehow going to walk back with all these damn groceries.

A few hours later the hotel room is covered in grocery bags and discarded pieces of cardboard. Repackaging this much food is a total fucking pain but necessary.

Then we have to figure out how many days worth of food to put in what boxes. Much math, calorie counting, and generally boring stuff ensues.

But wait, Rush Hour is on?! Damn this movie is great, I forgot how funny Chris Tucker is. I'll just finish watching this and get back to my boxes later...

Two hours later, oh shit, Just Friends? This movie sucks but is hilarious in my calorie counting delirium! The boxes can wait.

Two hours later... What's this movie called? Something with Cameron Diaz. It's not funny but I'm busy eating this vegan gluten free pumpkin coffee cake with cream cheeze. Might as well be watching tv as well.

Two hours later. Damn, I really need to finish these boxes.

They aren't done until late at night, and by that time it's decided that I'll get very little sleep.

128, 129, 130: Prelude to the Whites.

There's about three days worth of hiking until we hit the Whites (the promised land) and these days are filled with insanely huge elevation gains and losses, 90 degree weather, 100 percent humidity, night hiking, episodes of intestinal distress, and in one case, a wild college party that kept me up all night (shouldn't have slept so close to the road).

But on the third day, I feel pretty decent and we get to climb Mount Moosilauke, the first of our challenges in the Whites. I'm supposed to meet my dad at the top at 4:00 pm (weird I know, but he's hiking through the Whites with us), but there's seventeen miles of ups and downs before I can even start my 4000 foot ascent, so I'm honestly pretty concerned that I won't make it.

But like always, I remember that I'm a total badass and basically run to the top, passing northbounders all the way, yelling, "The promised land! We did it! We made it!"

I'm so enthusiastic that I don't really notice the time passing and I'm up at summit by 1:30. I feel so good that I even summit the south peak, just for the heck of it.

The weather wasn't the greatness. The visibility was total shit and the wind gusts were insane, strong enough to knock me over even. So I headed back down into treeline on the other side.

Round about 4:00 my dad still hasn't showed up and the weather is becoming increasingly bad, so before we get rained on at 5000 feet, I decide to head down and see if I can find my dad. At the very best he got lost, at the very worst he's dead.

Little did I know that the descent would be twenty thousand times worse than the climb.

Let me paint you a picture, 2000 feet down in less than a mile down wet boulders with rebar and wooden steps (also wet) hammered into the sides of them. Why is everything wet? Oh, the trail goes down the side of a massive cascade called "Beaver Brook". Ask anyone in New Hampshire, they'll tell you how scary that shit is.

It takes us more than two hours to go the one mile, wow, but my dad is just chillin' at the bottom, smiling all crazy with a brand new set of super white veneers (we Bransons have bad teeth, my future is in veneers as well). I'm relieved to see him, on the way down I had decided that he for sure was dead. Lo and behold, he found us a hitch into town, a nice older lady that was slack packing her daughter (also a nouthbounder), and I have more than a small inkling as to why she's willing to drive all us smelly hikers in to town (and it has to do with bright white veneers and my dad's ironman triathlete status).

We end up at a really nice hostel (where they force you to take a shower before you can do anything else) and pass out thinking that tomorrow will probably be a zero.

Day 123, 124, 125, 126: The beginning of the end.

123:

The day starts with a climb. A long, moderate ascent up Mount Killington. I excel at these types of things and honestly, I'm looking forward to it.

My stomach still churns and bubbles and I feel pretty shitty, but the cadence of my feet quickly lulls me into a sort of reverie, and I can ignore the serpent in my intestines.

Before long I'm at the top, and I feel like the climb was total chump change. I forget that I'm a total badass hiker sometimes. The mountain is covered in fog or mist or clouds or whatever it is that literally every mountain with a "good view" on the AT is consumed by.

Regardless, the alpine vegetation is pretty awesome, a nice change from the constant suffocating feel of dense forest at lower elevations.

The rest of the day is a race to our "last box". What I mean is that it's the last box we sent ourselves before our hike, but we have to make a bunch more once we get into Hanover, New Hampshire.

By late afternoon we pick up our boxes at a lodge literally right off the trail, and without having anything better to do, decide to hitch into Rutland to stay at The Yellow Deli.

I'd heard a lot of rumors about this particular place and the Twelve Tribes people who run it ("it's a cult! don't drink the punch!"), but honestly, to me, it was a sort of sanctuary.

