>>2611422The AT is absolute rife with fakers. It’s unreal, and nobody bothers to call them out. I’m mean the hippy-dippy “hike your own hike” ethos is right; if you want to hitchhike more than half the trail that’s your business. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. If you just do a few iconic sections, go to trail days, hike naked that one day, eat your half gallon of ice cream, and go to the top Katahdin, does that count?
I saw it a few times on my thruhike in 2005, but my wife and I probably saw a dozen people doing it when we did a 530 miles section in 2018. I’m guessing it has to do with social media. Basically we’d pass people on the trail, and they’d somehow arrive in town or at a shelter before us. And it happened again and again.
