Backpacker Long Trails

Liz Thomas broke the women’s self-assisted speed record on the 2,181-mile long Appalachian Trail, besting the previous record by almost a week, in 2011. She has completed the Triple Crown of Hiking–the Appalachian Trail, the 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail, and the 3,100 mile Continental Divide Trail–and has backpacked over 15,000 miles across the United States on 20 long distance hikes, including the pioneering traverse of the Chinook Trail across the Columbia River Gorge and the pioneering traverse of the Wasatch Range, which she did solo. Liz has been featured in Backpacker magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! News, Outside Online, and Gizmodo. She is Vice President of the American Long Distance Hiking Association-West and one of four ambassadors for American Hiking Society. She currently works as a staff outdoor writer at the New York Times.

On my first long trail, it took me until Damascus, Virginia, (450 miles up the Appalachian Trail) to learn much of this information—and through countless bouts of painful and expensive trial-and-error. Reading this book will get you miles ahead in your preparedness and planning for the trail—and proper prior planning prevents poor performance!