Wow. Thank you for posting this. I am fifty years old. In 1989 my best friend, Geof Allen, and I spent an entire year planning to walk the AT after high school. During long nights in my parents basement we literally mapped out every step by figuring out how many steps were in a mile, and then multiplying. Life happened. He walked the entire AT from Spring Mtn to Mt Kahdin. I reluctantly followed my parents wishes and went off to college.
Even in high school Geof was unlike anyone I ever knew. He did not have the best life, but he always smiled. When we were winter-camping together Geof knew how to make your frozen feet not-so-bad. When we were lost deep in a cave in Newport, Virginia, Geof showed no signs of worry, while I openly panicked.
After walking the AT Geof joined the Navy, and when a slot opened up he became a Blue Angel...not a pilot, but still a prestigious position with a flight suit as a uniform. He married his high school sweetheart, and after the Navy, moved back home and became a police officer.
I had totally lost contact with Geof, and was working in IT across the street from my local police department. As I was walking to my car one afternoon I saw Geof standing in the parking lot. We chatted and caught up a bit, and then lost contact again.
The next time I heard Geof's name was years later. He had committed suicide. I almost want to say that he didn't have a choice. You see, he had watched all of the other males and one female in his fathers bloodline be taken away by Huntington's Disease. I found out later that Geof was in the early-stages, and it was easy to deduce that he needed to take action while he was still able.
We were all from the same hometown. I knew his Uncles and his Aunt, and watched what Huntington's did to them, and I was there the day his father committed suicide.
I found Geof's picture on athikerpictures.com. He is second from the left. Blue pants and white shirt. I am certain that he made life easier for the three hikers pictured with him. His trail name was Alpha. Alpha Geof Allen.
Thanks for the story about your friend Geof. It was touching and made this archive just that much more valuable. Hope you have a few more good memories today.
What a moving story. I am younger than you but also had a friend die on me and now I wish I spent much more time with him.
I hope you don’t mind that I link directly to the photo so that it’s easier to find. https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/4119
I'm sorry for how this affected you, and for the situation your friend found himself in. It sounds like he lived well, was loved, and (however sadly) took his leave on his own terms. Thank you for telling us about him.
I'm sorry for you loss. Thanks for posting the story - I volunteer with the AT Museum to maintain this site, and it's always nice to hear some of the stories behind the pictures.
That was a very touching anecdote that stole away the mundanity of reading the morning news. I had to go look. These are the things that make life so human. Thank you for sharing with us.
I thruhiked in 1995, and while I did go to the ATC headquarters to sign in, I don't recall having my photo taken, but it may have been. I do however vividly recall the photo archive at Rusty's Hardtime Hollow just off the Blue Ridge Parkway section of the AT a few miles but was well worth the trip.
Rusty had polaroids of hikers going way back, they lined the walls of every building, when he built new bunkhouses, he started new annual collections. There were thousands of them. Every night he would roll his truck down into the parking are blast James Brown and feed what he could to whatever he had or whatever hikers could bring. Wood fired hot tub, sauna, huge garden, it was a paradise after almost a 1000 miles on foot.
I hope the ATC was also able to recover Rusty's photos, because he had a real gold mine. The few years after hiking when I lived in the area I would bring beverages and hot dogs for the hikers. I lost touch with Rusty after I went west. I was hiking recently in Maine and talking to another thruhiker who went through in the 2000 and she said the Hollow is gone now which would be a shame of his archive could not be recovered.
> Between January and April 2009, 12,779 images representing over 18,000 Appalachian Trail hikers were carefully removed from old notebooks, barcoded, scanned at 600 dpi, and placed into archival quality sleeves and slip-covered albums. The entire process took sixteen volunteers over 425 hours to complete.
Quite the effort! Always fun to see people come together for stuff like this.
They mention difficulty in trying to figure out names, dates, trail names, etc. I realized I'm so used to the ubiquitousness of social media and cell phones because my immediate thought was, "Why did these people not put down their numbers?"
There is a separate project (now also managed by the AT Museum) called the hiker yearbook, which collects phone numbers and emails along with pictures. It looks like the first one may have been published in 2014.
I did the PCT. Felt like going to college again in my 30s. Freedom, meeting tons of new people from around the world, and a richness and rawness of life I've never experienced before or since.
Found my sister! I think I met up with her a few days after this photo was taken. I was envious of her being able to thru-hike - but I made the time to go visit her along the trail and probably did about 400 miles of it, on and off.
Excited for a time I can just say screw it, and walk off into the woods for as long as I want. Always felt most at home living out of a bag, calorie starved enough to take immense pleasure in eating things I would never buy in my normal day to day - but filled to the brim with energy. The rush of hill after mountain after hill is greater than the most doomscrolling-optimized feed, and you feel it with all your senses.
