(Host) The Appalachian Trail runs 2,175 miles – from Georgia to Maine.
Hiking it can take a lifetime, but this Saturday the Dartmouth Outing Club hopes to cover the trail in a single day.
VPR’s Steve Zind explains how…and why.
(Zind) Organizing a one day hike, with enough people to cover the entire length of the trail was Dartmouth junior Matt Dahlhausen’s idea of a good way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Dartmouth Outing Club – and even he had a hard time taking it seriously at first.
(Dahlhause) "I thought it was rather crazy and nearly impossible, but then it got a lot of support behind it and the alumni base that Dartmouth has is absolutely incredible and has covered pretty much the entire trail."
(Zind) The plan is for more than 200 current and former Dartmouth Outing Club members to fan out along the trail from Georgia to Maine and, with each taking a segment, cover its entire length in a 24-hour period.
Dahlhausen sees it as a fitting way to mark the centennial of the nation’s oldest outing club.
Nearly half the students at Dartmouth belong to the club. Many are introduced to it as part of five-day trip to the White Mountains during their first year at the school.
The college owns much of the land around New Hampshire’s Mount Moosilauke and the outing club maintains a lodge at its base. The mountain and the club have a long history together- going back to when students maintained a hiker’s lodge at the top.
Henry Merrill is a 1939 Dartmouth graduate. He remembers working at the lodge during his days in the outing club.
(Merrill) "We took care of a place where we could put 60 people."
(Zind) In Henry Merrill’s time, Dartmouth wasn’t a co-ed institution, so all the members of the outing club were male. One day when Merrill was on top of the mountain, a young day hiker from New Jersey appeared. Mary Lois Igleheart ended up staying for a week and pitching in.
(Mary Lois Merrill) "Somebody had to do the dishes and all those men like Henry had to have their socks washed off and cleaned and so that’s what I did."
(Zind) Somewhere over the dishes or the socks, the two hit it off and that meeting on top of the mountain led to a marriage that’s still going strong today. Both Henry and Mary Lois are in their 90s and both will take part in Saturday’s Appalachian Trail-in-a-day hike. They’ll walk a half-mile stretch of the trail that crosses the Dartmouth campus.
Organizers are still trying to find hikers for a few remaining stretches of the trail and they’re dispatching teams of Dartmouth students to some remote areas, like the hundred-mile wilderness in Maine.
After Saturday’s event, hikers will submit photos and trip reports, which will be used to prove the club has succeeded in covering the Appalachian Trail in a single day.
For VPR News, I’m Steve Zind.