Face to Face with Failure: The 52 Hike Challenge 2017

This year, like last year, I began my year by setting a goal of accomplishing 52 hikes in 52 weeks. The 52 Hike Challenge is intended to get people outdoors, averaging one hike per week of the year. In 2016, I finished the challenge on Christmas Day, hiking in Providence Canyon with my mom and siblings. This year, I intended to finish the challenge in much the same way: hiking Suwannee River State Park and the Florida Trail instead. Fate and circumstance had different plans.

I was behind on my challenge entering December, but it wasn’t going to be impossible to finish. I had a couple of hikes planned in early December. These hikes were pushed to the back burner when I had to make a sudden trip home due to my mom being admitted to the emergency room. That turned into a week-long hospital stay that resulted in planned hikes for the following week being cancelled as well. Ultimately, my mom’s health didn’t improve and we ended up with another ER visit on Christmas morning and eventual surgery that cancelled our planned Christmas camping and hiking trip. I called to cancel the reservation, coming to the realization that I would not be finishing my challenge this year.

Root Cause

Ultimately, I can’t blame untimely family circumstances for my failure. I was behind on my hikes all year. I made a pact with myself that I would count each trip that included consecutive trail mileage as ONE hike. So, 26 miles in Virginia over 2 days? One hike. An overnight on the trail in NY totaling about 15 miles in two days? One hike. A three day backpacking tip in north Georgia in the fall? One hike. The purpose for this was to hike more.

In addition to just completing 52 hikes, in order to make the challenge more… um… challenging, I set two additional hiking goals for myself this year. One of those was to do one overnight trip each month. I did not meet this goal. The other was to complete all of the objectives in the Adventure Series Challenge. I did not meet this goal, either.

Why was I so far behind? The root cause is poor planning. I knew at the beginning of the year that I had just purchased a camper that was going to need a lot of work, and that this was going to be time consuming and I didn’t properly plan to work my hikes in during weeks spent at my Dad’s devoted to remodeling. I knew at the beginning of the year that I was going to be working three jobs to pay for said camper and did not have the foresight to plan short local hikes in the areas I would be visiting for work. Nor did I have the discipline to make myself hike when I was “home” in Franklin and hike before or after my work shifts. I knew I was going to be taking online classes during the summer and fall and that I would need to stay ahead of my assignments so that school work didn’t hold me back.

I knew all of these things, and I still didn’t plan well so that I could succeed. Hiking is more than a hobby for me. Hiking is therapy. Hiking is fitness. Hiking is stress relief. Hiking is my social outlet. Hiking is maintaining my sanity among all of the stress of school and work and financial instability. I need it. It is important. Therefore, I must treat it like it is as important as these other aspects of my life and carve out time for it. This is my biggest area for improvement in order to accomplish this goal next year.

Finding success amidst failure

Despite not reaching any of my three hiking goals for 2017, I did accomplish some pretty cool things this year. I got to do a LOT of night hiking. I got to hike with some incredible and powerful women. I got to hike the Appalachian trail in two states I’d never hiked in before (New Jersey and New York). I got to visit McAfee Knob for sunset (again) and introduce a new friend to the Appalachian Trail in the process. I got to hike in COLORADO! I got to play a small part in the successful thru-hikes of a few different people. I gave trail magic. I received trail magic. I developed bonds that extended my trail family. I got to introduce a Girl Scout, the beautiful daughter of two of my sweetest friends, to backpacking and the Appalachian Trail. Later, I got to introduce those same two friends to backpacking and the Appalachian Trail. I hiked with so many good dogs.

2017 Hiking Year in Review

• 251.7 miles hiked
• 114.2 new miles of the Appalachian Trail
• 42 hikes counted
• 49 days on trail
• 4 night hikes
• 2 trips to Springer Mountain, once setting a thru-hiker off on the journey of a lifetime and once congratulating a thru hiker on finishing
• 2 National Parks visited (Shenandoah NP and Blue Ridge Parkway)
• 4 State Parks visited (Grayson Highlands SP in VA, Harriman SP in NY, General Coffee SP in GA, Fort Clinch SP in FL)
• 8 different states (SC, NC, VA, NY, NJ, GA, CO, FL)
• 2 waterfall hikes
• 2 lake hikes
• 1 river hike
• 1 sunrise hike
• 2 sunset hikes
• 1 hike from my bucket list (ColoRADo!)
• 4 overnight backpacking trips

Maybe this year wasn’t such a failure after all!

Here are a few more of my favorite moments from 2017.