Appalachian Trail

24 March 2023 - 13 September 2023

Pictures and Recap by State

Data Spreadsheet

My Data
In the Progress sheet:
- Day: The number of days I'd been hiking.
- Date: What day of the year it was.
- AT End Mile: Where on the AT I ended the day using the 2023 Awol mileages.
- Miles Walked: How many miles I walked that day (including approach trail).
- AT miles/day: Overall average miles per day (not including approach trail).
- Miles Left: Number of miles left to complete the AT.
- Percent Done: Percentage of the AT completed.
- State Miles Left: Number of miles left to complete the current state.
- State Percent Done: Percentage of the current state completed.
- 1/Nth to go: The denominator of the amount of the AT left to go when written as a fraction with a numerator of 1.
- "Zenos": The number of times I've completed half of what remained of the trail. A reference to Zeno's Paradox.
- Overall Rate: Overall average miles per day (including approach trail).
- Projected End at Overall: The day I would end continuing exactly at the overall rate.
- Monthly Rate: Average miles per day for the last 30 days.
- Projected End at Monthly: The day I would end continuing exactly at the monthly rate.
- Weekly Rate: Average miles per day for the last 7 days.
- Projected End at Weekly: The day I would end continuing exactly at the weekly rate.
- Daily Rate: Same as "Miles Walked".
- Projected End at Daily: The day I would end continuing exactly at the daily rate.
- Daily Ascent: A rough approximation for the number of feet of ascent that day from FarOut.
- Daily Descent: A rough approximation for the number of feet of descent that day from FarOut.
- Total Ascent (feet): Cumulative number of feet of ascent for the whole hike.
- Total Ascent (miles): Cumulative ascent measured in miles.
- Total Ascent (Everests): Number of times the cumulative ascent covers the height of Mount Everest from sea level to summit. (Just for fun! Not a realistic comparison to the process of actually climbing Everest.)
- Notes: Where I spent the night (and where I left the trail for hostels etc.).
In the Missing sheet:
- The total number of missing miles is calculated at the top.
- Start: The mile number where I departed from the official path of the AT.
- End: The mile number where I rejoined the official path of the AT.
- Location: Major feature of the miles.
- Finished: The date when(/if) I return to complete those miles.
- Notes: The reason those miles were missed.
Blank Form
Instructions:

The columns are mostly the same as described above. The Calculation sheet also has columns that tell you how many miles you need to walk on average to finish on a certain day, and also when you will finish if you continue at a given average daily miles. If you have not entered miles for the current day, then it will be included in the calculation. If you have entered miles for the current day it is assumed you are done for the day and it will not be included. These columns will revert to the start date both leading up to the hike and after the hike is complete. The spreadsheet is only set up for a NOBO hike as is.

One time setup:
Change the following values at the top left of the Calculation sheet.
- Change Start date to the date you intend to being your hike.
- You can set Cutoff date to a hard deadline (or just a goal) for when you have to complete the trail by. This will change the coloring of all dates to show if they are before or after this deadline. This field can be left blank to remove the coloring. (Please do not take the coloring too seriously at the start of the hike, it wasn't until day 91 that my Projected End at Overall no longer exceeded my actual end date!)
- Every year the AT mileage changes slightly, and different sources can be different (such as Awol vs. FarOut). Update Total miles to be the current value, and use a consistent source for the mileages for the rest of the spreadsheet. (I used Awol. A word of caution, my year the FarOut mileages changed in the middle of the year when an update to the map was released.)
- Fill in the current Approach trail miles. Set this to zero if you don't plan to hike the approach trail. These miles are included in some of the statistics as there is a large difference at the start if you don't "get credit" for hiking those miles, although the difference is negligible towards the end.
- Fill in the mile marker for each state border. Since there are sections where the AT bounces back or forth between two states or follows along the border, you will have to make a decision about which crossing you want to consider as the border.
Daily:
- Fill in where you ended the day in AT End Mile on the Progress sheet. You should still manually replace the value on a zero day in order to indicate that the day is complete.
- Optionally fill in the daily ascent and descent.
- Optionally fill in any notes about the day.
- Fill in any sections you needed to skip in the Missing sheet if you wish to keep track.
Afterwards:
- I recommend deleting the additional rows of the Progress sheet to make it more tidy.

GPS Data

GPX File

GPS data from Garmin watch in "Expedition" mode.
Watch was supposed to record position every 15 minutes.
Many points were simply not collected if the watch could not get a fix in time.
The accuracy of points is not as good as I would have hoped.
Some points intentionally omitted for privacy.