Thru-Hiking Solo vs with a Group

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,Thru-Hike,AT Thru-Hike,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT,PCT Thru-Hike,Backpacking,Hiking,Long Distance Hiking,Long Distance Trail,UL Backpacking,CDT,Section Hiking,Tramily,Trail Family

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hey guys it's Darwin here today to talk about the differences between thru-hiking solo and through hiking with a group

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all right so let me first start off by saying there's this big misconception that whenever you go to do a thru-hike like the Appalachian Trail that you're going to be out on the trail for four to six months completely by yourself trapped in this beautiful nature landscape where you're going to connect with yourself and find out who you are being completely alone with your thoughts and the reality of it is it's not true there are so many people that do long distance trails especially trails like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail that it's pretty rare that you're alone there might be a couple times throughout the day while you're hiking that you can be alone with your thoughts but for the most part in the morning when you wake up at night when you're at camp and even whenever you stop to take breaks during the day that you're going to be running into a lot of other hikers so I've seen a lot of questions and concerns on Facebook about am I going to be hiking solo and being by myself or will I be able to be around other people so there's obviously the question that comes up do I want to be a solo hiker and experience this trail by myself or do I want to be in a group like a tramway a tramway is a trail family it's the people that maybe you meet the first couple of nights that you're out and then you tend to hike with everyday it might not even be hiking with them throughout the day but at least you start out at the same place end at the same place they become the people that you kind of hang out with every day they become your family so I wanted to talk about the pros and the cons of having a tramway versus hiking solo so in 2015 when snuggles and I set out to hike the Appalachian Trail you know we had this stuff that we're going to be out there as a couple for four to six months completely alone and hiking together we were actually really looking forward to the opportunity of doing that because we hadn't really been together since we've been married that long with each other for four to six months every single day so we were kind of looking forward to that to our surprise it didn't work out that way we ended up meeting a couple cat the first night we were out and we ended up hiking a lot of miles with them one of the guys in particular named rube we hiked over 1,300 miles with so he became really really close with us and you know having a tramway was really amazing for us so I think one of the number-one pros of hiking with a group or a tramway is community while you're out there you know you're you're putting yourself through a lot of stress not only physical stress but mental stress of it's hard I'm wet I'm cold so having that community and some other hikers to lean against at the end of a bad day or during a bad day is really really important you can connect with those people and you can swap stories kind of let out your stress and frustration and worries and you know they help lift you up and make you feel better so that's a really really positive thing about hiking with a tramway and I would say the other Pro about hiking with a group are making miles you know if you find a certain person that you hike with every day and you're hiking about the same pace it helps blow away those miles so if you're doing like a 15 to 20 mile a day and you know it's going to be a hard day it's pouring down rain or it's cold it helps pass the time and let that hike go on faster and get you to camp faster where you have someone to share it with and then kind of a goofy one but very true when you're hiking with a group it's easier to get hotel rooms so sometimes whenever you come into a trail town there's the option of staying in a bunk at a hostel but there's also some cheap hotels along the trail so hiking what the group allows you to take a hotel room that say maybe $80 and split it between four to six people that you're hiking with some people are sleeping in beds some people are sleeping on the floor but it kind of gives you a little bit more of a personal experience and staying in a hostel with a bunch of other hikers that you don't really know so a lot of times in 2015 snuggles and I would stay in a lot of hotels for the simple fact that we had other hikers to split a room with so it made it much easier and much cheaper in the long run so some of the cons of hiking with a tramway our number one you're not really on your own schedule so if you're hiking with other people kind of beginning the day you're all discussing well what type of mileage we're going to put in today and you know there might be some people in your group that want to hike longer miles than you do so it's kind of this collaboration and this community where you have to decide am I going to hike less miles and I want to or am I going to hike more miles so that is one kind of hiking with a tram late you're not really necessarily hiking your own hike as the term goes you're kind of hiking as a group and making decisions as a group and that's also true with staying in a town you know there's some of the times where I'm glad we did now but there were some towns that snuggles and I never planned on staying in hostels and