My AT Shakedown Hike in Texas…An Epic Fail??

Many class of 2019 Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hikers are currently obsessing over gear right now. With only a few months left before hitting the trail, everyone seem to be fretting. Every blog or YouTube channel is publishing content about lighter hiking gear, better hiking gear, or even luxury gear.

Don’t get me wrong, your gear is definitely an important element of preparation. We all adore the items on our packing lists. But, understanding what setup works best on trail all just theoretical until you get out there test it out on an actual trail.

Planning my shakedown hike

Putting my AT gear through the ringer was something I desperately needed to do. I haven’t been on anything longer than a day hike since I returned from Spain at the beginning on October 2018.

So, I decided to do on a mid-February backpacking trip on the Lone Star Hiking Trail (LSHT) near Houston, Texas.

There isn’t much elevation change on the LSHT, but it seemed like a perfect length for a multi-day trip. At 96 miles, it’s longer than virtually any section of the Appalachian Trail that I’d encounter between resupply stops this summer.

The LSHT is also far enough south that I wouldn’t need to pack any extra winter gear. I could find a window of moderate weather in February and take my pack exactly as it’s configured for my upcoming AT thru-hike.

But, as you may have guessed from the title of this blog, things didn’t go so well…

The LSHT was so muddy that I spent the bulk of my time trying to navigate around flooded trail. And after three grueling days, I decided I’d had enough.

But, I definitely learned enough lessons to make it well worth the trip.

Shakedown Lesson #1 – Don’t be stubborn

I’m a type-A person, and I have a tendency to set mileage goals in my mind. Once that number gets set, I have a very hard time nudging off it. Simply put:  I. AM. STUBBORN.

When I first looked at the maps for the LSHT, I thought to myself. “Hmmm. I can totally rock that trail in 5 days. That’s less than 20 miles of hiking per day. I was averaging 21 miles a day on the Camino de Santiago. This will be a piece of cake.”

What I didn’t take into consideration was my current physical condition. When I set out on the Camino last September, I was in peak shape. I’d spent the entire summer hiking trails and venturing up some really hard peaks. My body (and feet) were in great condition.

The past few months of winter though, I’ve been hanging out near the beach. I’ve hardly done any serious hiking. So, it was completely foreseeable that I wouldn’t be able to hike multiple 20-mile days without feeling a lot of pain.

Nonetheless, I still set this absurd mileage goal for myself. And once it was stuck in my mind, that was that!

As it turns out, the trail conditions on the LSHT were unexpectedly bad in early 2019. Instead of cruising down the trail and making miles, I was hopping from one muddy and mucky mess to the other all day long! Ugh!

And in the process of trying to keep my feet semi-dry, my plantar fasciitis started acting up and I got some serious blisters.

But I just kept going mile after mile. It was like I was on a death march to my pre-destined stop at mile 20 on Day 1. And, to be brutally honest here – it kind of sucked!

The next day, I got up and did it all over again.

And when I got up on the third day, I had a revelation. Why in the world was I killing myself for this silly mileage goal? Why was I continuing to hike a muddy trail that was giving me no joy?

If I was really out there to test out my gear for the Appalachian Trail, I had all the data I needed to make adjustments.

So that’s when I decided I was done with the LSHT. I’d get to mile 55, and then I’d head back home at the end of day 3.

I’m not normally a quitter. But you know what?? Plodding along in the mud on blistered feet and climbing over blow downs wasn’t going to make me a better person. There wasn’t a finisher’s medal at the end of the trail. Wasn’t listening to my body the wiser choice?

What did I learn for the Appalachian Trail? 

• Don’t set arbitrary goals; not all miles are created equal
• Settle on the distance your body can do in its current condition
• If you really expect to do bigger miles on the AT, then you need get your butt out on the trail these next few months and hike with ALL your gear to get stronger!

Shakedown lesson #2 – Balance your first aid supplies

I’ll admit that I tend to carry way too many first aid supplies on shorter hikes. My daypack looks like a walking pharmacy with band-aids, athletic tape, ankle wraps, body glide, ibuprofen, Benadryl, etc.

