Hiking Merit Badge Earned; Now Let's Go Backpacking!

by Brian Schwarz

I'm ready to move on from the Hiking Merit Badge requirements and begin with Backpacking. The fact is that even though I didn't do the 20-mile hike as prescribed in the Boy Scout Requirements for the Hiking Merit Badge, I have more than earned it. Besides the fact that I've planned and executed several hundred hikes, including more than 60 during which I led groups), I also have to consider the level of difficulty of the hikes I've done.

Boy Scouts of America Hiking Merit Badge

The average 20 miler executed by a Boy Scout is along fairly level terrain. According to the Sierra Club hike rating system, this means one of these typical hikes could be rated as low as 20 if there is no significant elevation change (1 point equals 1 mile). Every 400 feet of elevation gain and/or loss is also equal to one point.

Case in point, in June of 2012 I planned and executed a hike to the South Summit of Sandia Mountain in New Mexico. This hike was 10 miles out and back, but with 3,000 feet of elevation gain and 3,000 feet of elevation loss, the hike would be rated at 25 - higher than what would be required by the 20 mile hike done on relatively flat terrain. And this was not even my most strenuous hike. Later I hiked the South Summit from a different route - a 12 miler with 4,000 feet elevation gain and 4,000 feet loss - which would have been rated as a 32 on the Sierra Club hike rating scale.

So with that, I am ready to move on. I consider the Hiking Merit Badge requirements to be complete and am excitedly moving on to Backpacking. Stay tuned as I ramp up to tackle this beast of a badge!

PS - I'm not giving up on doing a 20 miler or even completing the three-day 30 mile challenge I set for myself in a previous post. I simply realized that those two things were not necessary for me to consider this Hiking Merit Badge challenge complete for myself based on all that I have accomplished in hiking over the course of recent years. I'm just ready for this new challenge to begin and am setting my sights firmly on completing it. Next weekend I complete training to become an official member of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club's Trail Patrol and in November I train to become a Sierra Club outdoor leader. I've also taken a job where I'll be exposed to all the best outdoor gear, so it is time for me to give my full focus to this and other new challenges.

Brian Schwarz is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. Way to old to be an actual Boy Scout, Brian has set a goal to complete the requirements of Eagle Scout by his 50th birthday in August of 2021. While some slight modifications are made to the requirements along the way, the spirit of the Boy Scouts guide all efforts Brian has on his journey, living life as a Man of Merit.

Gearing up for a three-day, 30-mile hiking challenge

Yesterday, as I was sitting at the White Rocks Overlook in the Bull Run Mountains - an outlier ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Northern Virginia - I took some time to reflect on my goals. It is disappointing that I started this blog in 2011 with the intention of completing merit badges I'd not had the opportunity to complete as a kid, and to date I've made progress but haven't completed a single one! That's gotta change. That will change! I am more determined than ever.

Being a Boy Scouts dropout was not in my control when I was a teen - lots of factors made it impossible for me to pursue my goal of becoming an Eagle Scout, the most prominent being not having an older male mentor and feeling excluded due to being different from the other scouts in my troop. But as an adult, I know that it is my decisions, and not the conditions of my life, that determine my destiny. So if I fail to accomplish what I set out to do now, it is my own fault, and I can blame no one but myself.

Reflecting on goals, watching hawk migration from Bull Run Mountains

That being said, I have been conditioning this summer to complete my final 20-mile hike as part of earning the Hiking merit badge. Unfortunately, problems with my left foot and ankle - the result of an injury while hiking Mt. Tammany at the Delaware Water Gap last fall - have precluded me from hiking long distances. I have only been able to hike up to 10 miles at a time before my body just gives out on me. So here's what I'm thinking. Instead of giving up on my goals, I am going to re-invision them. I will remain true to the spirit of the 20-mile hike goal, but I'm going to create a plan that works for me given what my body is physically capable of.

This is my plan. Instead of doing 20 miles in one day, I will plan to hike 30 miles over the course of three consecutive days. This is still going above and beyond what I've ever done before, challenging myself in an equal nature to the way hiking 20 miles in one day would challenge me, but giving my body rest intervals to recharge and not do more damage to my weakened frame.

I will plan to do a 12 mile hike on day one, followed by a 10 mile hike on day two and an eight mile hike on day three. The 12-mile hike and the 10-mile hike will be hikes with little elevation gain. But the third and final hike will be a hike with some significant elevation - Old Rag Mountain. It will push me beyond what I believe myself to be capable of, but because I am conditioning to prepare for this three day challenge, I know I will be able to handle it.