hotels that we never planned on staying at but because of the group that we were hiking with wanted to we ended up doing it anyways now those were much needed Nero and zero days that we needed to take anyways but there were some of those times where we didn't necessarily want to but we ended up doing it because it was a group decision another kind of hiking in a group is hitching into town so if there's this big group of hiker trash standing on the side of the road and you have this one car that's coming by that maybe has room for two people and there are six people with their thumb out it's really hard to get a hitch so one of the things that you can actually do is split up and that's what we had to do a lot so if we were going to hitch about five miles down into a town our group would have to split up into twos and then eventually we would have to meet up with each other when we got to town and I would think probably the biggest con would be like having any other family eventually you really get to know those people you start to open up more and you start getting on each other's nerves you start finding out things about each other that you know you might not like that might annoy you and you kind of fight just like any other family you argue yargh you over you know what towns you're going to stay in you argue about miles which is just small and petty and it's easy to get wrapped up in that stuff but that is a con you know whenever you go out there and you you first meet people you kind of want to have this new relationship and as you spend more time with them it starts becoming like your family at home and you start being a little more open with those people so that can definitely be a bad thing about hiking with groups so in 2016 when snuggles and I returned to the trail to finish our last 600 miles it was really important for us to kind of have a different type of hike so even though we were willing to travel a little bit with other people and maybe hang out with people every once in a while we really wanted to have more of a solo experience so just me and snuggles just us staying in hotels and hostels not splitting a room with anybody but just us so when we went out you know we had that mindset and you know even though we had that mindset we still ended up hanging out with the handful of people and kind of flip-flopping back and forth with some people that kind of became our new tram Lee another thing is it was really hard for us to imagine connecting that way with anybody else when we went back because it kind of felt like we left our tramway in 2015 those people you know like rube our friends Sider our friend hot sauce we got really close with those people so it's kind of like it was trapped in this bubble in this kind of time of 2015 we couldn't imagine having that same connection with people so some of the pros of hiking solo were obviously flip-flop of the cons of hiking with a group so snuggles and I were able to dial back our miles if we wanted to if we got up in the morning we were planning on doing a 20-mile day and we only got 15 miles in we were ok with stuff and we didn't have to worry about catching up with somebody else if there was a day where we just wanted to push it and do more miles past a shelter we did it so that was one of the pros of hiking solo you know snuggles and I aren't necessarily solo we're a couple but to us it was hiking solo versus hiking with the group that we did in 2015 and then another pro was you know experiencing things just snuggles and I I think that 2016 our relationship got a little bit stronger because it was just us leaning on each other versus leaning on some other hikers and connecting with other hikers we had a bad day it was us talking together and if I was having a bad day snuggles was lifting me up if she was having a bad day I was lifting her up so it kind of allowed us to become a little bit closer now I would imagine being solo and just going out by yourself you don't have that that same person to lean upon so you really have to lean upon yourself in 2018 I'll be going out to through hike the PCT and I'll be doing that solo without snuggles so it's kind of hard for me to imagine not having that person to kind of be there for me and to lean upon and to talk to so that'll be a really interesting experience and then I think I'll be able to get a little more of a mindset of what it is to hike completely solo so you know like I said regardless if you want to or not you will be around other hikers you might make those bonds and you might not you might go solo from my experience I think that if you're going to go out there and you're by yourself and you're not with a partner like I was with snuggles get into a tramway it was a really great experience I had some really great times and you know that has led to long lasting relationships I still talk to all of those people that were in my tramway and I'm still pretty close to them we still communicate back and forth on Facebook and Instagram and we're still close so it's good to have those lifetime connections so hopefully that helped kind of give you a little bit of an idea of what it's like to hike solo versus hiking with a group and you know make that decision based on the type of hike that you want to have okay I'm going to change it go over and check me out on Instagram and posting a lot of new photos of some of the things smoother than I have going on plus some pictures of shakedown hikes for my upcoming section hike of the Continental Divide Trail go ahead and like or dislike this video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music]

you

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