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Split it up and start now; there's no reason to wait because you think you have to do it all in one go. You can always do that, but you can carve it up into mea

Split it up and start now; there's no reason to wait because you think you have to do it all in one go. You can always do that, but you can carve it up into meaningful week or less pieces and go for it. ex: Banff to the US border is a pretty easy 3 days.

mauvehaus 2y ago
Having thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, I can tell you that most thru-hikers are pretty awed by the people who have racked up serious miles section hiking a week at a time. Regardless of where home is for you, at some point the logistics get challenging. Most of Maine, for example, is miles and miles from a useful airport, and even bus service is pretty sparse. It wouldn't be hard to spend as much time getting to and from the trail as it would be to actually hike/ride it. A couple years ago, my wife and I thru-hiked the Long Trail. We looked pretty hard at taking a bus to the start, but couldn't come up with an itinerary that took less than two days. Her parents ended up both driving us to the start and spotting our car at the finish. The finish is in the middle of goddamn nowhere; the start is near a fairly large city in western MA. It sure seemed like it should've been easier. For our honeymoon, we did a couple hundred miles of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The nearest place to the start to return a rented vehicle of any sort was a neighborhood U-haul (as in, not a corporate location; think a gas station with a couple trucks). And then we still needed a 1 1/2 hour shuttle ride to Old Forge. We spotted our car to the end of the trip and threw our boat in the back of the truck to get to the start.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  For the GDT the start is pretty easy to get to (Banff is ~1.5 hr from Calgary Airport, flights from anywhere) but the finish in NM is also in the middle of nowhere. The only saving grace is that the finishing season is typically compact enough that you can organize some sort of transportation. Most of the thru riders end the videos or logs at the border; it would be helpful if they showed how they got home from the middle of the desert.

mauvehaus 2y ago

Having thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, I can tell you that most thru-hikers are pretty awed by the people who have racked up serious miles section hiking a week at a time. Regardless of where home is for you, at some point the logistics get challenging. Most of Maine, for example, is miles and miles from a useful airport, and even bus service is pretty sparse. It wouldn't be hard to spend as much time getting to and from the trail as it would be to actually hike/ride it. A couple years ago, my wife and I thru-hiked the Long Trail. We looked pretty hard at taking a bus to the start, but couldn't come up with an itinerary that took less than two days. Her parents ended up both driving us to the start and spotting our car at the finish. The finish is in the middle of goddamn nowhere; the start is near a fairly large city in western MA. It sure seemed like it should've been easier. For our honeymoon, we did a couple hundred miles of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The nearest place to the start to return a rented vehicle of any sort was a neighborhood U-haul (as in, not a corporate location; think a gas station with a couple trucks). And then we still needed a 1 1/2 hour shuttle ride to Old Forge. We spotted our car to the end of the trip and threw our boat in the back of the truck to get to the start.

skeeter2020 2y ago
For the GDT the start is pretty easy to get to (Banff is ~1.5 hr from Calgary Airport, flights from anywhere) but the finish in NM is also in the middle of nowhere. The only saving grace is that the finishing season is typically compact enough that you can organize some sort of transportation. Most of the thru riders end the videos or logs at the border; it would be helpful if they showed how they got home from the middle of the desert.