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Couples Thru-Hike

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    • Couples Thru-Hike

      Hey everyone!

      My fiancée and I are thru-hiking the AT in 2017. This has been a big dream of both of ours for quite some time and so we decided to take the time between undergraduate and graduate school to make our dream a reality. We are both writers and amateur photographers and so we will be writing and taking photos along the way. I know this is all incredibly premature, but we already have a blog and an Instagram account set up documenting our training and musings. Feel free to read along here on our blog or check out our Instagram account. Also, if anybody has advice on thru-hiking as a married couple...we would love to hear from you.

      Grace and peace,

      Morgan and Logan
    • Ecstatically divorced pack sniffer here, so also no advice, but WELCOME TO THE CAFE, and best of luck in your planned hike.

      Okay I lied, I do have some advice: get out and hike all you can.
      Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. - Robert E. Lee
    • Search "Julie Urbansky" if you have a Kindle. She has written a few books about hikes with her husband, one of which, "Between a Rock and a White Blaze" is about their AT hike.

      She takes some heat for being a whiny ass, dare I say, bitch, but I've decided it's unfounded. I felt that way too and several times along the way I wanted to give up on the book, but I stuck around waiting for her "AHA!" moment. It never came. What did come was the realization that she's pure and telling it like it is without glossing it over. Once that set in I actually enjoyed the book.

      Anyway, read the damn thing, you might like, lol.

      P.S. I still have it on my Kindle so if you do have one PM me your email address associated with it and I'll loan the book to you.
      If your Doctor is a tree, you're on acid.
    • Make sure you discuss what you're going to do when the day comes that one of you can go on and another needs to abandon the hike. I've seen thru-hiker marriages fail when that happened.

      Aside from that, I've little to say. I could take my wife hiking, or I could stay married. I prefer the latter, so I go hiking without her.
      I'm not lost. I know where I am. I'm right here.
    • I've never thru-hiked, just some really long section hikes. I've observed numerous married couples on the trail, and some father-son and father-daughter couples. The famous Barefoot Sisters journals may also be enlightening. (Dynamics between two adult sisters on the trail.)

      Anyway -- one thing I've noticed is that they often don't walk together. They meet on breaks and at camp, but they're often separated on the trail by a good chunk of a mile, and definitely out of view and out of earshot.

      My wife doesn't hike. I've got a lady friend I hike with occasionally. Peak-bagging winter day hikes in the White Mountains. We aren't close friends, apart from hiking. Sometimes we chat while we walk, sometimes we're a hundred yards apart. I tend to lead on the uphills in the morning, she leads on the downhills on the way home.
    • It just dawned on me that there were two married couples I followed on thrus. One made it, the other didn't due to injury. Both did videos and blogs.

      Hitched Hike, the ones who made it:

      youtube.com/user/jeremyds37

      TNT, who unfortunately didn't. However, if you want a beautiful story about two people deeply in love, this is it.

      youtube.com/user/TNTonthetrail


      Hitched Hike's FB page

      facebook.com/HitchedHike/?fref=ts
      Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. - Robert E. Lee
    • My wife and I do our hiking and backpacking together most, but not all, of the time.
      We haven't done anything near a thru hike. I'd guess 3 weeks is the longest we've been out.
      The best, and most concise advice I can give you is to be flexible.
      If you have any specific questions post them here.
    • When I went to Trail Days 2008, I met a very cool young married couple with their 2 crazy beagles. Trail names: Kyanite and Sunkist. Since they couldn't take the beagles into Baxter State Park and so up to Mt. Katahdin, they took lifesize pictures/posters of them to the summit. They hung with a great group of other hikers who I had the pleasure to meet and hang out with at Trail Days. Here's a link to their TJ: Ian & Christina's TJ
    • Foresight wrote:

      Search "Julie Urbansky" if you have a Kindle. She has written a few books about hikes with her husband, one of which, "Between a Rock and a White Blaze" is about their AT hike.

      She takes some heat for being a whiny ass, dare I say, bitch, but I've decided it's unfounded. I felt that way too and several times along the way I wanted to give up on the book, but I stuck around waiting for her "AHA!" moment. It never came. What did come was the realization that she's pure and telling it like it is without glossing it over. Once that set in I actually enjoyed the book.

      Anyway, read the damn thing, you might like, lol.

      P.S. I still have it on my Kindle so if you do have one PM me your email address associated with it and I'll loan the book to you.
      I believe I downloaded it for free from Amazon, and while I finished it, I unfortunately never reached the point where I enjoyed it. One of the few AT books I didn't. On a positive note, it did make me appreciate my wife a whole lot more!
      The road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.
      Richard Ewell, CSA General