Our American Discovery Trail Hike - 2005

Our on-trail journals are posted at www.TrailJournals.com/GottaWalkADT.  

Eventually I'll copy the journal entries to this website and put up more pictures.

See our mail drop schedule in the ADT Itinerary link above.

We completed our hike at 4:30 pm on October 15, 2005 

becoming the first to backpack the American Discovery Trail  in one continuous hike. 

We even made an appearance on the Today Show the morning after completing our hike.

Click on a state to see the route through that state.

This was our goal when we started preparing for a thru-ADT hike.

Our goal is to walk a continuous path, all in one direction from Cape Henlopen, Delaware to Point Reyes, California. We believe that we can walk the entire trail in 8 months and time our crossing of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada so as not to have to contend with snowy passes. We will carry our backpacks and all our camping equipment the whole way.

We want to thank the American Discovery Trail Society for their help determining the route and maps for our adventure. We have also gotten lots of offers of help from people interested in our hike. We will meet many of them along the trail.

After our hike we have been getting questions from others interested in hiking the ADT. We have started posting collections of information to help others. Look for more to come

We wonder if those expressing interest in hiking the ADT recognize the magnitude of the hike. To help them plan their hike we put together a simple spreadsheet for estimating travel time for an ADT hike. The spreadsheet also indicates some of the weather problems hikers face in certain months.

Information about water caching and alternates routes are being posted by states.