Found this legend. I hiked with him in '98 and '99. I'd absolutely put Baltimore Jack in the top 10 of American outdoorsmen of all time. I think he thru-hiked the entire AT eight times. Pretty sure that's the record: https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/3969
He was a legend, for sure. I hiked with him a bit during my 2001 thruhike. By that point he was already... uhhhmm... not really "hiking" the trail as much as "hanging out on the trail, walking a bit, sometimes".
You may be pleased to know that he was still sectioning in 2010. I met him in the Smokies and bumped into him periodically as I went up the trail. RIP.
This is great. Found myself on 5/30/22. Looking forward to catching up with photos of people I hiked with. Also love the pics from ‘79 - total time capsule! Short-shorts never went out of style in the hiking community.
The 2010 data seems to be screwed up and/or incomplete. A search by year with a blank in the search box returns 17 pages of results (with very few trail names). 2009 and 2011 return 76 and 89 pages of results respectively. Master Chief's photo is a Katahdin photo (happy to see he finished!). There are a couple photos with a trailname of "original" and "edited" that are of the same hiker, but "edited" is cropped. And they're definitely missing pictures of a bunch of folks whose town names I know.
I'm bummed, because I'd sure like to see pictures of some of the rest of the class of 2010.
It also looks like they might've stopped recording (or transcribing from photos?) trail names for a while. I was SOBO in '03, and found a bunch of familiar faces by trail name. A blank search for 2003 and a sort by trail name descending gives me 68 pages. For 2011, the same procedure gets me 2 pages.
Has anyone hiked the trail very recently? It has been a long ambition of mine, but life continues to get in the way. Now with two young children I don't think I'll get a chance for another decade, but I'm conscious that every year going by the experience becomes less solitary (which I quite like).
Wow. Thank you for posting this. I am fifty years old. In 1989 my best friend, Geof Allen, and I spent an entire year planning to walk the AT after high school. During long nights in my parents basement we literally mapped out every step by figuring out how many steps were in a mile, and then multiplying. Life happened. He walked the entire AT from Spring Mtn to Mt Kahdin. I reluctantly followed my parents wishes and went off to college.
Even in high school Geof was unlike anyone I ever knew. He did not have the best life, but he always smiled. When we were winter-camping together Geof knew how to make your frozen feet not-so-bad. When we were lost deep in a cave in Newport, Virginia, Geof showed no signs of worry, while I openly panicked.
After walking the AT Geof joined the Navy, and when a slot opened up he became a Blue Angel...not a pilot, but still a prestigious position with a flight suit as a uniform. He married his high school sweetheart, and after the Navy, moved back home and became a police officer.
I had totally lost contact with Geof, and was working in IT across the street from my local police department. As I was walking to my car one afternoon I saw Geof standing in the parking lot. We chatted and caught up a bit, and then lost contact again.
The next time I heard Geof's name was years later. He had committed suicide. I almost want to say that he didn't have a choice. You see, he had watched all of the other males and one female in his fathers bloodline be taken away by Huntington's Disease. I found out later that Geof was in the early-stages, and it was easy to deduce that he needed to take action while he was still able.
We were all from the same hometown. I knew his Uncles and his Aunt, and watched what Huntington's did to them, and I was there the day his father committed suicide.
I found Geof's picture on athikerpictures.com. He is second from the left. Blue pants and white shirt. I am certain that he made life easier for the three hikers pictured with him. His trail name was Alpha. Alpha Geof Allen.
Thanks for the story about your friend Geof. It was touching and made this archive just that much more valuable. Hope you have a few more good memories today.
What a moving story. I am younger than you but also had a friend die on me and now I wish I spent much more time with him. I hope you don’t mind that I link directly to the photo so that it’s easier to find. https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/4119
I'm sorry for how this affected you, and for the situation your friend found himself in. It sounds like he lived well, was loved, and (however sadly) took his leave on his own terms. Thank you for telling us about him.
Thanks for sharing. I have a story similar to yours, I had a college friend who hiked the AT and then later died by suicide. I wrote about it here: https://journeys.appalachiantrail.org/issue/spring-summer-20...
(Here is my friend's picture: https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/22103)
I'm sorry for you loss. Thanks for posting the story - I volunteer with the AT Museum to maintain this site, and it's always nice to hear some of the stories behind the pictures.
That was a very touching anecdote that stole away the mundanity of reading the morning news. I had to go look. These are the things that make life so human. Thank you for sharing with us.
Thank you for your touching story. It's beautiful when people live on in memories like this.
Touching story. You are a good friend and Geof seems like he was an excellent individual.
Wow - thank you!
Sorry for your loss. You have a way with words, keep writing please.
I thruhiked in 1995, and while I did go to the ATC headquarters to sign in, I don't recall having my photo taken, but it may have been. I do however vividly recall the photo archive at Rusty's Hardtime Hollow just off the Blue Ridge Parkway section of the AT a few miles but was well worth the trip.
