Section 4
First walks and counted ones
Thru-hikes, completion rates, and how they are verified.
The Continental Divide Trail in the Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado.
Photo: Continental divide trail in Weminuche Wilderness · Wikimedia Commons
- The first reported end-to-end walk, in 1948Earl Shaffer reported the first thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1948, at a time when the idea was not thought possible.
- A woman walked it in 1955 in canvas shoesEmma Gatewood walked the Appalachian Trail at 67 with a homemade sack, and her walks changed public expectations of who the trail was for.
- Most people who start do not finishReported completion rates for long thru-hikes sit well below half, and the reasons recorded are mostly injury, money and time rather than terrain.
- How a record is actually checkedVerification relies on registers, photographs and increasingly on tracker data — and the standards are set by convention rather than by any authority.