Start­ing Novem­ber 1, 2005, Yoni and I hiked for almost a full year (through the win­ter). It took us 356 days (this is not a typo) to walk across the U.S., lon­gi­tu­di­nal­ly, three times incor­po­rat­ing the three major hik­ing trails in the Unit­ed States, but we also extend­ed it by about 2800 miles. This trip was over 10,000 miles long. We start­ed from Cap Gaspe, Que­bec, Cana­da to Key West, Flori­da fol­low­ing the East­ern Con­ti­nen­tal Trail (which is the Inter­na­tion­al Appalachi­an Trail, Appalachi­an Trail, Ben­ton MacK­aye Trail, Geor­gia Pin­hote Trail, Alaba­ma Pin­hote Trail, Alaba­ma Trail, Flori­da Trail, and a bit of road walk­ing). Then we drove over to the Pacif­ic Crest Trail and thru-hiked that north­bound from the California/Mexico bor­der to the Washington/Canada bor­der. After that we drove to Water­ton Lakes Nation­al Park in Alber­ta, Cana­da and south­bound­ed the Con­ti­nen­tal Divide Trail, back to the Mex­i­can bor­der. It was fun and chal­leng­ing hik­ing through the win­ter and dur­ing dif­fer­ent sea­sons than last time.I did the math if you are all interested:

• Total mileage: a bit over 10,000 miles (prob­a­bly around 10,700 miles)
• Days: 356
• Avg. mileage per day: 28.1 miles
• Zero days: 26
• Avg mileage per day on hik­ing days: 30.3 miles

It was very chal­leng­ing main­tain­ing this pace for the entire year, espe­cial­ly through the fresh snow­fall and short day­light in the win­ter, the heavy snow­pack of the Sier­ras and Cas­cades, and fresh snow­fall in Colorado.Some days in the fresh snow, I hiked about 19 hours to get my mileage in, aver­ag­ing about 1 to 1.5 miles per hour.It was amaz­ing though because so many peo­ple say, “there is no soli­tude on the AT”, so after this trip my reply to them is “that they are not hik­ing dur­ing the right time of year”.We hard­ly saw any­body on any of the trails, since I was slight­ly off-sea­son in most areas.