Dylan Weldin walked through a symphony of sights on his journey along the Appalachian Trail. Every step of Weldin’s 2,179.1-mile trek from Georgia to Maine was a note in nature’s opus that played out before his eyes from March to June.

The 18-year-old Eagle Scout from Bee Cave and Boy Scout Troop 441 shared his experience at an Aug. 18 presentation at Backwoods in Hill Country Galleria.
The hiker, bicyclist, kayaker and rock climber, who graduated from high school a year early, had backpacked at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico on hikes upwards of 100 miles, but he had never attempted to take on such a challenge.
The 6-foot, 7-inch hiker started off with the trail name of Stiltz and a 29-pound pack with some gear and mostly food at Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia.
“You check in and sign your life away and you get hiking,” Weldin joked.
Gorgeous scenery awaited him at Springer Mountain, which is the trail’s southern terminus, and the first day’s weather was ideal when he and his father, Stephen Weldin, set out March 3.
However, snow began to fall that night.
“Yeah, yeah this could work, I can still handle this. I’ve got some clothes,” he told himself before he slept.
Overall, several inches of snow rolled in and blanketed the landscape and obliterated the views for the early stretches of their hike.
“It’s very, very atypical year to have this much snow on the ground,” he said. “We were really freaking out.”
Despite the bleary weather, he defied the odds that turn back scores of hikers at the outset. More than 10,000 people have hiked the Appalachian Trail since its completion in 1937, and the completion rate has risen in the last few years to about 25 percent, Weldin said.
His father joined him for the first day, and weeks later for a stretch of Pennsylvania’s trail, but sent his son on his way and returned home, as planned, to help ship care packages of clothes, equipment and food along the way.
Weldin wasn’t alone for long. His Husky dog figurine mascot and another trail companion, Cake, whom he met early on in his trek, bolstered his resolve.
Cake, a hiker from Ann Arbor, Mich., whose real name is Hollis Stansbury, and Weldin became fast friends and trailmates on their thru-hike, which is an attempt to complete the entirety of the trail in one season.
Trail blazes, which are 4-inch by 6-inch markers placed on trees, rocks and even streetlights, pointed the way.
“It’s a big 2,000-mile connect-the-dots,” Weldin said.
He and Cake averaged a pace of about 18 miles a day and planned to camp out in their tents at night, but shelters stationed about every seven miles along the Appalachian Trail provided sturdy, often cozy, confines.
Because snow was still on the ground, permanent shelters became a hot commodity and what is designated as a six-person shelter turned into crowded quarters for 11 hikers.
“That’s just a big slumber party going on there,” he said, estimating that he and Stansbury stayed in shelters 80 out of 120 nights on the trail. They spent the other 40 nights in people’s homes, hotels and hostels close to the trail.
As they traversed several national forests in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee as well as Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they also were boosted by trail veterans and residents along the trail who often engaged in what is known among hikers as trail magic – random acts of kindness that frequently come in the form of food and shelter and equipment left behind by other hikers looking to lighten their loads.
When they grew weary of pack food and their stomachs roared like bears, Weldin and Stansbury would venture into towns such as Gatlinburg, Tenn., and load up on all-you-can eat buffets and $5 pizzas.
“That’s a couple of thousand calories of premium fried food,” Weldin said.
Although Stansbury boasted that he added weight before starting the hike by consuming an entire Bisquick box’s worth of food in one sitting Weldin took him on in a Pancake Challenge.
Stansbury couldn’t refuse, but Weldin flattened him in a Pancake Challenge by devouring 15 pancakes.
Their friendship intact, Weldin and Stansbury left North Carolina and the snow behind to enter Tennessee.
Parks and preserves fostered the creation of the Appalachian Trail, but many sections of the path run along private land and over fences. Sometimes the path was nothing but rocks. Other times, two wooden planks took the hikers over spans of bogs they didn’t dare fall into or risk much shame and sogginess.
Blisters and mosquitoes dogged them at many turns, and Weldin went through four carbon-fiber trekking poles.
Their spirits and energy remained high and in one day they blazed through parts of Virginia where they began to finally see some of the thick forests and sprawling meadows in their natural spring colors, West Virginia, Maryland and into Pennsylvania in one 44-mile hike from 4 a.m.-7 p.m. with minimal breaks.
Stephen Weldin rejoined his son in Pennsylvania and took the trail name of Pappy as he hiked 129.6 miles with the group that also added Stansbury’s father, Kevin.
The quartet hit rough, rocky terrain in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that shredded the soles of Weldin’s shoes and sapped his stamina quickly.
Dylan Weldin focused on the natural beauty around them instead of the hardships.
“The forests up there are really, really spectacular,” he noted.
Leaving Pennsylvania and their fathers behind, Weldin and Stansbury passed through New Jersey and skirted Manhattan when hiking over the Hudson River.
“New York is beautiful. It’s not just concrete there,” Weldin observed.
The duo had less than 1,000 miles to go, but their pace slowed slightly in Vermont, which they dubbed “Vermud” because of all its wooden-planked bogs and beaver ponds laden with mosquitoes.
“Big, big, honkin’ mosquitoes,” said Weldin, describing how he and Stansbury would avoid bites by encasing themselves in sleeping bags with only their lips exposed to take in oxygen.
Weldin enjoyed the trail in Vermont immensely, but he said the views in New Hampshire were ultimate in their beauty as the elevation would increase up to 3,000 feet per mile ascent at a 50 percent grade.
At points, trekking poles were useless when they clambered up and over massive boulders.
On this stretch, Weldin came across a sign on the Appalachian Trail that read, “When in doubt, the A.T. always goes up.”
As it approaches Dartmouth College, part of the Appalachian Trail enters the town of Hanover and morphs into street sidewalks with trail blazes posted on streetlights.
He did not shave during the trip, so his beard and hair had grown quite shaggy by this point, which didn’t escape the attention of a local resident in one New Hampshire town who chided him while Weldin sat in a city park.
“This kid drives by in his truck and yells, ‘Get a job, hobo!’ I wanted to yell back, ‘I just walked here from Georgia!’” Weldin said.
The so-called bums passed into Maine, and neared their final destination that brought them through 14 states over four months.
But the single-hardest mile of the trail yet, Mahoosuc Notch, stood between them and their ultimate goal.
Boulders to climb over and under, 10-foot drops and gaps too narrow for them to wear their backpacks greeted them at every turn in this deep gap in the Mahoosuc Range of western Maine.
After they survived that gauntlet, Weldin and Stansbury entered a 100-mile section of wilderness with no off-trail access to roads that lead to towns to get supplies.
Fears of injury severe enough to knock him off the trail plagued Weldin with the peak of Katahdin Mountain in sight, but at last the hikers reached the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
“It was a big sigh of relief. We did it. We’re actually here,” he recounted. “There also was a feeling of what next.”
After coming home, Weldin didn’t still for very long.
He led children on hikes in Colorado and started college this week in Durango, Colo., in pursuit of a degree that will prepare him to be a national park ranger.
“He’s an incredible young man,” said Steve Rudkin, Troop 441 assistant scoutmaster.