Yeah, it's run by a religious group, and yeah, they seem a bit weird in the way they dress and act, but in all seriousness, I would trade every baptist in the world for a twelve tribes member. I don't claim to know everything about their religion, but I do know several things. One, they never ministered to me. Two, they were insanely nice and accommodating. And three, they want almost nothing in return.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our hitch into Rutland is weird and our driver says some weird borderline racist stuff and I'm more uncomfortable hitching than I have been this entire hike, but he drops us off right at the hostel and I never have to speak to him again. Awesome.

Upon arrival at the hostel we're immediately approached by a girl with her hair tied back tight wearing what I can only call "pantaloons". She looks as if she's a big fan of Little House on the Prairie. She offers us mate and we decline after finding out that they add honey to almost everything. The hostel is upstairs and the deli is downstairs, but there's no distinction between the two.

Turns out that the "punch" here is actually mate. You know, the really strong South American tea that you drink out of a gourd? I'm not real sure why, but all of the other hikers act like they don't know what mate is and think it's gross. Also turns out that the Twelve Tribes own their own mate company, Mate Factor, and in addition to tea they make a variety of other mate products.

I digress. The point is, I order a mate latte with almond milk from their deli and it blows my mind. Maybe it's just been awhile since I've had some good mate but damn it's good. I understand why they basically worship this stuff now.

After consuming too much caffeine, I shower and put on the loaner clothes provided by the deli so we can do laundry. They're at least three sizes too big and so I roll my cuffs up, feeling a lot like a hobbit.

There's an overwhelming amount of hikers at the deli at this point, much too many to fit practically anywhere, so I end up sleeping in an overflow room behind the deli. Me and Stevie have to walk through their kitchen to get in and out of the room, and you'd think this would irritate or annoy employees, but they have a seemingly endless amount of patience for us.

I can't eat anything at the deli (vegan, gluten free, ya know), so I end up getting a frozen pizza from the grocery store, popping it into a microwave (sacreligious, I know), and scarfing it in my secret room behind the kitchen. Content and comfortable, I pass out still wearing my Frodo clothes.

124:

It's morning and the hostel providers have been up since probably 4:00 am making food for all 47 hikers.

We take over their entire restaurant and they literally serve us hand and food. Knowing that they won't have food for me and not wanting to be difficult I try to get some coffee without making a fuss, but of course one of the Twelve Tribes members notices me bumbling about without any food and makes it his personal mission to find something for me to eat. It takes him awhile and I feel awful, this man running around on my behalf, and he produces a vegan gluten free cereal and almond milk and bananas. Wow, he did it.

I get sucked into the vortex of town easily, spending way too long at the health food store down the street, and miss the first bus back out to the trail. Eventually though, we make it back, but it's already afternoon and we know we don't have much time to do huge miles, so we stop early at a place ambiguously named The Lookout.

The Lookout turns out to be a fully enclosed cabin with a rooftop deck. It's crazy badass and privately owned, and once again I wonder what kind of people spend this much time and money just for dirty hiker scum like us.

Some other hikers are already milling about, most of whom we know. It's very apparent that the hiker herds are thinning out quite dramatically. Which is nice. Not because I relish in others' failure, but because I value solitude and I'm not crazy stoked on trails and shelters filled to the brim with "hiker trash". A term that I don't really find endearing.

125:

As we near New Hampshire, the trail becomes increasingly difficult, and it's obvious. The elevation profile looks like a stegosaurus's spine, perhaps a small taste of what's to come.

There's also a lot of this:

Which can slow you down pretty dramatically.

Regardless, we march forward, pausing only to eat some snacks from a nearby farm (blueberries, rhubarb soda, pickles) and dodge some afternoon storms. Unfortunately the afternoon storms turn into evening storms and instead of hiking in the rain (which is complete and total misery) we wait it out, opting to night hike (which isn't much better when your headlamp totally sucks and you're in a crazy dark forest on a trail filled with roots and rocks).

Ghost pipe, a parasitic plant with no chlorophyll:

In the aftermath of the rain, me and Stevie trudge forward through trails completely covered in rain soaked vegetation, and quickly become just as soaked (negating our efforts to stay dry). 

