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Next spring, every morning for two months, Mitchell Tennison will wake up somewhere along the Appalachian Trail, collapse his tent and continue his 2,200-mile hike from Georgia to Maine with a small backpack, two walking sticks and a singular mission.
In the spring of 2011, when islanders will be reacquainting themselves with the beach, worrying about the Heritage, and watching comic-book movies, Mitchell Tennison will be hiking.
Every morning for two months, he’ll wake somewhere along the Appalachian Trail, fold his tent, pack his stuff, figure out which way is north and start walking. Depending on the cooperation of the weather and the woods, he’ll walk upwards of 30 miles a day, without benefit of rest days or weekends. He’ll break occasionally for water and snacks, and less occasionally for a cup of coffee and a flash-frozen meal. He’ll walk until further walking is precluded by weariness or dark, then veer a few hundred yards off the trail, unfold the tent and sleep until just before the sun breaks over the trees, at which point he’ll get up and continue walking.
If everything goes well — if it doesn’t rain too much, if he doesn’t slip and twist an ankle, if the supply packages he’s mailing to post offices along the trail arrive as scheduled, if he’s not unduly bothered by snakes or bears — he’ll traverse the whole of the Appalachian Trail in what he believes is record time: 60 days. By then he’ll have hiked almost 2,200 miles from the southern terminus at Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine.
There are a number of compelling reasons not to do this, and by now you have probably made a mental list of most of them. There are probably compelling reasons to not do many of the things Tennison has done, such as serve for 10 years as a Navy SEAL, dedicate three years to the California Department of Corrections, become trained as a sniper and hike 750 miles of lively elevation on the Pacific Crest Trail.
But the reasons Tennison wants to do this sharply outweigh those against. His goal is to raise money and awareness for two causes: the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry, where his wife, Francine, serves on the volunteer board; and for the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This last issue is closest to him: Tennison himself was a missing and exploited child, having been abducted from his San Diego suburb by a neighbor at the age of 14 and kept from home for more than a year.
It’s hard to imagine that experience not informing Tennison’s days and plans, but the softspoken, long-haired 43-year-old seems invested in bringing some good out of the dark.
- Follow Mitchell Tennison’s Appalachian Trail journey at www.2011appalachiantrailrun.webs.com
“(At the time of his abduction), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was in its infancy,” Tennison says. “They’ve got Amber Alerts now, Megan’s Law, all sorts of wonderful things. I’m hoping that people see this and say, ‘You know, I’ve got an extra five bucks I can give to the Center or give to the food pantry.’ All it takes is one person to give a little bit, to make that dollar amount the Center has go up just enough to lobby for a new law.”
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Tennison dropped out of high school a few years after his ordeal, and spent a couple years “just being a wreck.” But he found footing in the Navy, where he enlisted and served as a SEAL for 10 years. “I discovered what getting down and dirty in the mud was,” he says, “And I started to love it. Not necessarily the dirty part, but the solitude, the athleticism. Discovering that if I could do 20 miles a day and have six hours of daylight left that I could do another nine or 10 miles. I started to fall in love with long-distance hiking.”
- To donate to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, go to www.missingkids.com, click Online Donation and write AT Hike in the In Honor Of box.
- To donate to the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry, go to www.sandalwoodfoodpantry.com, click Online Donation and write AT Hike in the In Honor Of box.
- To donate directly, send a check or money order to PO Box 23242, Hilton Head, SC, 29925.
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At the time, Tennison began going out on the vast, varied Pacific Crest Trail, which he describes as much more difficult than the AT. “You’ll have maybe 30 or 40 miles between water stops,” he says. “On the AT, you might experience a 1,000-foot elevation gain over the course of a day. On the Pacific Crest, there are places you’ll have a 1,000-foot elevation gain over the course of a mile. On your daily hike, you go from 8,000 feet from the desert floor into Idyllwild.”
He kept hiking and exploring after leaving the service and joining the California Department of Corrections, where he spent three years. “They loved me,” he says. “because I had new tactics for them. I very quickly, within those three years, became sniper instructor for the state of California. I became a closequarter battle instructor. I was an entry-team commander as well as the primary sniper. But I didn’t like it. I did not like it.”
Tennison left the depart-ment, and a period of drifting followed — he says he spent time essentially homeless — as did a divorce. But before long he met Francine in San Diego — ”We both had dogs, he had a boy chihuahua and I had a girl chihuahua,” she says — and when his children relocated to the Lowcountry, the two packed their cars and followed. They were married two years ago. These days, Francine splits her time between working with a local cleaning company, running her own skin care and nutrition business, serving as a barista and volunteering at the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry, where she serves on the board. Tennison, for his part, says he’s written four books in the past year.
Francine says she and Mitch are both, as you might guess, the outdoors types. “I’ve always been a hiker, but I never did backpacking until I met Mitch. Being in San Diego, we did hikes, kayaking, surfing. The dogs basically went everywhere we went, including the kayaks,” she says with a laugh.
