Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail usually means ticking off one state every few weeks. Alyssa, a 2024 thru-hiker documenting her trip in weekly vlogs for The Trek, did the opposite: she hiked through four entire states in one brutal push.
Her tenth week on the trail started with a 20-mile day finishing the infamous "roller coaster" — a relentlessly up-and-down stretch in Virginia — before dropping into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the unofficial psychological midpoint of the whole 2,190-mile route. It nearly went wrong early. She misjudged her water carry and ended up grinding through all 20 miles on just 1.6 litres, arriving in town seriously dehydrated.
The centrepiece of the week was the Four State Challenge, an unofficial rite of passage where hikers walk across Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania in a single day — roughly 40-plus miles by linking the trail segments between those borders. Alyssa was up at 3:30 AM for a slackpack run (hiking with a light daypack while gear gets shuttled ahead). She passed the Washington Monument replica on South Mountain along the way, but by 2:00 PM and the 28-mile mark, the wheels were coming off. Her fix, in her own words from the trail: adopt a mindset of simply never stopping walking. By the finish, her feet were wrecked and she could feel something shifting in her big toe — probably a loosening toenail — which she refused to inspect until the state lines were done.
The reward? Leftover Chinese food at a hostel, a proper night's sleep, and a job interview the next morning — the exact juggling act many long-distance hikers face when a months-long trek collides with normal life.
Why does this matter if you're not attempting a thru-hike? Because this stretch of the AT is one of the most accessible pieces of long-distance walking in the US. Harpers Ferry is an easy day trip from Washington DC, the Maryland section is short and historic, and the Four State Challenge itself is a popular one-day bucket-list hike for reasonably fit walkers with a shuttle plan. Alyssa's week is a good preview of what the terrain actually feels like: the roller coaster's repetitive climbs, long waterless gaps that punish bad planning, and mental fatigue that kicks in long before your legs give out. Even if you take on just one state at a time, it's some of the most rewarding trail east of the Mississippi.