My goal is to complete this challenge the end of October 2014. Since I have already completed every other challenge set forth in the Hiking book in the Boy Scouts of America Merit Badge Series, once I complete this three-day, 30-mile challenge I will consider my hiking merit badge to be complete.

Meanwhile, I will also begin working on the Geology Merit Badge. This week I am reading through the manual and setting up an interview with a local geologist to interview and do a profile on him for my blogs.

Hiking: Setting goals for the summer

I am happy to report that I endured the harsh winter and am finally back to hitting the trails - hard! Last week for the first time in 2014, I achieved my 20-miles/week goal. For two years I was hiking 20 miles per week, but 2013 had seen a steady reduction in miles, and my fitness level has declined as a result. I just didn't have the same access to trails as before. For that reason, I've moved to a neighborhood that abuts a park with some mildly rugged trails, and from my front door step I can make a nice loop of between three and seven miles that includes a bit of city trekking mixed with good old dirt-and-rock single-track. I'm back in the zone. Location is everything.

During the dead of winter, I joined several organizations related to hiking, the sport that's got my passion. I joined the American Hiking Society, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, the Philadelphia Trail Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club. All of these organizations have incredible missions and tons of ways to get involved. But the one that reached out to me in a way I responded best to was the Appalachian Mountain Club - Delaware Valley Chapter. I had been looking for affordable outdoor leadership training, and they offered a two-day class for just $35. Cha-ching!

I attended the two-day training in the beginning of April, and throughout the month I have been training to be an outdoor leader with the AMC, which is the oldest conservation and recreation organization in the United States if you didn't know. After the two-day training at Nockamixon State Park, the club assigned a mentor under whose guidance I was to arrange to co-lead two hikes.

Serving as "sweep" on my first AMC-DV co-lead, April 2014

The first co-lead I did was with the DV chapter chair, Joan, on a brisk and sunny jaunt through the Tohickon Gorge. For that one I helped with registration at the trailhead and served as sweep on a hike of nearly 30 people. My second co-lead is one I actually planned and executed with the help of my mentor, Lennie, who is also the club's leadership chair. That one was just this past Saturday in the Upper Wissahickon Gorge, and I did it with Midori as the "leader", since Lennie was unable to hike that day. Midori's role was really to observe my leadership skills in the field and report back to Lennie.

While many people do this training to lead hikes with the AMC, I am still leading hikes independent from the AMC with the fitness-inspiration group I started, Hiking Megalopolis. I've held two hikes within the past 10 days - one was an Earth Day Hike in East Fairmount Park and another was a thru-hike of the Wissahickon Gorge. I am feeling that my fitness level is getting better than it was a month ago, but with this being said, I still need to train harder so I can finish that 20-mile hike I've been talking about since forever. I am still gung-ho as ever about it, but I fear my body is not up to it yet, so I have some preliminary weight loss goals that must be attained before I can set out on the hike with any degree of certainty for success.

I have set a goal to hike 20-miles per week as part of a fitness plan that includes core training with a medicine ball and strength training three days per week at the local YMCA. With this, and a healthy eating plan based on Michelle Obama's My Plate, I believe I will be able to achieve a large portion of my weight loss goals by August - around my birthday. This means that September is when I will plan my 20-miler.

September 7, there is a 5K on a historic trail near my house - The Boxer's Trail 5K. I plan to run this, and then two weeks later I will do my 20 mile hike. I am planning a route that leads from Love Park in Center City, Philadelphia, through East and West Fairmount Parks, and through the Wissahickon Gorge to Chestnut Hill.

Well, that's it for now. If you have any questions or comments for me about this post, please leave it below. And check out a list of my other blogs and social media contacts at About.Me/Brian.Schwarz.

Time flies when you turn your eyes from your goals

One year and nine months have passed since I completed my fifth 10-mile hike, leaving a one-day 20-miler as my only Boy Scouts Hiking Merit Badge requirement to complete. That's nearly two years! What has taken me so long? Good question. Time sure does fly when you turn your eyes from your goals.

I love to quote motivational speaker and coach Tony Robbins, saying, "It is your decisions and not the conditions of your life that determine your destiny." I recognize this to be true. So then I must take responsibility for my decisions for the past two years, which have simply taken me down a different path.

