Mental Toughness May Be Your Downfall When Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail
Learn why hikers with high mental toughness scores quit their A.T. thru-hikes — and what you can do differently
We might assume that someone has to have massive amounts of mental toughness to hike 2,000+ miles of the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) in less than a year, but results of a research study shows that mental toughness is not the magic bullet.
High mental toughness may actually be a disadvantage.
In this study, before hikers tried to thru-hike the A.T., I asked them to rate themselves on a lot of items. Unbeknownst to them, some of the items measured their mental toughness.
They then went and tried to thru-hike the Trail.
After the hikers were done, I asked them to let me know whether they ended up finishing by hiking 2,000+ miles of the A.T. less than a year or not. Plus, I asked all of them — finishers and non-finishers — to again rate themselves on those same mental toughness items.
170 hikers answered the questions before and after their thru-hike attempts.
In this post, I’ll share what we can learn from these 170 hikers about mental toughness and thru-hiking.
