Before Bethany Conerly, a 2015 Webster Groves High School graduate, embarked on hiking the over 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail she spent much of her time hiking the streets of Webster.
“Getting yourself stronger, getting your feet used to walking for hours on end and getting used to carrying weight will definitely make the beginning of the trip more enjoyable," she told the Charlie Brennan Show with Amy Marxkors on Wednesday.
Although she was hiking with all her gear including tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes and cooking supplies she was never concerned the trail would be too difficult.
“At times it was kind of hard to hike the trail … but I wasn’t ever too concerned that I wasn’t able to get through," she says. "It just took me longer than I was happy about."
Her hike took 143 days which averaged about 15 miles a day.
She was able to obtain water from streams along the trail with the help of a crowd sourced app that marked safe drinking water locations, “We’d just let each other know this water source is good, it’s flowing. Fill up here. So getting water was never really a problem,” she says.
One thing that helped her along the way were the Appalachian “trail angels.”
“There’s a fantastic community of people that for some reason have decided to give their time and resources to people hiking the trail," she says. This assistance included making meals for hikers, taking their trash, giving them pep talks when needed.
"I was constantly amazed by the generosity of strangers," Conerly says.
Although she hiked alone for many stretches she was rarely afraid.
“When you’re out there, for over a week, the trail is almost your home and you feel safe out there," she says, gaining comfort for hiking remote areas quickly by starting in Maine – while most hikers start in Georgia and follow the trail north. "I started in the most remote part of the whole trail, so I got that learning of the trail really fast and everything after that was really easy for me.”
One of the worst days of the trip was an afternoon in Vermont with rain that turned to hail, she says. However the best part of the trip was arriving in Georgia in the Fall.
“It was so much better than I imagined ... it was like walking through a golden tunnel of leaves.”
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