Week 10 Appalachian Trail Hike Journal: Foot Pain, Swimming & 600 Miles

Last updated on January 2nd, 2026 at 08:38 am

Considering an Appalachian Trail thru-hike? Or perhaps intrigued by trail life? You’re in the right place! This post continues our journey, giving insight into what life on the trail is like week by week.

Hi! I’m Cindy. In 2022, my husband, Barrett, and I completed an Appalachian Trail thru-hike! 🥳

I journaled daily on the trail; these entries make up a monthly AT series for anyone interested in our thru-hike tale!

🔗 Want to start at the beginning with week one? 👉 click here.

🔗 Browse all the weekly trail journals 👉here.

If you plan to attempt an AT thru-hike, be ready for an incredible adventure!

Also, if you know us as flip-floppers, we didn’t know at the time we’d become flip-flop thru-hikers (more on that soon). We started NOBO in Georgia in April, after months of research.

In hindsight, starting as Flip Floppers or in March would have fit us better. But that’s for a later post.

Just know, when picking a route for the Appalachian Trail, you can always change it up anytime!
👉 Click here for tips on where and when to start an Appalachian Trail Thru Hike. 👈
👉 And click here for advice on thru-hiking backpacking gear. 👈

Alrighty! Welcome back to my Appalachian Trail thru-hike journal series! Let’s pick up where we left off and dive into the details of week ten.

Week ten of our Appalachian Trail hike brought foot pain challenges, unexpected trail magic, and our 600-mile milestone!

If you’re new here, you can start with week one of our Appalachian Trail thru-hike journals here or catch up on past weeks here. Otherwise, let’s dive into week ten on the AT!

Curious about hiking the Appalachian Trail for months? Here’s week ten of our adventure:

Day 64

June 7, 2022

At 6:41 this morning, I was reading about metatasalgia pain from my Econo Lodge bed, trying to self-diagnose what was going on with my feet.

I’m still not sure why my foot pain is so bad. At this point, the foot pain is hovering between annoying and concerning.

I’m aware it’s slowing me down. I’m trying to assess whether this is just my feet adjusting to walking so much every day, and whether it’s perhaps fixable with some gear changes. Or if it’s something I need to see a professional about that will perhaps not get better and will inevitably take me off trail.

So, we headed into town to run the usual errands and try to find some gear items that can help my feet.

While enjoying a fantastic breakfast at Sisters Cafe and Gifts, we decided to stay in town for the entire day, extending our stay at the Econo Lodge one more night. This way, we can take a bit more time to figure out what we can do about my feet and give them a tiny break.

We stopped at Marion Outdoors to grab some resupply items and talk to someone about my feet.

The man who runs this gear store was, I believe, the first person to ever mention Topo Athletic shoes to me. His company was relatively new, and he was trying to get Topos in stock at the time, but he didn’t have any on hand.

So, after talking with him, I settled on buying some cushy insoles for myself, hoping they would help alleviate some pain.

Since we extended our time in town, Barrett also got a haircut.

I also later bought these cushion inserts from Walmart. Figured, why not have options? 🤷‍♀️

Also, demolishing a bag of Reese’s Chips Ahoy is becoming a trail town ritual.

✔️ Length: 0 AT trail miles

Day 65

June 8, 2022

Before taking off this morning, Barrett repaired his sleeping mat. (He had woken up on the ground one morning before arriving here.)

This will be the first of many repairs we have to make to these Sea to Summit mats throughout our hike. While I like many of Sea to Summit’s other products, and their customer service was fantastic and tried to help us with new mats multiple times, I do not recommend these mats. You will see more on this in the weeks to come, but for now, just take my word for it and get this one instead.

Marion had a hiker shuttle, but it never lined up with our hiking or errand schedule.

We ended up getting a ride across town yesterday, and to and from the trail, from a local couple who advertised on FarOut as available to give hikers rides.

I have started embracing eating an entire family-sized salad kit (with added tuna) for lunch on the first day out of town.

Next, we reached the Settlers Museum:

The museum’s campus includes a one-room schoolhouse bursting with trail magic, where you could also spend the night. Since it called for rain, we opted to stay!

This low-rider good old boy also came by and made us miss our doggo very much:

✔️ Length: 8.7 AT trail miles
✔️ Total Ascent: 1721′
✔️ Total Descent: 2357′
✔️ Total Grade: 468’/mi

Day 66

June 9, 2022

It rained, but we are dry because we stayed in the one-room schoolhouse!! 😻

I slept soooooo well in here. Loved it. 10/10 would recommend.

Barrett not so much. A very friendly and adorable mouse ran across his face mid-sleep. 😬

We were on the move by 7:37 am. 🙂

Walked through pasture with lots of close cows.

Around 10:30 on this day, we hit the 1/4 mileage point! 🎉 It was a bit bittersweet because we felt we should have already been past it at this point, yet we were also elated to have reached it! 💪

Lots of brutal ladders to get over barbed wire.