It's not all bad though. We're walking towards a massive rainbow, unobscured by foliage. It arcs into the ground somewhere in the distance, vivid and sharp, and I can't help but think the end is somewhere in New Hampshire, our metaphorical pot of gold. Some deer lope by through the dense, tall grass, and seem more like unicorns from Fantasia in the rainbow strewn gathering orange of evening.

Soon enough it's night, and an hour or two later we arrive in a small town on the edge of Vermont. There's literally nothing there except a place to tent and a water spigot. On the roadwalk in, however, Hollywood (fellow hiker) runs up on me and Stevie from a nearby house. She says the locals are having a party and there's food and beer and... Wait a minute, you guys can't eat any of it and you don't drink huh?

So we move on. 

In town we find that Cheyanne somehow found a free "hostel" for AT hikers (aka garage apartment with some old beds) and better yet, there's a tv, VCR, and seemingly endless supply of VHSes (seriously, this place must also be a museum of bad 90s movies). She's already watching Jurassic Park, so we join in and fall asleep long before the plot even gets anywhere.

126:

Ten miles into Hanover. A good chunk is a roadwalk. Supposedly there's lots of trail magic to be found on the way in, but I don't see much of that. Must be because it's crazy early on Sunday. The only trail "magic" we get is an old man on a front porch yelling at us, "God bless Oklahoma!" he exclaims when we announce where we're from.

So just like that, we're in New Hampshire. The next two days will be full of errands, buying groceries, building boxes, and mailing ourselves the rest of our resupplies.

We picked Hanover for this endeavor because it has a lot of stores (including a coop), and is a "real" town.

First things first though. Thai food and espresso.

Afterwards we hitch into West Lebanon (where our hotel is) and spend the rest of the night watching bad movies on HBO, a favorite past time of ours when in town.

Day 122: Salvation is free.

Life on the AT is a constant struggle between injury and convalescence, health and illness, and in that regards, it's no different than normal life. Only, the possibility for injury/illness is much higher and it leans towards that end of the spectrum more often than not. Also, not like real life is the fact that regardless of malady, we still have to get up and move forward, miles and miles forward, every day.

Today is one of those days for me. All of my clothes are wet, I feel fatigued and somewhat sick, but the need to move forward is a higher priority. If you sit around for too long and think about how much it's going to suck, you'll never get anywhere, so it's better to adopt the mantra "ain't nothin' to it but to do it".

So I'm doing it.

Along the way we run into a clearing filled with cairns of all shapes and sizes. I'm not sure what the reason is, but it seems like the tradition in this area is to build a cairn before moving onward. Well, all the rocks are used up so instead I just take some pictures.

The weather isn't bad, and I honestly don't feel horrible, so I'm moving along at a somewhat decent pace, even though Stevie is far ahead of me. I walk up on him eating at a shelter and decide to hike out before him, knowing that I plan on going slow. I pass up eating as well, since I'm certain that snacks will only make my problems worse.

I make it to the top of a climb before I realize that not eating was a horrible, terrible, absolutely awful idea. I bonk so hard that I honestly don't know if I can go any farther, my hands are shaking, and I don't know what's wrong with me. With a sense of urgency and worry, I down all my remaining snacks for the day, Stevie passing me up along the way. I eat two macro bars, some coconut oil, almond butter, and two chocolates in about a five minute period.

This turns out to be worse than bonking, and almost immediately I feel like complete shit.

A few hours later it's getting dark, thunder is booming somewhere behind me, and I know that I'm not going to make it to the shelter. Sitting on the side of the trail, trying to gather energy and willpower enough to make it the final push in the dark, a local couple walks up on me.

We talk for a bit and they inform me that there's a "secret" shelter just off trail in a really short amount of time.

Secret shelter?! You mean I don't have to hike in the dark anymore and potentially get rained on and I can be alone and have intestinal problems alone and not be crazy uncomfortable around every other hiker on the trail?!

The shelter turns out to be weird. Real weird. First of all it's immediately off a logging road behind an abandoned tractor. Someone has obviously decorated the place, whether that be local kids or what, I have no idea. There's burned up candles everywhere, animal skulls, and random bits of what would otherwise be considered trash loosely strung up around the place. But it's a shelter. It has a roof, and I'm there, and I'm tired. And just I start to relax, it begins to rain.

But I made it. Sanctuary. I'm dry, I'm safe, and I might feel better tomorrow. So I drift off to sleep listening to the steady drum of rain on a tin roof.