The idea that he might one day hike the entire Appalachian Trail, a trek of just under 2,200 miles when traversed from Georgia to Maine, first entered Alex Neufeld’s head the summer after his freshman year at Newtown High School. On a high adventure trip with Venture Crew 70 to Maine, he encountered a hiker at the top of Mount Katahdin who was finishing up the Appalachian Trail.

“I decided it was something I wanted to do,” said Alex, after visiting with that hiker. He grew up in a household that did a lot of family hikes and camping, and his experiences in Venture Crew gave him more experience with the outdoors. Beginning the summer after his freshman year at the University of New Hampshire, the 2011 NHS graduate began to hike sections of the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the section through Vermont.

“I did the Vermont section in ten days, six of them alone, so that made me really feel like [the entire Appalachian Trail] was something I could do and wanted to do. It was a different experience, those six days by myself,” said Alex.

Many Appalachian Trail hikers begin the journey in Springer, Ga., in March or April. Being in school until May meant that Alex was four to six weeks behind most of the other hikers heading north.

“I wasn’t even sure [when I started out] that I was trying to finish. My main goal was just to get to Connecticut, where I had started the section hikes,” he admitted. By the time he was making his way through Virginia, though, he could see his pace was pretty quick. “I thought I could finish if I pushed a little bit,” he said.

That push meant averaging more than 20 miles nearly every day on a trail known for its demanding terrain and, sometimes, boring monotony.

“We don’t know what number he was in Georgia,” said Alex’s father, Conrad Neufeld, “but at Harpers Ferry, Va., on July 7, the unofficial halfway point, he was hiker #1106, and summitting Katahdin [in Maine, the official end point], he was hiker #383.”

He took one “zero” day, due to an aching Achilles heel and a sore knee.

“Other than that day, sometime in the first two weeks,” said Alex, “I hiked every single day.”

Being well prepared helped the hike move along successfully. He broke in an extra pair of Oboz Sawtooth hiking shoes before he started out, and when he topped mile 800, somewhere in the Shenandoah region, his parents delivered the extra pair to him. That pair lasted about another 1,000 miles. A third pair of hiking shoes took over at that point — “Not so bad to break in, after all,” commented Alex — and delivered him to the top of Mount Katahdin on September 1.

He traveled fairly lightly, foregoing a tent for a hammock strung between two trees each night, with bug netting and a rain fly to keep him comfortable.

“The first few nights were pretty chilly, with the wind rushing right underneath me,” he said, so a hammock pad was one of his few purchases along the way, as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Wet Either Way

If he had had to jettison anything, Alex said, it would have been his rain jacket.

“I ended up with it being at the bottom of my backpack. It was so super sweaty to wear it, that I didn’t want to, even on the rainy days. I was wet, either way.” At a checkpoint, he left the jacket with his parents, only to get it back again as summer began to wane.

“My dad drove up when I reached the White Mountains and dropped it off, along with some warmer wear. It was pretty cold in the Whites,” he said, “with temperatures in the 40s, even.” Encountering a day there in which winds rose to 80 miles per hour, he was grateful not only for warmer gear, but for the huts along the way.

“I had hiked 18 miles that day, mostly in a kind of sheltered valley area, but the last couple of miles were not pleasant,” he said. To hunker down in a shelter was a welcome respite from the weather.

Long before he reached the mountains in New Hampshire, though, he had encountered other uncomfortable weather situations.

“In Virginia, mainly, it seemed there was a thunderstorm every day. It was always a 50/50 chance — would it hit me or miss me?” He usually opted to walk through the storms, although hail in Vermont slowed him down.

Primarily a narrow, wooded trail, the Appalachian Trail can be rugged, steep in areas, and remote. There are only about six small towns in its entire length through which it passes. Other hikers are encountered, and to Alex’s experience, are by and large an interesting lot.

“People were mostly super, super friendly and willing to help you,” he said. It was two of the trekkers he bumped into multiple times who gave him his trail name, “Frodo.”

“It was just how they told me they had been referring to me, to each other,” he laughed.

Bear Encounters

Others encountered on the trail were not quite so willing to make friends.

“I saw a lot of bears in the South, about 115 over all,” said Alex, particularly as he went through the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. Two cubs and a mother bear spent a great deal of time playing around on a hill adjacent to a campground, he said, “Just playing around and checking us out.” The bears were anxious to disappear when sticks were clicked together when yelled at, said Alex, so he was never particularly concerned. In New Jersey, he did encounter a bear rather indifferent to the noise.

“I had to just follow it down the trail until it decided to go off into the woods. It didn’t seem to care too much if I made noise,” he said.

The real concern when bears were about, said Alex, was if the food was hung up high enough to discourage marauding by the animals.

Food was one of the constants in his thoughts as he hiked, he said. “For the most part, my dad would mail a box of food to a PO box or an outfitter along the way in one of the towns, to resupply me,” Alex said. That box would contain his staples, such as the oatmeal and Pop-Tarts he ate for breakfast, the peanut butter and trail mix that he rolled into wraps — lighter to carry than bread and unlikely to get crushed — or the packages of ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes he ate for dinner.

“I ate a lot of granola bars and Snickers bars during the day,” said Alex, but even so, he ended the trip 35 pounds lighter than his starting weight.

His days started around 8 am, and he made a point of never stopping before 5 pm. More often, he walked until dusk. It was interesting, he said, to realize how quickly each day shortened as the end of the trip drew closer.

“Mornings would go by really fast, so I would kind of lose track of time then. Toward the end of the day, though, it would feel like 15 minutes was forever,” Alex said. He did try to keep an eye on the time, in order to know if he was keeping the pace he needed if he was to reach Mount Katahdin before school resumed.

The Four Fs

“The Four Fs” occupied a great deal of his thoughts, meandering over hill and dale, crawling up rocky ledges, and fording streams. “Food, finishing, family, and friends are the Four Fs. I spent a lot of time thinking about food and about finishing the hike. Then I’d be wondering what my friends and family were doing,” he said. A good deal of time was “mindless walking,” he said, or in kinder terms, a walking meditation.

As beautiful as some days on the Appalachian Trail can be, there are enough days that are so unpleasant that quitting comes to the forefront of one’s mind, Alex said. He thought about advice he received before he left on his adventure, though.

“If you ever feel like you want to quit, wait for a perfect, beautiful day, and see if you still want to quit. Don’t quit on a rainy day,” he had been told. That moment came for him on a particularly difficult day in Maine. Even though he was closing in on the end of the trail, he was thinking he had had enough.

But waking up the next morning to a gorgeous day, and looking out from the top of a ridge at the beauty around him, he knew that he was not going to stop.

He summitted Mount Katahdin on Labor Day, September 1, where seven of his classmates from UNH joined him. A five-hour ride later, he was back at the school, ready to start his senior year. He plans to graduate in the spring of 2015 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

“Just go for it,” he would urge anyone considering the challenge of the Appalachian Trail. “Even if you’re not doing the entire thing. It’s definitely the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

Only about one in four hikers finishes the 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail, according to information at appalachiantrail.org. It does not fail to leave a mark on the hikers who triumph over the hurdles it throws in their ways, whether it is physical or mental.

“I learned how much I can push myself, and about my mental strength as opposed to my physical strength,” said Alex. “I know now that I can accomplish long-term goals. If I really want something,” he said, “I can do it.”