The Final Miles

Last Revised: June 09, 2008

For a few minutes on April 3, a finishing line was strung across the Appalachian Trail south of Thornton Gap, Va. Erected by hiking friends of Ray Hunt, it symbolized the group's pride in one man's accomplishment - the completion of a 2,100-mile hike that was 38 years in the making.

Hunt, presiding officer of the Appalachian Trail Conference Board of Managers since 1983, accommodated his camera-clicking friends by retracing the final steps several times. After so many years and so many miles, he didn't mind over-punctuating the end of the experience. Like others who have hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, Hunt found the final inches a bittersweet experience.

"I could have finished it last fall, but I decided to wait," Hunt said a few weeks later, adding, "It was more sentiment than egotism." He spent much of last winter contemplating, almost savoring, the 30 miles of relatively easy terrain he had left to cover in the Shenandoah National Park.

The 64-year-old resident of Kingsport, Tenn., knew his wife, Martha, would be there at the finish line, as she had patiently waited at the end of so many of his A.T. hikes over the years. And, he could count on the hiking companionship of his close friend and Board colleague, Collins Chew. But, he hadn't expected the entourage of five other men friends who wanted to participate in his final 30 miles. Four of them, including Chew, were already 2,000-milers. With Hunt, they were long-time members of the Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club and frequent companions on the Trail.

"I was really touched," recalls Hunt, with a flash of emotion uncharacteristic of his easy-going, no-nonsense manner. "It's not in me to be philosophical about it . . . but it made me feel good that they were there . . . and, as far as completing the Trail, I feel good about it . . . for my own pleasure and self-satisfaction."

At the spring meeting of the Board of Managers in late April, ATC Executive Director Dave Startzell presented Hunt with a plaque commemorating his achievement: the first chair to hike the entire A.T. since it became a continuous footpath in 1937. (Myron Avery, ATC chair from 1931 to 1952, had hiked all Trail sections, often as the route's primary scout, by 1936.) Hunt was obviously pleased with his placement in Trail history.

In 1946, a few years after graduating from Yale University, Hunt, a native of western Pennsylvania, became a chemical engineer at the Tennessee Eastman Company in Kingsport. The 26-year-old enjoyed walking and being outdoors but had never heard of the Appalachian Trail.

About 1950, Hunt became involved in the hiking club sponsored by his employer as part of its recreation program. At first, he says, he was "only interested in pleasure hikes," but soon he became involved in the maintenance of a 126-mile stretch of A.T., from Damascus, Va., south to Spivey Gap on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, assigned to the club by ATC.

He laughs heartily now as he recalls a major relocation of the Trail early in the 1950s. Under the leadership of Stanley Murray (who served as chair of ATC himself, from 1961 to 1975), club members undertook the arduous task of relocating the A.T. from roads to a 54-mile scenic route over Roan Mountain.

"I had no idea of where or why, but I was sure it would be the ruination of the club," Hunt quips. The work took more than three years to complete, he recalls, "but, we did it."

Between 1950 and 1969, Hunt covered the Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club's (TEHC) section over and over again. It wasn't until the mid-1960s that he began hiking farther from home, mostly on weekend pleasure trips along the Trail in the Smoky Mountains.

His first backpacking experience was at the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch near Cimarron, N.M., in 1965. In 1969, he participated in an Appalachian Mountain Club range hike in the White Mountains.

About that time, Hunt says, he and the other men he often hiked with decided to complete hiking all of the A.T. "We had already hiked several hundred miles, . . . and it was a challenge for all of us." Over the years since then, they have hiked as individuals, in different teams, and as a full group.

By 1972, Hunt had completed all of the A.T. from Damascus to Springer Mountain, Ga. By the mid-1970s, he recalls, "we decided that the hardest part of the Trail was in Maine and New Hampshire and that we better get up there before we were old men!" So, in 1977, Hunt completed the northernmost 60 miles of the Trail, to the summit of Katahdin, Maine. During Group of TEHCC members who accompanied Ray Hunt in his completion of hiking the A.T. the next five years, he completed the rest of Maine and most of New Hampshire. He still had nearly 1,000 miles to go, but the end was in sight.

For more than 1,100 miles, Hunt backpacked different sections of the Trail. The rest was covered with day hikes that, in recent years, often involved Collins Chew and the cooperative support system of their wives - Charlotte Chew and Martha Hunt.

"You can't really do it without a support system," Hunt says. The wives would leave their husbands off in the morning and pick them up at a designated stopping point at nightfall. In between, the women would sightsee or shop up to 50 miles on both sides of the Trail. Hunt notes that, among the four of them, "we often covered a 100-mile swath around the Trail on each hike."

He teases Chew, who completed his A.T. hike last year and has written a book about geological features along the Trail. "I have a running joke with Collins that (during our hikes) he told me a lot more about rocks than I really wanted to know."

He laughs, recalling the dual monologues. "Whenever we were going uphill, Collins would do all the talking; I'd save my breath and answer his questions when we started coming down a hill."

Hunt says hiking the Trail "takes more persistence and patience than a lot of people want to devote to it . . . . Most of the time, you are dog-tired. I never did get used to it, but I did enjoy setting out the challenge and being able to say to myself that I did a particular segment . . . .

