Gear Review: The A.T. Guide: A Handbook for Hiking the Appalachian Trail

The A.T. Guide front cover

The A.T. Guide back cover

Does your New Year’s Resolution involve spending more time hiking the Appalachian Trail? Have you always wanted to thru or section hike the AT? Will you be doing a lot of day hikes anywhere along America’s most famous Long Distance Trail? If you fall into any of these categories one piece of gear you should consider adding to your ‘essentials list’ is David ‘AWOL’ Miller’s The A.T. Guide: A Handbook for Hiking the Appalachian Trail.
 

The A.T. Guide is a data book containing mileage, landmarks, elevations and the elevation profile for the entire trail. The guide lists towns and services near the AT and in some cases has town maps making it easier for navigation when in those select cities. There are two books published in the series. One is designed primarily going Northbound (NOBO), the other is designed more for those heading Southbound (SOBO). Both books have the same information but each is better tailored for thru-hikers going one way or the other. Each is available in both a bound and unbound format.

Detail of data page

The books lists GPS coordinates for countless trailhead parking areas which should assist day and section hikers locate their put-ins and take-outs with the aid of a GPS in their vehicle. The guide mainly consists of data spread pages and service spread pages. Data spread pages show the elevation profile of the trail, lists both northbound and southbound mileages, elevation and major landmarks such as shelters, rivers, road crossings, summits and trailheads with GPS coordinates. This is what I would call ‘on the trail’ data. The service spread pages contain a list of services (such as hostels, laundry mats, restaurants, supermarkets, convenient stores, outfitters, post office information, hotels, shuttle services, etc) on or near the trail and includes the town maps (if one exists for that town). It typically lists hours/days the business is open, meals served or rates for meals/rooms/etc, contact information for shuttle services and PO information. This really is ‘off the trail’ information.

Detail of the Elevation Profile

The maps and data spread pages use symbols to allow hikers to quickly and easily see what is accessible near the trail. For example a teepee symbol is used to represent campsite locations, a water drop shows where there is likely a water source, a shopping cart/basket are used to indicate where long/short term resupplies can be purchased, a mailbox symbol is used to show where post offices are located, etc. When needed the author has a short sentence or paragraph explaining things such as directions, where to go to get water from a tap, which places are not hiker friendly, etc.

Symbols used in book

One of the handy features on the data pages is that at every shelter it lists the mileage from it to the next three shelters in each direction. This really can come in handy when I reached a shelter in the afternoon and wanting to decide if I wanted to push on to the next one, stealth camp somewhere in between or just call it an early day. It proved priceless on rainy days or when a storm was rolling in as well. It was nice to have for estimating what to do the following day or two (even though plans are always subject to change). I frequently was looking at the data pages throughout the day tentatively planning where I would stop for the night, where to get water, where to get off for a resupply and measuring how far I’d come since waking up, the last shelter or the last road crossing. I saw almost everyone I spent significant time with doing the same thing with their data books.

I typically went to the service pages just before heading into town and while in town. Any towns with a map really came in handy. Towns without a map were hit or miss in regards to finding my way around town.

When I started looking into doing an AT hike I was concerned about getting this book because I intended on doing a flip-flop and expected to go north for a long time and then south for a long time. I did not want to purchase two copies. After looking into it I determined I only needed to purchase one and could use it easily going either direction. The book is set up so it is easy to use going either direction as a thru, section or day hike.

I started my section hike at Harpers Ferry, WV in early June. The northbound thru hikers were coming through but had not reached their peak rush yet. The thru hikers were in fantastic shape doing big miles and most of the pack passed me at some point. We got off the trail for a health issue and started going south in the middle to latter half of the southbound thru hikers. Needless to say we met a lot of thru hikers and not everyone was using the same data/guide book. The general consensus was that The A.T. Guide: A Handbook for Hiking the Appalachian Trail was the better guide book to have (even though any of the main data books would do just fine). That being said we found a lot of errors, inaccuracies and omissions and we heard about more from other hikers.

Detail of Service page offerings

Most of these were not huge, trip-altering errors but it was enough to not place too much trust in the data book. For example, the book lists that the Harper’s Ferry Hostel will sell denatured alcohol. We arrived and were going to fill up on it but the person running it claims they never carried it. While we were not sure if it was the person behind the counter or the author of our book we knew there was a discrepancy and it did affect our trip enough to give us a minor headache. Service rates were sometimes different than listed and even though the author clearly states in his book that rates are subject to change, it did not stop some thru hikers from arguing with the owners about the price for services (we did not do this at all and if you see anyone out there doing so please talk some sense into them as they tend to give thru hikers a bad reputation). Some places listed were closed down entirely while other services that are available were not listed at all. Landmarks were inconsistently marked throughout the guide book and Post Office hours/days open were sometimes wrong. There were numerous instances like these but again most were just minor annoyances (some would say these are great instances to test ones resourcefulness).

Town maps sometimes available

There were a few places when these were a bigger problem. In the New Jersey and New York sections there are plenty of water symbols indicating the possibility of obtaining drinking water at numerous locations. I passed through New Jersey and New York in late June/early July and most water sources had completely dried up. There was also the occasional water source not mentioned in the book that turned out to be perfectly reliable. Trusting the book for reliable water sources from northern Pennsylvania through northern New York would have been disastrous. We tried to play it slightly conservative and carry extra water in a lot of places and still ended up running out of water in some sections. It also proved to be a major worry throughout the day. I spent a lot of time wondering “where will the next water source be”? A similar situation happened in Shenandoah National Park and middle Virginia in September. A majority of the springs dried up completely and hiking in extreme heat with no water can be dangerous. Again the author should not be blamed for this issue but trusting his water source locations during these stretches would have been a mistake.

All the guide books have issues and so to blast this book for its errors would be unfair. It is meant to be a guide only. In that regard, from my experience I think David ‘AWOL’ Miller’s The A.T. Guide: A Handbook for Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a good resource for use on the Appalachian Trail. I have heard that the author is updating the 2011 issue to include more town maps, additional landmarks and corrections to inaccurate data. Hopefully the next revision will be more up to date and I hope the author continues to improve the quality of the data in years to come. While not perfect this book would be one of, if not the first, thing I reach for when planning to go on the AT in the future.
The A.T. Guide: A Handbook for Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Author	David "Awol" Miller
Publisher	Jerelyn Press
ISBN	978-0979708152 (2010 edition) 978-0979708190 (2011 edition)
Price	$15.95
Genre	Guidebook, backpacking, section hiking, thru-hiking
Links (2011 editions)	The A.T. Guide on Amazon David "Awol" Miller's The A.T. Guide Webpage
Pages	216 (about 8 oz/227 g)
Book Details	Landmarks, mileages, and elevations for the entire AT Maps for over 40 towns near the trail, and listings of services available along the way Elevation Profile maps for entire A.T. GPS Coordinates for over 200 trailhead parking areas Shelter mileages to next three shelters in each direction Symbols for quick identification of services Northbound, Southbound, and loose-leaf editions available

This story was originally posted February 7, 2011.