Hiking Stories That Will Inspire You: 5 True Trail Tales and the Books Behind Them
The most inspiring hiking stories are true ones: Earl Shaffer’s 1948 Appalachian Trail walk, Emma Gatewood’s 1955 hike at age 67, Cheryl Strayed’s Pacific Crest Trail trek in Wild, Bill Bryson’s unfinished A Walk in the Woods, and Jennifer Pharr Davis’s speed record.
Each has a book you can read.
Hiking stories do something a trail guide can’t: they make you want to go.
The best ones are true, and the five below, from a veteran’s 1948 walk to a 2011 speed record, each have a book behind them.
Here is what each hiker did, what went wrong, and what the rest of us can take from it.
Why Hiking Stories Work Better Than Trail Guides
Hiking stories show ordinary people finishing hard walks, which makes your own first trail feel possible.
A guidebook tells you where the water is. It doesn’t tell you how day nine feels, when your feet hurt and the sky turns grey. A memoir does.
Most of the people below were not elite athletes. One was 67 and wore canvas sneakers. One had never backpacked before she started.
One quit before the end and still wrote a bestseller about it.
We kept to hiking stories that are well documented, each with a published book, so you can check the details and keep reading.
Earl Shaffer: The First Reported Thru-Hike of the Appalachian Trail
In 1948, World War II veteran Earl Shaffer walked the full Appalachian Trail, and later told the story in Walking with Spring.
Before 1948, nobody had reported walking the whole Appalachian Trail in one go. Shaffer set out from Georgia and headed north toward Maine.
The trail was young then, patchy in places and poorly marked in others. He followed it anyway.
He went partly to shake off the war. He had lost a close friend in it, and the walk was his way of working through that.
He wrote about the experience later in Walking with Spring, which the Appalachian Trail Conference (now the Appalachian Trail Conservancy) published.
He didn’t stop at one. Shaffer hiked the trail again in 1965, this time heading south, and walked it once more in 1998 at the age of 79.
The lesson is quiet: you don’t need a reason anyone else would understand. You need one that gets you out the door.
Emma Gatewood: A 67-Year-Old in Canvas Sneakers
In 1955, Emma “Grandma” Gatewood hiked the Appalachian Trail alone at age 67 and finished in under five months, as told in Ben Montgomery’s Grandma Gatewood’s Walk.
Gatewood was a mother of eleven from Ohio.
She had read about the Appalachian Trail in a magazine and decided it sounded like a pleasant stroll. It wasn’t.
An earlier attempt ended in failure, so she went back to Georgia in 1955 and started again.
Her gear would make a modern ultralighter wince.
She wore Keds sneakers and carried a homemade denim bag with a blanket, food, and a plastic shower curtain for rain.
No tent, no frame pack, no fancy boots.
She finished at the top of Maine’s Mount Katahdin in September 1955, after a little under five months on the trail.
Reporters picked up the story, and the attention is often credited with putting a neglected trail back in the public eye.
Ben Montgomery’s book, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, which presents her as the first woman to hike the whole trail alone, also covers the hard marriage she was leaving behind, which gives the walk more weight than a simple record.
She went back and hiked the trail twice more.
Age and gear are rarely what stops people. Quitting early usually is.
Cheryl Strayed and the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild
In 1995, 26-year-old Cheryl Strayed hiked about 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with almost no backpacking experience, the story she tells in her memoir Wild.
Four years after her mother died, Strayed was a mess. Her marriage had ended and her life had lost its shape.
She bought a pack, packed far too much into it, and started walking north from the Mojave Desert in California.
The early days were rough. She nicknamed the overloaded pack “Monster.” Her boots were too small and cost her several toenails.
At one point a boot tumbled down a mountainside, and she threw the other one after it, then kept going in sandals wrapped in duct tape.
She finished at the Bridge of the Gods, where the trail crosses from Oregon into Washington, after roughly three months.
Her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, came out in 2012 and later became a film.
Read it for the honesty, which sets it apart from most hiking stories. Strayed doesn’t pretend the hike fixed everything.
She shows that walking gave her room to grieve, and that it was enough to start putting herself back together.
Bill Bryson and the Hike He Didn’t Finish
Bill Bryson never completed the Appalachian Trail, and his 1998 book A Walk in the Woods shows that a partial hike can still make one of the best hiking stories.
Bryson was an established travel writer when he decided in 1996 to walk the Appalachian Trail with an old friend, Stephen Katz.
Their story became A Walk in the Woods. They started in north Georgia one March morning, out of shape and nervous about bears.
They quit well short of the end.
By Bryson’s own account, he covered a little under half of the roughly 2,200-mile trail, partly together and partly in pieces.
The book is funny, a bit grumpy, and honest about both the boredom and the beauty of long-distance walking.
It also made a quiet argument that matters if you’re starting out: hiking some of a big trail still counts.
