BAXTER STATE PARK, Maine — This week ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, whose boisterous, record-breaking completion of the Appalachian Trail put a spotlight on bad behavior inside Baxter State Park, agreed to pay a $500 fine for celebrating with champagne atop Mt. Katahdin.
While the media coverage of Jurek's 46-day excursion provided a glimpse into one man's athletic achievement, other hikers who are just now finishing the 2,200-mile journey from Georgia to Maine have their own tales to tell.
What Jurek missed during his 46-day ordeal, says Kacy Hale, is camaraderie. A thru hiker from Virginia, Hale says her journey was strengthened by the kindness and generosity of others, including "trail angels" who provided advice, occasional rides into town, snacks and even Easter dinner along the way.
The trail, she says, offers a sense of purpose.
"For the past five months, I wake up and know that I'm traveling north and following white blazes," Hale says. "And now I wake up and I don't have a path, really, to follow anymore."
Hale, whose trail name is "Tank," spent most of the journey hiking with four other 20-somethings, most of whom she met in Tennessee. None of them had much hiking experience.
"Noooo. No. Nooo," a chorus of voices says. "I had never done anything before. Not really."
Relaxing at the Katahdin Stream Campground in Baxter last week, the group members say they faced many challenges.
Most lost at least 20 pounds. They endured constant hunger, survived an encounter with a black bear, got soaking wet in rainy weather, were nearly struck by lightning on a mountain ridge and suffered hundreds of mosquito bites — most hikers prefer not to apply bug spray because showers are so infrequent.
They'd all thought about giving up at least once.
One hiker, Marissa Napolitano of Connecticut, came close to drowning on a difficult section of trail in Maine.
"We were fording a river in the Hundred Mile Wilderness and I probably had one more step to take and then my foot kind of slipped and then we went down the river for awhile," she says.
Napolitano, whose trail name is "Mars", was still attached to her heavy pack.
"You're supposed to unclip it before you cross, which I remembered as I was being dragged down and my head was going under and I was hitting rocks," she says.
Luckily for Napolitano, her companion Jeremy Calini, known as "Buddy", jumped into the swift-moving current after her and somehow managed to get the two of them to shore.
"And then I threw up a little and then cried, for like, the rest of the day," Napolitano says. "And that night. And the next day too."
The hikers say they'd heard the news about Jurek's celebration on the top of Mt. Katahdin, where he posed with an entourage of more than a dozen people, popped champagne and drank in public, all in violation of wilderness park rules.
"Popping the champagne bottle with like 30 people behind him on the Katahdin sign — that was just rude and kind of, like, selfish for all the other thru-hikers, you know?" says Alexander Scherlitzsky of Germany, who goes by the trail name "Steam Machine." He says even worse behavior is evident along other parts of the Appalachian Trail outside of Maine.
"There's definitely a big group of people who are just out here for partying — like smoking a lot of weed and drinking beer — and leave a lot of trash," he says. "But most of them are really, really nice people and they're out here for the outdoor experience and not just for partying."
Scherlitzsky says he was surprised by the volume of trash he saw along the trail — not just candy wrappers and beer cans but tents and cooking supplies that hikers abandoned early on as they shed weight from their packs.
There was also a lot of human waste. Matthew Fioramonti says it's especially noticeable in the Smoky Mountains, where there aren't enough outdoor toilets.
"And it's just turning into a wasteland of stuff you don't want to see: people pooping, not digging proper cat holes, and even if there are privies, they're not built to sustain a hundred people a day for a couple of months," he says.
Fioramonti and others say they're worried that the recent release of "A Walk in the Woods," the movie based on the memoir of the same name, will make the situation worse. It chronicles two men's experience hiking part of the trail.
Ron Tipton of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which manages and protects the trail, says his group is anticipating a surge in hikers as a result.
"Are we prepared for a lot of additional hikers?" he says. "Let's put it this way: We're not prepared today but we will be prepared."
Tipton says a task force has been working for nearly a year to address the effects of increasing hikers and exploring solutions, such as the expansion of overnight accommodations at shelters.
He wants the journey to be memorable and positive for as many people as possible.
Hale says that was the experience for her. Despite the challenges, the ups and downs, the garbage and the weather, she cried her heart out when it was over.
There's nothing quite so reassuring, she says, as having your path laid out for you.