Rusty had polaroids of hikers going way back, they lined the walls of every building, when he built new bunkhouses, he started new annual collections. There were thousands of them. Every night he would roll his truck down into the parking are blast James Brown and feed what he could to whatever he had or whatever hikers could bring. Wood fired hot tub, sauna, huge garden, it was a paradise after almost a 1000 miles on foot.
I hope the ATC was also able to recover Rusty's photos, because he had a real gold mine. The few years after hiking when I lived in the area I would bring beverages and hot dogs for the hikers. I lost touch with Rusty after I went west. I was hiking recently in Maine and talking to another thruhiker who went through in the 2000 and she said the Hollow is gone now which would be a shame of his archive could not be recovered.
I thruhiked in 2001. Stayed for a few days at Rusty's. That place was amazing!
I found my pic, they spelled my trail name a bit differently: https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/2329
Wild! I don’t even remember this picture being taken, but here I am with my (future) wife.
https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/9660
> Between January and April 2009, 12,779 images representing over 18,000 Appalachian Trail hikers were carefully removed from old notebooks, barcoded, scanned at 600 dpi, and placed into archival quality sleeves and slip-covered albums. The entire process took sixteen volunteers over 425 hours to complete.
Quite the effort! Always fun to see people come together for stuff like this.
They mention difficulty in trying to figure out names, dates, trail names, etc. I realized I'm so used to the ubiquitousness of social media and cell phones because my immediate thought was, "Why did these people not put down their numbers?"
I wonder if this could add clues to the handful of people who go missing on the trail.
There is a separate project (now also managed by the AT Museum) called the hiker yearbook, which collects phone numbers and emails along with pictures. It looks like the first one may have been published in 2014.
I did the PCT. Felt like going to college again in my 30s. Freedom, meeting tons of new people from around the world, and a richness and rawness of life I've never experienced before or since.
Found my sister! I think I met up with her a few days after this photo was taken. I was envious of her being able to thru-hike - but I made the time to go visit her along the trail and probably did about 400 miles of it, on and off.
Excited for a time I can just say screw it, and walk off into the woods for as long as I want. Always felt most at home living out of a bag, calorie starved enough to take immense pleasure in eating things I would never buy in my normal day to day - but filled to the brim with energy. The rush of hill after mountain after hill is greater than the most doomscrolling-optimized feed, and you feel it with all your senses.
Found this legend. I hiked with him in '98 and '99. I'd absolutely put Baltimore Jack in the top 10 of American outdoorsmen of all time. I think he thru-hiked the entire AT eight times. Pretty sure that's the record: https://athikerpictures.org/hikers/3969
He was a legend, for sure. I hiked with him a bit during my 2001 thruhike. By that point he was already... uhhhmm... not really "hiking" the trail as much as "hanging out on the trail, walking a bit, sometimes".
I didn't realized until earlier this year that he passed away back in 2016. https://appalachiantrail.org/leadership/jack-tarlin/
You may be pleased to know that he was still sectioning in 2010. I met him in the Smokies and bumped into him periodically as I went up the trail. RIP.
This is great. Found myself on 5/30/22. Looking forward to catching up with photos of people I hiked with. Also love the pics from ‘79 - total time capsule! Short-shorts never went out of style in the hiking community.
Short-shorts love those who don't skip leg day.
And thruhikers never skip leg day.
The 2010 data seems to be screwed up and/or incomplete. A search by year with a blank in the search box returns 17 pages of results (with very few trail names). 2009 and 2011 return 76 and 89 pages of results respectively. Master Chief's photo is a Katahdin photo (happy to see he finished!). There are a couple photos with a trailname of "original" and "edited" that are of the same hiker, but "edited" is cropped. And they're definitely missing pictures of a bunch of folks whose town names I know.
I'm bummed, because I'd sure like to see pictures of some of the rest of the class of 2010.
It also looks like they might've stopped recording (or transcribing from photos?) trail names for a while. I was SOBO in '03, and found a bunch of familiar faces by trail name. A blank search for 2003 and a sort by trail name descending gives me 68 pages. For 2011, the same procedure gets me 2 pages.
Has anyone hiked the trail very recently? It has been a long ambition of mine, but life continues to get in the way. Now with two young children I don't think I'll get a chance for another decade, but I'm conscious that every year going by the experience becomes less solitary (which I quite like).
What an internet treasure.
Great. Thanks for sharing. Found myself 2004 thru hike.
Neat. They seem to have bought a digital camera around 2008-05-30. Much better image quality from thereon.
Hiking the trail has been a life goal of mine for a decade now.
Seeing stuff like this is inspiring to me.
The increase in numbers each year is pretty remarkable.
Thanks. Found myself