We passed this campsite and privy. I decided to include the pictures for anyone who wants to see what a camping setup along the trail looks like midday:

✔️ Length: 17.4 AT trail miles
✔️ Total Ascent: 3847′
✔️ Total Descent: 3703′
✔️ Total Grade: 434’/mi

Day 67

June 10, 2022

While hiking, I’m sharing daily updates with ~40 family and friends via FarOut’s check-ins feature. At this point, I was still logging my location every evening or morning, but my journaling had grown ridiculously behind.

In my defense, ever since we kicked up our mileage, it seems all we do is hike, eat, and sleep.

Plus, I’ve still been having some pretty terrible foot pain, really ever since we crossed into Virginia, which isn’t helping anything.

Over the past couple of days, I have been trying to treat it with a mixture of Dr. Scholl’s and Ibuprofen. Unfortunately, it’s not fixing the problem. So now I’m just trying to survive until I can get new shoes.

All that being said, I was still taking tons of garbled notes every day, intending to make them easier to read to share later.

Our hike today started at 9 am and ended at 6 pm, making it a full-day on the trail.

We reached a washed-out bridge, complete with a caution sign:

As you can see in the picture below, the water level was not a threat to us on this particular day:

We also passed a mini gnome village:

Some motivational defacement:

And some beautiful mountain-top trail with a shelter. (Although we carried on a bit further and camped elsewhere.)

✔️ Length: 12.6 AT trail miles
✔️ Total Ascent: 3691′
✔️ Total Descent: 2432′
✔️ Total Grade: 489’/mi

Day 68

June 11, 2022

This morning, I rented a car for July 14-16 from our tent. The goal is to get off trail for a mental reset, see some movies, and get myself some new shoes.

I know at some point on this day we crossed paths with a vulture’s nest.

We also stopped at a bridge area to get water, and decided to soak my throbbing feet.

While stopped, we ran across Trail Magic!

We met a dad, with his teenage kids, who was dropping off a case of Coors by the bridge for thru-hikers to pull from.

He told us they were on a family road trip, but he wanted to make a detour to drop Trail Magic along the Appalachian Trail, hoping he and his kids would run into some thru-hikers in the process.

He wanted to show his kids the trail and what Trail Magic was because he had always wanted to hike it.

We talked to him for a bit. It was lovely and made us feel like superheroes in the moment.

✔️ Length: 13.4 AT trail miles
✔️ Total Ascent: 2327′
✔️ Total Descent: 3231′
✔️ Total Grade: 414’/mi

Day 69

June 12, 2022

While it may not seem like we made it very far on this day, we felt very proud of those 9.6 miles.

Some tasks, like getting a ride into town for our resupply and handling detours to obtain water in a dry section, took longer than usual and delayed our hiking.

So, it’s kind of amazing we put those miles on at all!

Here we are, waiting for our ride to head into Bland for a resupply. We also got some to-go Subway while in town with our driver.

At the end of the day, Barrett did a water carry, and we ended up having a campfire with Back Tracker at our camping spot (who we ran across again after originally meeting back on May 27th, aka mini-violin night).

✔️ Length: 9.6 AT miles + a resupply
✔️ Total Ascent: 1945′
✔️ Total Descent: 2085′
✔️ Total Grade: 419’/mi

Day 70

June 13, 2022

This morning, we were googling to get a sense of how we were doing with our current pace. We ended our research feeling stressed and behind. One article said we were supposed to be hitting our stride with 20-mile days in this section, but we found Virginia more challenging than we expected.

Today we’re headed toward ending at a much-needed visit to a swimming hole. I can’t wait; I dreamed about it last night. 😻

600s here we come!

Around 10:30 in the morning, we reached the 600-mile mark! 🎉

We ran across this snake:

Also, at this point in the thru-hike, we’ve been dabbling with eating fresh, refrigerated food items within 12-24 hours of resupplying. Probably not ideal, and I am not recommending it, but we were desperate for more non-processed options.

Closer to the end of the day, my newish pack got its first decent snag:

We hiked from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm.

This was a very hot and sweaty day. Getting to this refreshing waterfall, complete with swimming holes, was an amazing way to end the day’s trek. 😻

Despite the heat and the feeling of falling behind, we made it (mileage-wise) a bit further this day than on the couple of previous days, and I remember having a lot of fun at this swimming hole. Our smiles in these pictures are genuine.

✔️ Length: 16 trail miles
✔️ Total Ascent: 2874′
✔️ Total Descent: 3475′
✔️ Total Grade: 394’/mi

Conclusion: Week Ten of our Appalachian Trail Hike

Week ten of our Appalachian Trail hike tested our perseverance through foot pain and Virginia terrain, but it also brought moments of joy—trail magic, a cozy schoolhouse shelter, hitting our 600-mile mark, and refreshing swims that reminded us why we were out here.

Onward to Week Eleven! Stay tuned for more stories, challenges, and milestones as our Appalachian Trail adventure unfolds.