City life entered the equation last year, when I moved from the Western Mountains region to the East Coast, and out of convenience I turned my eyes from this 20-mile hike goal as I transitioned to life in Philadelphia. While living in New Mexico and Southern California, I could hike every day alone if I wanted to by just biking or taking the bus to various trails. I had hikes with 4,000-feet of elevation gain practically on my doorstep! But in Southeastern Pennsylvania, hikes with even 1,000-feet of elevation gain are two hours away by car. Even just one big hike a week can cost $60 to $80 round trip, with tolls. So to mitigate the cost I began hiking with others. And soon, their goals became my goals, and my 20-miler goal was put on the back burner so I could mitigate the costs of what, through the process of creating this goal in the first place, had become my hard-core hiking habit.

So anyway, I'm back and focused on the goal. I just need to see the hikes with others as training for the big hike, which I still expect to do alone. I have brainstormed some ideas, like having certain people meet me at different points along the 20 miles and hike smaller sections with me, or even doing the hike as some charity event. But whatever I can muster by June will have to do, because I have decided that June is the deadline for achieving this goal. I'm adding that the 20 mile hike should be completed within two years of the final of five 10 mile hikes.

So, there you have it. This is my goal, so today I'm off to the park to get some training in. I'll post pics later!

Hiking: Is 2014 the year to hike my first fourteener?

Wow, I can't believe it's already 2014! I haven't posted here in a while, as I've been getting adjusted to my new home here in Southeastern Pennsylvania for the past eight months, hiking up a storm in the nearby Appalachian Mountains. In fact, I figure I did between 60 and 75 hikes this year.

The Catoctin Mountains, part of the Appalachians in Maryland

The first four months were spent hiking Sandia Mountain and other geological formations of central New Mexico. I hiked Pinnacle Mountain in Arkansas on my road trip back east, and the rest of the year was all about the Appalachians, from Western North Carolina to Northern New Jersey. I still haven't completed my goal 20-mile hike in a single day, but plans for it are in the works. Meanwhile, I'm thinking beyond that goal to another hiking goal I have in mind: hiking my first fourteener!

Although I absolutely love hiking the Appalachians, I am often inspired to research hikes out West. Ever since returning from New Mexico and Southern California, I've been thinking I really missed out by not hiking the Rockies in Colorado. Well, this year is the year. How epic would it be to hike my first fourteener in 2014!

I'm not sure how the details will all pan out, but I'm hoping that in either August or October to make the trip to hike either Longs Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park or perhaps one of the Collegiate Peaks. I need to do more research, but meanwhile, my mind and my heart are soaring in the Rockies tonight. I hope my body will be able to joint them soon.

For inspiration, John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High"!

 Happy Trails! And check out my blog HikeyHikey for info on great hikes from East Coast to West! And for more info on me, check out my splash page.

Hiking: Conditioning plan for Boy Scouts Merit Badge 20-miler

This summer I have been doing a bunch of hiking both locally in Philadelphia's Wissahickon Gorge as well as in the nearby Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont. Most of my hikes have been fairly intense - meaning they were usually greater than 7 miles and included some moderate elevation change (1,000+ feet) - but I haven't been exactly conditioning for my first "Boy Scouts Hiking Merit Badge" qualifying 20-miler, which has been a goal of mine for about two years now. Now that I've finally become accustomed to East Coast high-humidity hiking once again, though, it's time to get at it!

Recent conditioning hike, Lover's Leap Trail, Wissahickon Gorge

So, without further ado, here is my conditioning plan for preparing to do my first 20-miler.

1. Attack the core. When I first started hiking two years ago I had a core of steel. I had been focusing on my core for more than a year before, doing medicine ball exercises five days per week and planking every chance I got. These excellent habits have waned greatly over the past year, so step one is to get back into near-daily core work. I will return to doing my former medball workout every day except Tuesdays.
2. Hike with a mission. I am able to get to the Wissahickon Gorge to hike on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Normally I do about five miles each time I go, but now that I'm going to be focusing on conditioning or a 20 miler I've got to amp it up. That being said, I will begin hiking a minimum of eight fast miles at each outing. This means I'll hike with no significant rests for contemplation, picture taking or anything hippy dippy at all. I'm going to book it through those woods!
3. Hike for fun. On Saturdays, I have been in the habit of hiking with friends. This will be my opportunity to slow it down a bit and just enjoy being outdoors for the sake of it. I'm still going to hike fairly quickly, but I'll take time to stop and smell the Hemlock.
4. Hit the gym. After one full month of adhering to the first three steps outlined above, I will add strength training at the gym. I really miss lifting weights, but I know I don't want to bite off more than I can chew right off the bat. Besides, if I do too straight away I'm prone to injure myself, and that would be entirely counterproductive.

