Customer Reviews

White Blaze Fever

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For the first time, I think I understand what it's like to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. This is a day by day journal of Bill (Mountain Slayer) Schuette's thru-hike in 2000. - 2167 miles from March 28th to August 28th, at the age of 51. Bill is a retired high school principal, who was hooked by the thru-hiking bug, when he and his wife were checking into a lodge and saw a thru-hiker stagger in, dirty, smelly, exhausted.

White Blaze Fever gets its name from the white blazes used to mark the route of the AT. The regional trails usually have blue blazes, and work their way reasonably around a mountain. the AT with its white blazes, goes over the top.

Every three to five pages, there is an italicized paragraph or two inserted, with various hiker tips for doing the trail. This gives the reader a useful break - read the tip, then back on the trail again.

By the time you reach the end of the book, you will have a good sense of what equipment works and doesn't work, and what you are getting into. This book makes you realize that this is very much a group experience. Shelter conversations, stories referring to hikers by their trailnames, shared misery and triumphs pay a large part in this book. You also learn something about the terrain, and a small dose of history.

I strongly recommend reading this if you have any intention of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Try to read it several months before you go.

If you're looking for an AT narrative like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, this book is not for you. Like other reviewers have noted it is written in much more of a daily journal style. That said, it is much more informative about the AT, stops along the way, gear that worked and gear that didn't. Schuette's mantra seems to be reduce pack weight whenever possible and his tips at doing that are excellent! Does a very good job at not romanticizing parts of the hike that were not pleasant. I got a great picture of him waking up and putting on wet clothes on several occasions and it read as miserable as it must have been. At the end of the book, my own fever to hike the AT is still running rampant and I feel much better prepared having read Mountain Slayer's account.

I found this book really interesting. I felt I was right there with the author walking the trail. That's the only way some of us would be able to do it. It was so well written that I could hear the mosquitoes buzzing and feel the rain falling. I could see the beautiful views of the sun as it rose or set over the mountains. Once you start reading it you don't want to put it down.

Like the author, I also thru-hiked the A.T. in 2000, and while my experiences differed from his in many respects, I really enjoyed this book and had difficulty putting it down. Many of his descriptions of towns, shelters, and the general trail experience really brought back memories - it's a realistic portrayal of Mr. Schuette's experience. Your experience will probably be different, should you hike the trail yourself, but there would certainly be a lot of overlap with the portrayals in this book.

Part of my personal enjoyment of this book certainly stemed from the fact that I also met many of the other thru-hikers mentioned, having started and finished the trail at roughly the same time as the author. An A.T. thru-hike often delineates distinct chapters in a hiker's life, such as graduation, career change, divorce, retirement, etc., and hearing these stories were really fascinating for me. However, be warned that this book doesn't touch on such issues - it's essentially a day-to-day log which covers the nitty-gritty of milage, resupply, trail towns, etc.

Having said that, if you read this book and find it hard to put down, then you probably have White Blaze Fever and may as well get out there and hike your own hike.

That test alone should justify your investment in this book.

I have been an armchair AT enthusiast for years and have read most of the AT books out there. This is definitely a journal of almost every day Bill Schuette has on the AT. This is a nuts and bolts type of story, telling you about almost every part if the trail and what it takes and what it's like to do it. I have read books that generalize large parts of the trail and spend more time on the spiritual, philosophical part of why they are doing the trail but this is not it. I think I enjoyed this as much as others is I got to hear about parts of the trail that most books seem to skip and it is a timely account from the year 2000. Another is he finishes the trail unlike Bill Bryson's fractional account, "A Walk in the Woods"

I recommend Mic Lowther's book, "Walking North" for a nice combination of trail accountability and philosophy.

This book is basically the trail journal of `Mountain Slayer" (Bill Schuette) on his Appalachian Trail hike in 2000 - with very little editing. Although it is a bit of a "rough cut" generally it is well written - especially considering most of it was written on the trail. The author presents his experiences on the trail in a very open and honest way. I think making it quite easy for the reader to get the feel of the day to day life on the trail.

Don't expect this book to be like "A Walk in the Woods" - Bill Bryson has nothing to worry about. At times it may get a bit monotonous (as life on the trail can be at times) but as I continued to read it I found myself walking along with the author. By the end I was actually wishing he turn around on Katahdin and start walking back to Georgia - I wanted to keep reading.

For people who really love to hike and when they can't hike love to read about hiking - I would recommend this book. It is a straight forward, first person view of the day in and day out life on the AT. For people who have not read many hiking books before, I would not recommend starting with this one, there are several better (start with "A Walk in the Woods").

As someone said above, if you are looking for a Bill Bryson caliber book, this is not for you.

As an aspiring AT thru-hiker, the day-to-day journal style taught me quite a bit about what the daily grind would be like. However, the prose and the grammar just about killed me on every page. Exclamation points are used like salt, and dull, pointless paragraphs are prodigiously used to essentially say, "I hiked all day." There was essentially no ending - even the obvious climax of ascending Mt. Katahdin is glossed over. No personal information is given, and although this might have been an intentional point by the author, it makes a lot of his adventures vague and boring - instead of knowing *who* is hiking, all we know is, as mentioned above, that he is an aging educator that enjoys hiking. And has a daughter that enjoys hiking, too.

That being said, if you are truly aspiring to thru-hike the AT, this book has some useful information. However, I would pass on it as casual reading - the "gee-whiz" style is just too saccharin.

The Hiker Tips were pretty lame, mostly to take up space, I'm guessing. The liberal use of exclamation points and overuse of 'Once again, hike your own hike' damn near drove me over the edge. I probably would've thrown it at the wall about halfway through it had it been a paperback, but I didn't want to damage my Kindle.

Like a through-hike, while reading this book I sat in my arm-chair Damascus and considered whether or not I really wanted to finish.

Overall, this was a decent account of a successful through-hike by a mature hiker. I enjoyed reading it but the Hiker Tips were distracting placed in the text and the 'Hike Your Own Hike' cliche was overused to where I almost tossed the book. I would recommend the book with the caveat that you read it by saving the hiker tips for the end. AWOL and Iron Toothpick were much better than the old Mountain Slayer.

This daily journal of Bill Schuette's walk of the Appalachian Trail gave me a good feeling that I was on the trail. I loved every bit of it. This is one of the better journals I've read. He gives a great look inside the life of a thru-hiker which includes the towns, places, animals, and social aspects of the hike. This is a great book that let's you understand just one journeys taken on the Appalachian Trail.