Francine will handle the shipping of supplies to Mitchell’s designated supply points along the trail, and if they can swing it, she and his kids will be waiting at Katahdin when he finishes the trek.
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Tennison is hiking unassisted, as naturally as possible, more “Into The Wild” and less “A Walk In The Woods.” Aside from his phone, he’ll carry no electronic devices (“The more devices you depend on, the more you’re going to be let down,” he says). He’ll carry only about a half-liter of water, since water sources cross the trail pretty regularly. From there, the plan is basically a whole lot of walking.
“In reality, it sounds pretty boring,” he says, “And it can be pretty boring.”
But the idea is not to go from shelter to shelter, or even roof to roof, and it’s not to commune with the forest or immerse himself in soulcleansing solitude or indulge in the majesty of nature. The goal is to get to Katahdin in two months.
“In the beginning, I thought that whoever said they did it in 60 days was full of canal water,” he says. “That equates to 36 miles a day, without a single rest day. You have to resupply, and at some places it can be several miles into town. What if your package isn’t there? What if you have to buy food?”
But once he started hiking, he made an unlikely dis-covery. “I started doing 7 or 8 miles. Then I upped it to 12, and then I upped it to 15, then 18, then 20. Now I’m doing 25 miles before 3 in the afternoon, and I feel absolutely fine. Absolutely fine.”
At that point he realized it became a matter of simple numbers. “If you do the math, I’m doing 25 miles by 3 p.m. I could push it out to 8 p.m., which is another 5 1/2 hours. That’s another 16 1/2 miles. So (60 days) is doable. It actually is doable.”
It’s doable, of course, assuming an awful lot of things fall into place.
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First, there’s the cost. “I’m not in it to make any money,” he says, but there are obvious logistics to work out involving getting to the trail and stepping away from his regular life for a few months. (“I’m used to running the household,” Francine says with a laugh, “but obviously I’m going to miss him.”) There’s also the matter of food and supplies, although he’s being sponsored by Outside Hilton Head, which is supplying gear, including a new, ultra-lightweight tent.
Then there’s the time. Training, as you might imagine, involves a lot of walking, usually in the mornings at Pinckney Island or the Fox Swamp Trail. He admits that getting in 25 miles of training and attending to the routine of life has been a challenge.
As for the hike itself, Tennison is leaving April 1, before the crowds, the heat and the bugs. Most thru-hikers and recreational hikers hit the AT at the end of April, so he figures the extra time should let him keep pace and cut down on distractions. He’s set up resupply points every 300 to 370 miles, where Francine will mail his supply packages. Frankly, he says, it’d be the perfect time to go, were it not for the bears.
“The only thing I could see slowing me down is that’s when the bears come out,” he says, with a fairly shocking matter-of-factness. “They’ve been out for about a month, and they’re hungry, and I’ve got a big bag full of food.”
Comfortingly, Tennison has a plan. “There’s a funny thing about bears. They’re familiar with antlers — they know they hurt, so they don’t go after deer with big antlers. You click your hiking poles together and they sound like antlers. Really, the only bears I’ve ever seen are running away as fast as they can.” Also effective: simple pepper spray. “A bear’s nose is 100 times more sensitive than a bloodhound’s, so if you hit him, he’ll be down for an hour and a half.”
He’s anticipating a certain amount of monotony, of course, which he already has plans to combat. “It sounds silly,” he says, “But I count. I have my pace count down to where I know exactly how many times my left foot hits the ground for 1/10 of a mile.”
There’s no paperwork to fill out when hiking the trail; you don’t register with a state park or the government or anything, and the only official records are journals that dot the path. As such, official records for thruhikers tend to be spotty and incomplete. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy says it’s recorded more than 11,000 hike completions since 1936, but that includes thru-hikes, section hikes and those who’ve done it more than once.
What is known is that, like marathon running, skydiving and other seemingly terrible ideas, more people are doing it. Just 61 hike completions were recorded from 1936 to 1969. In 1970, author/hiker Ed Garvey released the popular “Appalachian Hiker: Adventure of a Lifetime,” and interest spiked immediately. The number of hikers on the trail has doubled every decade since 1980, and by 2008, 10,000 hike completions were in the books.
But even with the increased numbers, it’s not something that’s taken on lightly. “The kids think it’s awesome,” Francine says. “But his dad’s a little nervous. Especially about the bears. But I’m not really worried, I just say, ‘I’ll pray for you a lot out there.’”
Besides, Tennison’s goals go beyond the actual hiking. “I have enough money to take the time off, but realistically I’m winging it as I go. I don’t have any money to give the Center, to the pantry. My wife gives (the pantry) her time, but the only thing I can give, and give a lot of, is my exertion. And if one person can think, ‘Wow, things happen outside my bubble that I normally don’t think about, for a moment I’m gonna care about this, and I’m going to help,’ then that’s great.”
