How many miles have I hiked?

c) Andrew Carter, 2025

Occasionally, I’m asked how many miles I’ve hiked in my life. My answer has always been an off-the-top-of-my-head estimate. Most recently that estimate has been 6000 miles.

The estimate was based on having hiked the Appalachian Trail (2100 miles) and the Pacific Crest Trail (2700 miles) plus the several shorter long-distance trails I’ve hiked over the past four years. All those alone would get me to more than 5500 miles, plus I’ve done other hiking besides that.

After I got back from my Long Trail hike, I decided to sit down and think it through and come up with something more exact. The answer? About 7300 miles. Holy heck!

The chart below shows how I came up with this number.

SEKI stands for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. “SE” for the first park, “KI” for the second. “Approx.” means the actual distance is within one or two miles of what’s shown. “Estimate” means the actual distance may be as much as five miles different from what’s shown. “Guess” means exactly that. I’ve tried to guess low vs. guess high.

I’ve been hiking since I was a kid. I had the good fortune to have a father who hiked. I went on my first overnight when I was five years old. The longest hike I did with my father was a 100-mile section hikers on the Appalachian Trail from Hot Springs, NC through the Smokey Mountains to Fontana Dam.

There were lots of other hikes we went on together when I was young. Some of those hikes were just he and I. Others included my siblings. When I was a young adult, I went on a couple of hikes without my father but with my younger brother, an older sister, even a girlfriend.

After I completed my Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 1977, I did very little hiking for a long time. That’s often the case when you’re an adult. “Life gets in the way” — marriage, career, family, and so on.

It wasn’t until I moved to San Luis Obispo in 1996 that I started hiking again. Much of that has to do with how many trails there are in the surrounding hills. Also, my children were getting old enough to go on hikes. I wanted to expose them to hiking and the great outdoors.

In 2001, I went on my first long hike for almost 25 years. I hiked through the Los Padres National Forest from Montecito to San Luis Obispo. Then I began to go on hikes in the summer with my son William while he was in high school. On our first trip, we summitted Mt. Whitney. On our second, Half Dome.

During college, William didn’t have the time, but after he graduated and was living and working in LA, we started hiking together again — summitting Mt. Baden-Powell, Mt. San Jacinto, and Mt. Gorgonio, also walking across Catalina Island.

In 2021, I retired and began my recent hiking frenzy — the Pacific Crest Trail in the West, the Benton MacKaye Trail and Tuscarora Trail in the East, and the Ozark Highlands Trail and Ouachita Trail in Arkansas. Now, I’ve completed the Long Trail in Vermont. Whew!

I look at that 7300 number and think I should try to get the number up to 10,000. It’s not going to happen. I retired in 2021, but my wife Marta didn’t retire until last August. It was one thing to “ghost” her while she was still working. It’s another thing to do that now that she’s retired. We have non-hiking adventures we want to do together. Even while Marta was working and I was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I made sure to never be gone for more than a month.

Do I still have trails I’d like to hike? Yes, of course. I’d particularly like to hike the Colorado Trail. I’ve never hiked in the Rockies. The Colorado Trail is 486 miles long, with an alternate route that can extend the distance to 567 miles. If I’m able to hike either distance, it won’t be in one trip. The shorter distance would take at least four weeks. The longer distance, five weeks. Marta might humor me enough to allow me to do the trail in two trips over two years. We’ll see.

This may be my last “carterhikes.com” post for quite a while since I don’t have other hikes planned. I do need to finish my “Two Trails” book. I’ll let you know when it’s done. Whatever the case, happy trails.