Friends and family know him as P.K. Brunnemer. On the Appalachian Trail, fellow hikers know him as “Mule” for his tendency to overpack.
Last year, Brunnemer, 20, a Columbus native who was doing maintenance and repair work for a real estate company in Bloomington, had grown tired of “doing the rat race” and wanted to get away from it all.
“Eventually, I said, ‘I’m kind of fed up with my job, and I’ve got some money saved up, so it’s about the right time of the year to start the (Appalachian Trail),’ and so I did,” he said.
“What better way to (get away from it all) than live in the woods for six or seven months?” Brunnemer explained.
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The Appalachian Trail is estimated to be around 2,200 miles long, and nearly 3 million people walk some portion of the trail each year, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservatory.
The trail winds its way through 14 states — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia.
It typically takes five to seven months to complete, a feat that most hikers are not able to achieve.
For Brunnemer, who had saved $4,000 for the trip, it was a 201-day journey from July 7, 2019 to Jan. 24 — and one he said was full of adventures.
‘I packed for my fears’
In July, Brunnemer’s mother drove him around 1,250 miles from Columbus to the 8.8-mile approach trail that ascends around 5,260 feet to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
His journey would begin alone as he set off into some of the roughest terrain on the entire trail, including a rugged, 114-mile stretch of woods in Maine known as the “Hundred Mile Wilderness” where there are no roads, no towns and nowhere to resupply.
Brunnemer said he quickly found that he was consuming “nowhere near enough” calories to compensate for the estimated 4,000 to 8,000 or more calories he was burning hiking an average of 10 to 12 miles per day.
Additionally, he didn’t pack the kind of food he needed.
Instead of the granola bars, peanuts and other quick snacks that Brunnemer characterized as mostly “junk food” that would later form the lion’s share of his gastronomical repertoire on the trail, he had brought instant mashed potatoes and ramen noodles, which needed to be cooked.
“I lost 22 pounds in the first 10 days,” he said. “…You don’t really know what you’re doing, so you pack breakfast, lunch and dinner. You don’t want breakfast, lunch and dinner, you want snacks all throughout the day. Every hour and a half you want to sit down and have a couple granola bars, or whatever. I was so hungry for the first week on trail because you didn’t want to stop in the middle of the day and cook lunch.”
Overall, Brunnemer said he would lose between 40 and 50 pounds by the time he completed the trail, he said.
The ‘Mule’
Though Brunnemer didn’t initially pack the types of food he needed, he said he quickly gained a reputation among fellow hikers for having packed more than what was necessary.
He carried a headlamp, battery pack for his cell phone, sleeping bag and pad, a 12-foot-by-12-foot tarp, cook pot, stove, clothes, food and snacks, several water bottles, a first aid kit, among several other items, he said.
“I packed for my fears,” Brunnemer said. “I had a ton of equipment. One of the guys I hiked around with a bit named me ‘Mule’ because of it. You know, like a pack mule. The name kind of stuck.”
Many hikers adopt “trail names,” many of which are descriptive or humorous, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservatory.
“I don’t actually know a whole lot of people’s real names,” Brunnemer said. “Everybody just goes by their trail names. You don’t really get to choose your name. It’s something that’s given to you. Some characteristic about you determines your name.”
As Brunnemer continued along the trail, he would start reducing the weight on his back, ditching what he said were “luxury items.”
One of the first items to go was the first aid kit, Brunnemer said. He also got rid of the lid and steel handle of his cook pot, extra water bottles, a detachable pocket on top of his hiking pack, among other items.
“It was just, ‘What weight can I get rid of?’” he said. “Every ounce means less calories (burned).”
Trail buddies
It didn’t take Brunnemer, or Mule, long to find a group of hikers he joined up with for most of the trail.
By Massachusetts, Brunnemer said he had encountered a trio of hikers he finished the trail with — Hot Sauce, Avid and Young Bull, a recent college graduate who reportedly was given his trail name by “some old, intoxicated man in the woods” who “may have possibly smoked something” and thought the hiker had a physical resemblance to a young bull.
