Trail Folk & Trail Names

A ride to town by an awesome trail angel, Bucksnort.

One of the many questions we got when we first started the trail was: "Are you hiking with a group?" Our answer before the trip was: "No, but other people will be starting the trail around the time that we start so we won't be totally alone."

We've found a good balance of being alone, while not being lonely. For the most part we hike by ourselves in the morning and afternoon, then typically have lunch or camp with other hikers. We enjoy camping by ourselves but absolutely value and enjoy the company of others. For example, there have been some days when we were just completely dejected after a tough section of hiking, then our spirits rose as other hikers joined us for camp and shared in the same level of frustration at the day's endeavors. Through our shared experience, we all smile and laugh at our recent poor moods and are brought back to a good place, back to a wonder of the trail.

Hiking with other people brings out funny culture unique to the trail. One part of the culture is that most everyone has something called a trail name. You basically stop using your name and begin going by a name someone else on the trail dubbed for you. Examples of trail names of people we've been hiking with are: Skinny D, Drop Dead, Rattler, Mudflap, Grenade, Speedbump, Pine, Thumper, Stumbling Goat, and Cookie Monster. Each trail name typically is associated with some event or story. Garrett & I both have been given our trail names. Mine is Meow Meow and his is Funyan.

Meow Meow: I got my trail name from a time when I was frustrated after a day of hiking on a serious hard ORV road (which was part of a trail detour) and asked a fellow hiker how far we'd hiked on the 14 mile road detour. It was a really windy and cold day which added to the feeling we'd been walking through a wasteland of ORV tracks (sponsered by Yamaha, I might add), so when she said we had only hiked 5 miles into it, I said conjured up a reference to Henrietta Pussycat from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and said,"meow meow, sad, meow meow."

Funyan: Garrett got his trail name in two phases. It started during a 'group therapy' session we were having around a camp fire one night. Everyone was going around talking about their various ailments, mostly blisters and things of that nature. When it got to Garrett, he said, "Yeah, well my bunions hurt." Everyone stopped and kind of stared, with the question, "What the heck is a bunion?" in their eyes. In no time, Garrett took off his shoe and shared with the group his lovely protruding bunions. So he went by bunyan (an accidental misspelling of the term on my part) until someone misheard him say his name and thought he said Funyan. Thus the completion of the second phase in getting to be Funyan. (By the way who wants to be constantly reminded they have bunions anyway?)