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Photos courtesy of Joseph Harper.
Clockwise from left: Joseph Harper reached Mount Katahdin in Maine, the endpoint of the Appalachian Trail, on Oct. 3, after 147 days of hiking.
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Photos courtesy of Joseph Harper.
Harper watching the sunrise on McAfee Knob in Virginia. During his time on the trail, Harper spent half his nights in shelters like this one on Blood Mountain in Georgia.
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Photos courtesy of Joseph Harper.
During his time on the trail, Harper spent half his nights in shelters like this one on Blood Mountain in Georgia.
Joseph Harper said life-changing things can come from a yard sale. When he was younger, he picked up a book at one such sale and walked away with a new dream.
“I’d heard about the Appalachian Trail through Boy Scouts, and then I read all about it in that National Geographic book. It got stuck in my mind,” said Harper, a 2019 Vestavia Hills High School graduate and recent Auburn University graduate. “Then, sometime in college, it became a reality that I could be doing this very soon.”
Five days after his graduation in May, he did just that. He spent 147 days hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine — a feat that only 25% of people who attempt it actually finish.
During some of the hike he was by himself, but for much of it, he was walking with others and making new friends, he said.
“The people, the friends you meet along the way really make it worthwhile,” Harper said.
On Oct. 3, Harper reached Mt. Katahdin in Maine, the endpoint of the trail.
“I got to see the sunrise on the top of the mountain,” he said.
It was a fitting reward for just under five months of battling weather, wet socks and blisters.
“I think the most days of rain I had in a row was four,” Harper said. “My feet got really destroyed. It was a challenge to figure out how to walk with that, and it was a challenge to have to get up and put on wet socks.”
But overall, it wasn’t that bad, he said. Even when he and some fellow hikers hunkered down in Maine for a hurricane to blow over, they didn’t get much rain at all.
Harper said while he was on the trail, he thought about his journey in increments of three or four days at a time, which was basically the amount of food he had in his backpack. Along the way, he slept about half the nights in his tent and half in the roughly 260 shelters scattered along the AT.
“I never really had any issues with wildlife,” Harper said.
He counted 22 bears along the way, and he only remembers one incident — a night when he woke up to a porcupine chewing on the shelter.
“One of my buddies, about 2 a.m., hit the shelter floor to scare it away, but all I could think was, ‘Now we don’t know where it is,’” Harper joked. “But a few minutes later it waddled over to the privy and started gnawing on it.”
He said he went back to sleep just fine after that.
In addition to the gift of new friends along the way, Harper said the views along the trail “were just incredible.”
“There’s nothing like seeing the sunrise out of a fire tower or watching the sunset out of your tent,” he said.
At one point along the way, Harper completed the Four State Challenge, hiking a 44-mile-long section of the trail that goes through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania in one day.
Now back in Vestavia, Harper said he’s taking it one day at a time just like he was on the AT, “trying to enjoy each day and what it will bring.”
Not long after arriving back home, he started his career in civil engineering. And even though he said he didn’t have any more big hikes on the horizon at the moment, he planned to return in May 2024 to the AT’s approach trail in Georgia for a short hike on the anniversary of his dream hike.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to have accomplished my dream, and I can’t wait to see what each day holds from here,” Harper said.
