Confidence

A question I've had from a lot of people is "Why do you think you'll manage it?" and, truth be told, I'm not actually sure I can manage it.  But I'll give a jolly good go at it.  I've read about and listened to people about and researched the trail and as far as I can see it's absolutely awful, difficult and no one should do it.

...and yet...

People do.  I'll try to.

So why do I think I have a chance?
Well, I'm fairly young and fit so that's a bonus but that doesn't guarantee anything.  I've previous hiking experience, though obviously nothing this long.  The longest I've been backpacking or hiking for is nearly three weeks in Greenland, but that isn't really the same deal anyway as we often made basecamps and rarely had to haul everything from A to B. Over summer I attempted the West Highland Way, but before I could finish was poisoned! caught Noro virus.  It's an unpleasant, disgusting disease that I'll let other people research; and only ended that attempt because I was on a strict schedule.  The AT will be much more flexible about being delayed a day or two by an icky diseases, that I hopefully won't catch again.

All of that adds up to not the best odds in the world, but certainly not the worst.  I could do some maths, but statistics are the work of the devil; instead I'll just guess with blind confidence that I'm somewhere on the good side of the bell-curve for chance to succeed.  And with that I'll give the hike a go!

What's the worst that could possibly happen?








That said..
There are some rules and tricks to make it easier, but the only thing hiking such a long trail can be compared to is... hiking one of the many other long trails.  There are quite few of them, I've linked the other two that comprise the Triple Crown Of America, which is definitely not something I also want to do in the future nope, and the European Long-distance Paths; but there are many others.
The most common tip I've come across is 'Don't quit on a bad day'.  Don't decide to stop because the weather is miserable, it's raining, everything's wet and nothing is comfortable.  Only quit on a good day so you know that you want to quit, not just that you want out of the cold.
Another common tip is to think of it not as one impossibly long hike.  You go back to town once every few days to resupply, so maybe think of it as lots of smaller hikes for a week or so.  That you just do over and over and over and over and over and over [....] and over.