This over-preparation isn’t because I’m a hypochondriac. It’s because I’m a wife and mother. My husband has a knack for hitting his head on things during hikes. And our pre-teen son regularly stumbles while he’s running and jumping around the forest like a wild thing. So, mom needs to be prepared for lots of contingencies.

Over the winter months though, I took a long, hard look at all the first aid supplies I was carrying, and I decided I could really downsize quite a bit for my thru-hike.

I ditched my normal first aid kit and decided to go with a small handful of items in a small ziplock baggie for this hike. In hindsight though, I went way too sparse in my downsizing. I was like someone watching a Marie Kondo video who  decided to radically purge their house and now had nowhere to sit.

This quest to minimize my first aid supplies came to light almost immediately. At the end of Day 1 on the LSHT, my feet were pretty torn up. This was mostly because I didn’t stop to take care of my feet (like I should have done) when they first started hurting.

In my own defense, everything from my shins down was caked in mud. So I figured, “what’s the point? I’ll clean up at the end of the day.”

Unfortunately, deciding to ‘tough it out’ all day only increased the damage I did to my feet. I had blisters on the balls of my feet. I had blisters between my toes. There were even blisters on the side of my heels!

And when I finally broke out my baggie of first aid supplies at the end of the day, I had just enough there to bandage myself up overnight. What was going to happen when everything came loose in the next day’s moist trail and mud?

Luckily, my sister was coming out to join me for my third day on the trail, so I was able to send her a frantic text message requesting her entire medicine cabinet when she showed up. (Thank goodness for family!!)

What did I learn for the Appalachian Trail?

• Stop to fix hot spots before they get out of control
• Your biggest need for first aid supplies is probably at the beginning of a hike
• Don’t go crazy with the downsizing what already works just to cut weight

Shakedown lesson #3 – Know how all your gear works

Like may thru-hikers, I was super excited to get a new backpacking tent for Christmas. In fact, we set it up immediately to admire it and make sure it fit my needs.

This new tent cost a lot of money though. So a few weeks later, I decided I really wanted to protect my investment, and I purchased the footprint designed specifically for it.

I didn’t bother to put the tent together again with the footprint. After all, I’ve owned many, many tents over the years. How hard could it be??

As it turns out, this particular footprint had some unusual clips on it that I’d never seen before. And they were supposed to connect to the tent in a unique way instead of being staked out.

I didn’t know this silly little fact though, because I didn’t put everything together before I started my shakedown hike.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at my camping spot at the end of my first day on the LSHT, the sun was already starting to go down. I’d taken much longer in the muddy conditions than I expected, so I was racing daylight to get everything put together.

That’s when I realized that not only was I exhausted, but I didn’t know how to get my stupid tent footprint secure. I jimmy-rigged something and it seemed to hold. So, I figured it was good enough for the night and I could spend more time looking at it the next day.

At the end of my second day on the LSHT, I arrived to my camping spot earlier and had more time to set up my tent. I decided I was finally ready to take on the task of figuring out how those clips for the footprint worked.

But as I spread everything out, I discovered there was a new problem. I seemingly lost one of the clips when I was packing up that morning. So, once again, I was jimmy-rigging a new solution to keep it secure overnight.

And once I got back home, I had to contact the tent company and try to get a replacement part. All this drama because I was too lazy to simply set the entire tent system before I started my shakedown hike!

What did I learn for the Appalachian Trail?

• If you change your gear, spend some time getting to know all its features
• Don’t assume your new gear will work the same way your old gear did
• Always carry a little extra cord or tape with you for a make-shift solution when something goes missing

So was my shakedown hike and epic fail?

All in all, my hike didn’t go as planned. I didn’t blissfully or easily hike the full 96 miles of the Lone Star Hiking Trail.

But, I certainly learned a lot of useful tips that will help me as I continue to prepare for my upcoming AT thru-hike. And that makes it all worth the while, right?

Of course, these aren’t the only things I learned during my shakedown hike. So, I’ll be sharing my some more do’s and don’ts about hiking food in an upcoming post.

In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about the LSHT, here’s few resources I used for my planning:

• Maps of Lone Star Hiking Trail
• Official Guide to the Lone Star Hiking Trail
• Lone Star Hiking Trail Club