NOEL KING, HOST:
Every year, a few thousand people try to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2,190 miles of it. This year, because of the coronavirus, they have been asked to not try it. Some of them have refused. Here's Susan Sharon of Maine Public Radio.
SUSAN SHARON, BYLINE: Friends from college, Drew Miller and Dustin Kornegay of North Carolina, are among the first thru-hikers starting to complete the trail. They both quit their jobs and set off from Georgia on February 29. The pandemic hadn't prompted shutdowns or quarantines, and Miller says they felt like they were in a safe place.
DREW MILLER: Really, until we got several weeks in, it wasn't that big of a thing here yet.
SHARON: At a trail rest stop in Maine on their final 15-mile stretch, Miller says everything changed in March. Concerned about hikers infecting each other and stopping in rural towns to pick up food and supplies, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy made an unusual decision.
SANDI MARRA: We asked people that hadn't started their hike to postpone it, and we asked people who were on the trail to please leave.
SHARON: Sandi Marra is president and CEO of the Conservancy, which manages the trail. She says even before COVID-19, there were regular outbreaks of viruses in crowded bunk houses and shelters. Hikers often don't have access to soap and water for days at a time, so good hygiene can be a challenge. Kornegay says he and Miller briefly considered ending their months-long trip once shelters and privies closed.
DUSTIN KORNEGAY: Yeah, we debated. I mean, I know for me personally, I put so many other things in life on hold to come and do the trail, and this was my one chance to do it, so I was not going to stop. I mean, it was - that's what it came down to.
SHARON: Many others cleared out. Zack Chen of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was one of them. Chen says he got yelled at in a North Carolina post office where he went to pick up a package.
ZACK CHEN: It was something along the lines of, you know, you're endangering a lot of elder folk. You know, you're really putting people's lives in jeopardy.
SHARON: Chen says he rented a car and headed home that very same day. He waited until July before resuming his hike. This time, he's going in reverse, from Maine to Georgia. But for those who didn't get off, there was criticism from the online trail community.
KRISTEN GLENNIE: We did hear that. Right at the peak when everything was getting worse, people were throwing around, like, Grandma killers and, like, stuff like that.
MARY SZATKOWSKI: Yeah, really bad.
SHARON: Kristen Glennie and Mary Szatkowski, both from Maine, finished their hike on July 4. Along the way, Szatkowski says they were confident they could follow CDC guidelines.
SZATKOWSKI: When we went to town, we would feel like we were being safer than the residents there. We were masking up. We were sanitizing and paying attention to, like, the CDC and seeing, like, do we feel like we can follow these directions well enough? And, like, we did feel like we could.
SHARON: But northbound hikers who were a few days ahead of the two women faced one other obstacle. The trail officially ends at the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine's Baxter State Park, and the park didn't completely open until July 1. So a few hikers sneaked in to do the climb, which created more hard feelings. Paul Renaud runs a nearby hostel for hikers.
PAUL RENAUD: Puts a bad mark on the trail community. Don't listen to anybody.
SHARON: The hikers who are finishing the trail now, though, say they're glad they stuck with their plan.
KORNEGAY: I don't know. To me, we're living our best lives right now. It's been nice to have most everything to ourselves.
SHARON: Dustin Kornegay says it will be strange leaving the Appalachian Trail to return to a world in the midst of a pandemic. And plus, he says, his wife is going to want him to find a job.
For NPR News, I'm Susan Sharon.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOONCAKE'S "CAST THE ROUTE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