Hiking the north slope of Philadelphia's Wissahickon Gorge

Well, there it is. My conditioning plan for completing my first "Boy Scouts Hiking Merit Badge" qualifying 20-miler is fairly intense, but it is totally do-able. I just need to be focused on my goal and intentional about creating the habits over the next month that will prepare me to handle hiking 20 miles in one day between sun up and sun down.

Hiking: Trail Maintenance along AT and North Trail at Lehigh Gap

Today I joined Dave Scheid, trail maintenance co-chair with the Philadelphia Trail Club, and James Dunn, an Appalachian Trail Ridgerunner, to do some hedging of prickly greenbrier and other plants that had practically overgrown great sections of the blue-blazed North Trail, a scenic offshoot of the white-blazed Appalachian Trail just west of Lehigh Gap.

AT Ridgerunner, James, and PTC trails co-chief, Dave, on North Trail

I met Dave at the Translator Road parking area off of Mountain Road west of the gap, and we hiked up to the AT using an un-named spur trail - which we agreed to call the Birch Clump Trail, since there's a striking clump of white birch trees at the spot where it intersects the U.S.'s premier interstate long-distance trail. 

Looking west on the AT from Birch Clump Trail - AT intersection

From the birch clump, we hiked briefly east on the AT to the start of the North Trail, which shoots north but soon doubles back to the west as it traverses an exposed ridge of Blue Mountain, featuring nearly two miles of striking views of the Lehigh River and valley beyond.

Lehigh River and Pennsylvania Turnpike snake north from Blue Mountain

At the point where the North Trail cuts west, we came to a spur that to leads to the Devil's Pulpit, a precipice overlooking the Lehigh Gap that requires a precarious scramble to enjoy. I made a mental note to return here soon. For today, though, there was work to be done - and lots of it!

Clearing the trail from overgrown understory was the job of the day!

The North Trail runs through the Palmerton Zinc Superfund Site, Dave explained as we clipped away at rampant overgrowth. The entire north side of this section of Blue Mountain had been denuded at one point as soils were poisoned through the work of a now-defunct zinc smelter in the valley below. Trees are sparse along this ridge, but they are coming back. In fact, the once thriving American Chestnut is making a stand, though not a very tall one. The real growth here is the forest understory - the taming of which was the reason of today's trek.

American Chestnut makes a comeback on Blue Mountain near Lehigh Gap

Seeds were at one point dropped from the air to re-vegetate Blue Mountain's north face, from the Lehigh River to the ridge. And following the substantial rainfalls the area has experienced throughout this spring and summer, the site is thriving with ferns, tall grasses, sassafras and greenbrier, all of which are taking root and spreading like crazy over what Dave said in recent seasons looked more like a moonscape than a forest.

Hiking through rebounding Palmerton Zinc Superfund Site on North Trail

A little farther down the North Trail we ran into Ridgerunner James. James had hiked in from Lehigh Furnace gap with the intention of catching up with us. I'm glad he did! Listening to him and Dave talk clued me in on lots of trail trivia I might have missed out on if it were just Dave and I on our own. Dave is day hiker, like me. But James thru-hiked the AT in 2012, and now he spends many nights on the trail fulfilling his official role with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

Staving off our hunger along the way, we had been snacking on juicy wild blueberries that were growing in patches all along the North Trail. But as the morning mist began to clear and we realized it was already well past luncthime, we decided it was a good idea to have a bite to eat before finishing up and making our way back down the mountain. 

Wild blueberries! Our reward for hard work clearing the North Trail

As we sat down in the midst of a great boulder field, I noticed my arms and fingers were quivering. I joked that I thought I might be having a stroke, but James confirmed he was experiencing the same sensation, confirming it must have been the result of nearly three hours of walking and clipping, not of something more serious. Phew! After eating and hydrating, we made our way back to the AT and then eventually to a point along Translator Road, which we took back down the mountain to our cars.

Appalachian Trail - North Trail and Lehigh Gap 

For me, this day exceeded my expectations for my first trail maintenance experience. It was great exercise for one, and even though my purpose for coming out here was to give back to the hiking community, which has given me so much in recent years, I ended up walking away having received an amazing learning experience. If you think you might like to learn more about the AT or volunteering with the Philadelphia Trail Club - and I highly recommend you do - check out the PTC website or email Dave for information. Tell him Brian from Man of Merit blog sent you!

Brian Schwarz is an award-winning journalist whose career was derailed by super obesity. He fought his way back to health - losing 165 pounds in the process of his "fit-life journey". A professional communicator by trade and activator by nature, Brian's personal mission is to inspire others to live their fullest lives. Follow Brian on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.