Together, they slogged through rain and mud, trekked across drought-stricken mid-Atlantic states where they did not find water for 15 miles and braved below-freezing temperatures in Virginia as fall turned to winter, Brunnemer said.
They also would encounter a host of characters during their journey — including a hostel owner who had hiked all over the world and a woman they didn’t know who let Brunnemer drive her car to run errands.
Brunnemer would go into a town near the trail every 10 to 12 days to pick up a package of food from a local post office, he said.
‘Honeymoon phase’ ends
Roughly 40% of the way through the trail, Brunnemer said the mental ebbs and flows of living in the wilderness started to weigh on him.
“The biggest (challenge) is mental,” Brunnemer said. “When you’re out six, seven months and you’re doing the exact same thing again, again and again, you go through ups and downs on the mental thing. Early on, everything is awesome. You’re in the honeymoon phase. Everything is perfect. This is what you want to do. When that wears off, you start to notice the parts that aren’t as awesome, like being rained on, being wet for three or four days straight, when it gets cold, being cold, the fact that you are hiking 20 miles a day. Those start to dig at you.”
For Brunnemer, the honeymoon phase had worn off about when he got to Pennsylvania, or roughly 900 miles into the 2,200-mile journey.
“Hygiene is a big hurdle,” he said. “It’s a mental game. You just have to kind of admit, ‘Yeah, I’m going to stink. I’m going to smell. Sometimes I have to put on damp, sweaty shirts.’”
His beard had grown a couple inches and his hair would periodically grow out and get to the point that he would shave it because it was “nasty and greasy,” he said.
In Pennsylvania, Brunnemer said he, along with Hot Sauce, Avid and Young Bull, decided to pick up the pace, attempting to hike 20 to 25 miles per day just get the trail over with.
But by the time they were crossing into Maryland, they realized the quicker pace had sapped the fun out of hiking and decided to reduce the pace to 15 to 20 miles per day so they could take more breaks and enjoy the scenic views.
“We got to the end of Pennsylvania, and we were like, ‘That’s not enjoyable. That’s not pleasant to do.’” Brunnemer said. “You just turned hiking into a job. …You’re out there for the journey, not the destination.”
Not wanting it to end
By the time Brunnemer and his fellow hikers reached some of the southern states on the trail, the number of people on the trail had thinned out. At one point, they did not encounter another human for around two weeks.
Though the temperatures had dropped as winter set in and he had been living in the elements for the better part of six months, Brunnemer said he didn’t feel excited to finish — even as he got within 100 miles of completing the trail.
“It’s weird. (Being on the trail) becomes your new normal,” he said. “You should be excited about (finishing) and going home and doing all your normal stuff and your hobbies, but you’re not really super excited. You don’t want it to end.”
On Jan. 24, Brunnemer said he reached Springer Mountain in the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia, the southern terminus of the trail, capping off his 2,200-mile-long journey. His parents drove to Georgia to pick him up, he said.
Brunnemer said some thru-hikers experience what he called “post-trail depression” after finishing the trail.
According to the Appalachian Trail Conservatory’s website, “post-trail depression” can “feel like grieving the loss of a loved one, and feeling nostalgia for the trail, resulting in overwhelming and lingering sadness over what was.”
Brunnemer said he hasn’t experienced post-trail depression because is already planning on making similar trips in the future.
“I’ve always been outdoorsy, and I’ve not ever really loved modern life, society, the busy bee, go here, go there, you know,” Brunnemer said. “I thought it would be really, really interesting to be able to get away from that. …(The trail) just puts things in perspective about how overly stressed about unreasonable things we are every day.”
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The Appalachian Trail is estimated to be around 2,200 miles long, and nearly 3 million people walk some portion of the trail each year, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservatory.
The trail winds its way through 14 states — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia.
It typically takes five to seven months to complete.
Visit appalachiantrail.org/ for more information.
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