Last month I logged my first official Appalachian Trail miles in our Covid adapted 2021 thru hike. One of the biggest challenges to doing the hike during a pandemic is simply how to handle getting on and off the trail. This is especially true as we do a soft start, and are likely only going to do weekend or simply day hikes as we are able through the winter, until the weather warms up a bit again.
Even during a traditional thru, hikers needs to get off trail and into towns for food resupply about every week. They also take advantage of civilization's modern conveniences like heating and air conditioning, showers, and fresh vegetables (beer is a vegetable right?) This is normally accomplished thanks to a great trail community, whether people who offer paid shuttle services, a willingness to pickup hitch hikers, cab services, or uber/lyft.
While some of these folks are still out there operating, it was something I wanted to avoid. It's too close, often for too long for my own comfort levels. I don't want to get sick on trail, and difficulty breathing with a lengthy recovery of months could be a deal breaker.
Still, our first weekend out, we did plan to try it out. Full disclosure, despite a fair amount of travel in a lot of different places, we've never used Uber or Lyft or similar. We had downloaded and set up Uber once, but never used it. We settled on parking the car at the start of our weekend hike, and having only Jake Uber back to the car. This would minimize the interaction, and ensure he could sit as far from the driver as possible.
In the end, we decided to actually call an Uber Saturday night rather than camping overnight. It wasn't that I was too worn out or that we weren't prepared to camp (we both hiked with full gear). It was mainly that I didn't realize the shelter was just half a mile onward from a popular trailhead parking area and I was afraid the shelter area itself would be full of people, combined with the fact that we'd left our car parked in a high traffic spot, just right off an interstate exit on a major highway (not my favorite situation), combined with the additional and important fact that it was gonna be 39 degrees that night and I'm a giant baby when it comes to the cold. Our sleeping bags are not new, and are comfortable to 40, technically. So we called an Uber Saturday night and Sunday night. Both times Jake rode behind the passenger seat, and everyone was masked. The first driver kept the windows partly down and didn't talk much. The second driver was chatty and windows up. Overall, it felt risky to me. And there were other drawbacks. Both times, the wait for the driver, trip to the car, and Jake's return took about an hour and twenty minutes. And of course, Uber isn't free. Between both trips with a decent tip, the total was about $40. Not ideal.
So for the second weekend, we thought we might rent a car instead, so we could hike from our car to that car and ride back together. This was a lot more expensive than I wanted, nearly $150 for a Saturday AM pickup and Sunday PM drop off,. Not at all sustainable to do regularly. And not likely something that would always be doable depending on our locations and distances, and especially if we do a multiday hike. Add to this, we still had to do a fair amount of extra driving to the car rental location. We went ahead and reserved free online, but when we showed up, there were a lot of people, employees and customers, sort of scattered everywhere, social distancing, fortunately, and waiting their turn, but, having spent months in major isolation, it felt overwhelming to me. So, instead of picking up the car, we cancelled the reservation. Which was also a financial relief. This option is likely never going to work for us.
So what else could we do? We only had one car. We do hope to hit other, closer to home sections by driving two cars and parking at either end, but this weekend, that wasn't an option.
So what we decided to do instead is what I will call crosswalk, until someone wants to tell me an actual term, if there is one. We hiked separately from opposite ends of a section, and met in the middle for lunch and an exchange of car keys. I feel overall positive about the experience, but there are definitely limitations. I will share more next week.
If there is an alternative method to do this you can think of, let me know in the comments! I am all ears.
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