AT Thru Hike Budget

Description

In This Video I Yak about how much money I saved & used on my 2015 Hike of the Appalachian Trail, tips on how to budget, & some advice on great places to stay along the trail.

Music By: Thunder/Dreamer

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Tags: Thru-hiking,Hiking (Sport),Appalachian National Scenic Trail (Protected Site),Backpacking (Sport)

Video Transcription

how's it going it's Darwin again so today I wanted to kind of talk about the whole money situation on doing it through hike and the money situation on the Appalachian Trail so there's a lot of talk and questions about how much does it cost to do it through hike how much does the typical person take for it through hike is it $2,000 do you need ten thousand dollars it really all depends on you it definitely depends on the individual what type of things the individual likes food whether you're going to be the partying type that likes to you know drink and stuff whenever you get into towns if you like the luxury of staying in hostels pretty much two times a week you can definitely do it and you can definitely rack up some money so personally snuggles and I spent we saved up $8,000 for our hike this past year granite we only went from Springer Mountain to Great Barrington Massachusetts just over 1,500 miles and had to get off the trail a little bit early but with that eight thousand dollars in the four month period that we were on the trail a little over four months 1,500 miles that we were on the trail we spent right at six thousand dollars so that was three thousand dollars a piece so we started our hike on four thousand dollars apiece now it can definitely be easier if you have somebody to split cost with like hotel rooms or shuttles or anything else that you might run into out there so that definitely helped but I think that the average person can probably do a really decent through hike for $4,000 and that's staying in certain hostels getting laundry done eating somewhat okay food as best as you can and enjoying some of the things that the trail has to offer aside from the actual trail itself so it's definitely important to everyone swim I'll get off the trail take a little break rest up and there's a lot of great hostels and a lot of great hotels and stuff along the trail that you can do that they kind of get your mind off the trail for little bit recharge yourself because out there it's a huge mental game and you definitely want to make sure that you don't overdo it and wear yourself out on just thinking about the trail all the time so there's definitely some cool spots like Damascus hot springs Erwin Tennessee these are all really great little hiker towns that you can get off maybe take a day or two get a hostel or a hotel and kind of take take it easy do something a little different party with some more hiker trash so snuggles and I personally stayed in a hotel or hostel about once a week sometimes a little longer and mainly the the main reason to do that was to not only take a little bit of a break but obviously to take a shower wash clothes send away for some stuff from our family and just kind of get in contact with people so about a week was what we did there are some people out there that kind of stay at a hostel or a hotel about three times a week it just kind of all depends on what kind of hike you are and what kind of crowd that you're roaming with another really good budget-conscious thing to do is if you're hiking with a nice group of people like say five people you get a hotel room you can split the cost of the hotel room so it's much cheaper on you to get a shower to do laundry and actually stay somewhere that's not in your tent or not in the shelter for the night

so speaking of hostels and hotels some really key places that I suggest that pretty much everybody check out and that I stayed at are as follows number one a bunch of people kind of say don't stay there some people say you stay there it depends on what kind of crowd you're rolling with standing bear hostile standing bear hostile is the first thing pretty much that you come to whenever you exit the Smoky Mountains it's a great little place I've heard a lot of people kind of talk bad about Standing Bear say it's too much of a party place I didn't see that at all it was a great little place to stay a really rustic hand built by the original owner nice little bunk room pretty little resupply shop definitely check it out don't pass it up it's really worth a stay another place whenever you get to Hot Springs North Carolina which is going to be the first bigger town that you come to after the Smokies Ellmers is Ayden must stay Elmer's has been around for years

Elmer himself is an amazing host I think there's only like maybe five or six rooms in the entire house it's an old Victorian house that you can rent out one of the rooms and even split you know split some rooms with some hiker friends or with your wife like I did and just a great little place to unload there's no TV there's no internet there's not even any self-service there so it's a really good place to just kind of unwind and unhook from everything and he himself fixes amazing food he's a vegetarian chef so he always fixes really really great food you usually eat breakfast or dinner you can stay and actually sit around the table with him and he'll prepare you like a three-course dinner so definitely recommend checking out Elmer's and Hot Springs Damascus Damascus is a huge milestone for the trail it's the first town that you come to in Virginia and it's known as hiker town USA so being hiker town USA there's multiple hostels there's the place there's Dave's place the one I really really liked

I stayed there the first time we went through Damascus and then when we came back to Damascus for 12 days we stayed at again was woodchucks hostel woodchucks hostel is phenomenal woodchuck is a previous through hacker like most of the hostel owners and he opened up a couple years ago has a nice little house but the big key great thing about it is with your stay he makes an awesome all-you-can-eat wall for breakfast in the morning that's fantastic we stayed there for two days whenever we came through Damascus the first time to kind of unload and get some stuff done and then the second time when

we came back for trail days we stayed there three days and actually tinted in his front yard so definitely check out wood chucks hostel it's a really great place really loved it now there's definitely some hiker traps out there what I mean by hiker traps is there's definitely the some of the hiker towns like Hot Springs and Damascus Damascus not so much but definitely hot springs that have some some hiker entertainment some bars and stuff that you can definitely get sucked in as they called it the vortex you could definitely get vortex into some of these places and spend a little bit longer and a little more money than you want to do is obviously when you're out in the woods you're hiking all the time and you're doing it through hike the smallest little things can seem pretty appealing to you if they just breaks up the monotony now obviously as you get further up the trail the hostels kind of become less and less until you get to Maine it's it mainly comes down to staying it really cheap kind of crummy hotels which obviously aren't bad if you haven't had a shower in a week and you need to wash your clothes anything will do so you can definitely find those throughout the trail as you know if you have a group of say five hikers split in one of those rooms between five people can be pretty inexpensive like 15 to 20 bucks a person for a good place to sleep a good place to take a shower and then be able to do some coin laundry or something so all through Pennsylvania pretty much everywhere there's good little cheap crappy hotels whenever you get more up into Maine and stuff that's when the hostels start picking up again but the hostels get much more expensive and hotels also get much more expensive so definitely watch where you're staying and watch how you're spending your money so yeah again the budget that worked for me was technically four thousand dollars snuggles and I saved up eight thousand dollars took four piece we ended up spending six thousand dollars in the 1,500 miles that we were on the trail and had two thousand dollars left so I think that we could have definitely gotten our hike done on less than $8,000 but that's what worked for us obviously if you're much more budget conscious you don't go into towns you don't go to things like trail days which we did you don't I think we seen a movie whenever we were in Pennsylvania we went to the theater to see Jurassic Park we went to a few bars every once awhile and had some beer if you don't do things like that you're really budget conscious and you're just really focused on your hike getting from Georgia to Maine I think that anybody can probably do a thru-hike on $2,000 pretty easy so it's pretty much all up to you your comforts on the trail and kind of what you want it's definitely worth making more of an experience and experiencing more out there than just hiking because it is a very social trail so it's all up to you so hopefully that helped with get your budget ready and leave me some comments below tell me what you think like or dislike my video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always thanks so much for watching

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