"When you're hiking by yourself, it's easy to give up," he adds, noting that he hiked solo for only 142 miles of the A.T. "When you're with a group, and the car is waiting 80 miles away, it's a disgrace not to get there," he laughs.

Some of his most pleasant memories are of fall hikes in Maine, but he pensively adds sections in nearly every other state to the list.

He often reported Trail conditions to the appropriate maintaining club. He says, with conviction, that "I never hiked any section that showed neglect or lack of concern." Most problems, such as blowdowns, occur between maintenance trips, Hunt notes. A number of Trail sections were in poor locations, he recalls; in some cases, because of private property, that couldn't be helped.

Hunt used A.T. guidebooks throughout his hike and says he "never got lost more than 100 yards." Since that incident, many years ago, due to a poorly blazed section, he's prided himself and the guidebooks for keeping him on the footpath and able to meet a hiking schedule.

"Mostly, I took my time," he says. "I didn't want to get into a situation of staring only at the top of my boots . . . I was never obsessed with it at all, although I was pretty determined to finish. I think that doing it in pieces provides time to reflect on the memories of each particular trip. I remember it better."

He says he's been asked many times how much money the 38-year hike cost and laughs, "I don't know, and I don't want to know.

"It's like going fishing or hunting . . . or gardening . . . . You don't want to know what it cost to grow one tomato or catch one fish."

Hunt notes that "transportation and lodging costs are ferocious," and he recounts a 1,000-mile round-trip he made in 1980 to join a friend for a 10-mile weekend hike in Pennsylvania. "It was absolutely nuts," he adds with a laugh. "But, it was important too, because that 10 miles was what that friend needed to complete the Trail, and I knew what that meant to him."

In 1977, Hunt first got involved with ATC as a member of the Board's publications committee. He had already served as a data contributor for two editions of the Tennessee-North Carolina guidebook. He was also field editor for three editions, between 1971 and 1981. Hunt coedited, with Florence Nichol, the first (and only) guidebook style manual, in 1979.

Using the out-of-print "Mileage Fact Sheet" compiled by Ed Garvey and Gus Crews as a springboard, Hunt also created a "data book" to serve as an overall reference to all A.T. guidebooks. The compact book contains the mileages to landmarks and towns along the Trail, along with directions to sources of water, food, shelter, post offices, etc.

The A.T. Data Book that Hunt edited from 1977 to 1983 is now updated Ray Hunt each year by Daniel Chazin of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference.

Hunt was first elected to the Board of Managers in 1979. Appointed chair of its publications committee, he served in that capacity until elected ATC chair in 1983. His third and final two-year term will expire in June 1989, at which time he plans to continue his involvement in ATC affairs as chair emeritus.

In the mid-1980's, Hunt was stricken with two life-threatening illnesses, one almost on top of the other. He seems uncomfortable talking about the experience, other than to make light of it.

"Either illness could have taken me away in a flash . . . and that would have disappointed me, not being able to finish the Trail," he quips.

His carefully kept A.T. log shows nary a break in hiking. "It's a poor choice to stop doing what you want to do," Hunt maintains. "You have to ignore it (illness) to the greatest extent possible, so it does not interfere with normal activity any more than it must."

Always a "great numbers man," he perks up with a grin, adding, "I did decide to hurry a little more" with the hiking, "not out of fear, but probability."

Now, his health fully restored and his A.T. hike completed, Hunt enumerates the many activities in his daily life. After his retirement from Tennessee Eastman last year, he stepped up his involvement in an extensive historic-restoration project in his community. He is also president of the local chapter of the Audubon Society. "And, it appears I have become a handyman" for several family members, he adds.

His volunteer work for ATC requires about 20 hours a week. At other times, he enjoys working in his yard, tending to trees, shrubs, stone walls, and wildflowers.

Lately, he's taken up writing about different events in his life, but he shakes his head, almost despairingly, at the thought. "For me, writing is very slow and painful . . . I'd rather backpack than write," he says.

Over the years, Hunt has been a frequent contributor to the Appalachian Trailway News, writing numerous feature articles. One of his more famous, or infamous, accounts was to garner tongue-in-cheek support for a new organization he created - the Society of Those Whose Favorite Boots Wore Out. (It was written soon after his favorite pair of hiking boots wore out after they had covered 1,000 miles of the A.T.)

". . . They were like an old friend," he wrote. "When the soles came loose, I took them to the shoe repair shop. The shoemaker said they could not be repaired. I felt like an old man who had lost his pet dog. I knew I could get new boots, but it would never be the same . . ."

Since he was first elected ATC chair, Hunt has covered a wide array of subjects in his regular column in the Appalachian Trailway News. As with his A.T. hikes and his chairmanship, his approach is pragmatic, succinct, often rippled with a dry sense of humor - and always positive. He has, in short, an unwavering optimism about the future of the A.T., ATC, the clubs, maintainers, hikers, the environment. For every potential problem, there is a "Huntism" that addresses the matter with quick finality.

"The A.T. is one of the best hiking trails in the world. Certainly, it is the best known, best marked, and the public has paid a whole lot for it. I don't have it in me to say, 'Don't use it,' " he says.

-Judy Jenner