The 2015 film version, with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, brought it to a wider audience.
You are allowed to hike a trail in pieces, and you are allowed to stop. The walking you did still happened.
Jennifer Pharr Davis: From First-Timer to Record Holder
Jennifer Pharr Davis hiked the Appalachian Trail at 21, then in 2011 set what was then the overall fastest known time of 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes, with her books Becoming Odyssa and Called Again telling both stories.
Her first Appalachian Trail hike came in 2005, when she was 21 and walking under the trail name Odyssa.
She wrote about it in Becoming Odyssa (2010), a memoir of someone learning what she could do one mile at a time.
Six years later she went back with a very different plan: to cover the whole trail as fast as possible, with a support team handling food and logistics.
She finished in 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes, averaging well over 40 miles a day.
At that point it was the fastest time on record for anyone, men included. Called Again (2013) covers that second attempt.
Records on the Appalachian Trail have been broken since, which is part of the point. The trail didn’t change. Her relationship with it did.
How to Turn Hiking Inspiration Into Your First Hike
Start with a short day hike on a marked trail, carry the basics, and tell someone your plan before you leave.
You don’t need a thru-hike to act on hiking stories like these.
A good first step is smaller than any story above, and you can do it this weekend.
Start With a Beginner Day Hike
Pick a marked trail of a few miles with a clear start and end. Check the forecast the night before.
If you’re not sure of your pace, choose a route you can shorten.
Pack the Basics, Not Everything
Strayed’s overloaded pack is the cautionary tale here.
Bring water, food, a rain layer, a map or offline route, a headlamp, and a small first-aid kit.
Add more only after you know why you need it.
Tell someone your route and when you expect to be back. Turn around if the weather, the light, or your body says so.
Every hiker above adjusted their plan at some point, and that’s part of why they finished.
Read One of These Books Before You Go
If you’re drawn to long-distance hiking, start with whichever hiker sounds most like you.
The table below shows which book covers which trail.
Hiking Books and Stories at a Glance
Five books tell five very different hiking stories on two of America’s best-known long trails.
| Hiker | Book | Trail | Year of the hike |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earl Shaffer | Walking with Spring | Appalachian Trail | 1948 |
| Emma Gatewood | Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery | Appalachian Trail | 1955 |
| Cheryl Strayed | Wild | Pacific Crest Trail (about 1,100 miles) | 1995 |
| Bill Bryson | A Walk in the Woods | Appalachian Trail (partial) | 1996 |
| Jennifer Pharr Davis | Becoming Odyssa; Called Again | Appalachian Trail | 2005; 2011 |
If you want to read about trail life first, two organizations maintain the official sources: the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the Pacific Crest Trail Association.
Book References for These Hiking Stories
Every story in this article comes from a published book, and each title below links to its book page so you can read more.
- Walking with Spring by Earl Shaffer, Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The first reported Appalachian Trail thru-hike, 1948.
- Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery, Chicago Review Press, 2014.
- Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, 2012.
- A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books, 1998.
- Becoming Odyssa: Adventures on the Appalachian Trail by Jennifer Pharr Davis, 2010 (author profile).
- Called Again: A Story of Love and Triumph by Jennifer Pharr Davis, 2013 (author profile).
For the official side of each trail, see the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the Pacific Crest Trail Association.
Hiking Stories FAQ
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about these hiking stories, the books, and the trails behind them.
What is the best hiking book to read first?
For a first read, try A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It is funny, easy to read, and honest about how hard long trails are.
If you want something more emotional, pick Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
Do you need experience to hike like these people?
Not to start. Strayed had almost no backpacking experience in 1995, and Gatewood wore canvas sneakers. But both learned fast and adjusted.
Begin with short day hikes, build up your distance, and learn from mistakes while the stakes are low.
How long does it take to hike the Appalachian Trail?
Most thru-hikers need roughly five to seven months to walk the full Appalachian Trail, which runs about 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine.
Emma Gatewood took a little under five months in 1955, and Jennifer Pharr Davis finished in under 47 days with support.
Is Wild by Cheryl Strayed a true story?
Yes.
Wild is a memoir of Strayed’s 1995 solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, covering about 1,100 miles from California to the Oregon-Washington border.
It was published in 2012 and adapted into a film in 2014.
Dreaming of a trek in Gilgit-Baltistan? Tormik Valley Tourism, based in Skardu, can help you plan one around your dates and fitness level.
Pick Your Trail, Then Pick Your Book
The best way to use hiking stories is to read one, then schedule a real walk within the week.
None of the hikers above started with a perfect plan. They started with a trail and a reason.
Read the book that sounds most like you, then book a short hike while the feeling is fresh.
Hiking stories are best when they send you outside to write one of your own.
Which of these hiking stories moved you most, or which book would you add? Share it in the comments below.
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