UPDATE: Since I posted this two days ago, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy is asking people to stay off the AT, even for day hikes.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail might seen like a perfect way to get through the COVID shutdown of life – I’m laid off, so let’s do that thru-hike! – but think again. Shelters are being closed and getting resupplied is more complicated.
It also might be dangerous to others. As this Washington Post story notes, hikers might unwittingly carry the virus to rural places that can’t handle it. The Continental Divide Trail Coalition, which oversees an AT-like trail in the Mountain Time Zone, put it like this:
We are thinking of the elderly man working part-time at the checkout counter of the grocery store where you will resupply, and the woman without health insurance who cleans your hostel or hotel room,” the organization’s website states. “We are thinking of the fact that many trailside communities along the CDT are small and isolated, and may be hours away from the closest covid-19 testing center or, more importantly, the closest hospital equipped to treat patients in severe respiratory distress.”
So, sorry hikers. Walk around your neighborhood 10,000 times if you need to but otherwise, stay home.
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I think this is taking it too far. Ok, I stay at home.. I still have to shop for food. I’m around a more densely populated community. So, I give it to my local grocer instead. If i’m out on the trail, odds are I don’t have it, and if I do, and without symptoms, I’m over it in a matter of a week, and possibly expose a lot less people.
Better yet.. take two weeks of food. Stay in the woods. If you feel fine after that, feel free to visit the local communities. My guess is the trucker getting gas, or the food delivery companies supplying the supermarkets, the energy delivering companies, the kids home from college, etc. will more likely give a remote town exposure to the virus than a lone person who’s been in the woods for a few weeks.
If you really take two weeks of food and don’t interact with anybody for two weeks, then yeah, maybe. The number of thru-hikers who do that is minuscule. Most of us are just as likely to be infected as anybody else and if we interact with rural areas that lack good health care, as virtually all thru-hikers do regularly, then that’s bad.
Once again we look at the worst case scenario. That elderly man working part time at the grocery store won’t get the virus from you the thru-hiker. Most likely it’ll be from the rich city dweller fleeing his home from the suburbs to his 2nd home on a lake out in the country. Meanwhile, everyone in the lil’ town in the country is getting exposed, Wow, Such a negative press coverage we have right now. As a NH native & after 60 years of climbing throughout NH, NE and out West, I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about spreading a deadly disease across the land. I might have smelled pretty bad a time or 2 but… Heart disease, cancer. Sadly, they take more lives in a short time. Stay inside, read a book about the White Mountains (Suggest Lucy Crawford’s History of) and stay away from your grandkids for a lil’ while till’ the “coast is clear”.
The point is that we don’t know who has the virus – perhaps half of the infections come from asymptomatic people. There’s nothing special about hikers that makes us immune. Increasing the chance of spreading the disease in rural areas that don’t have good health care is irresponsible, selfish, not part of the hiker ethos. That’s not “negative” press coverage, that’s accurate representation that makes some people uncomfortable.