Before hitting the 100-Mile Wilderness, Appalachian Trail hikers tell tales of hunger

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 6, 2023

The Appalachian Trail is some 2,200 drenched, sweaty, bug-bitten, frigid, achy – and euphoric – miles up and down and up and down and up and down from Spring Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin. If you think that AT thru-hikers get the formidable energy they need to hike as many as 22 miles a day, with loaded packs, in challenging terrain by eating nutritionally correct diets – heavy on the whole grains, fruit, vegetables and healthy proteins; low on the sugar and salt – you’d be mistaken. Sugar and salt might as well be basic food groups for AT hikers.