What's The Fastest Anybody Has Ever Hiked The Entire Appalachian Trail?

Most Appalachian Trail thru-hikers take around six months to finish the trail's 2,197 miles, averaging 14 to 20 miles per day. There is also a high failure rate, with one out of three who attempt the trail abandoning the quest somewhere between Springer Mountain in Georgia and the peak of Mt. Katahdin in Maine. Along the way, most hikers make their way off the trail and into a town to re-supply their food stores (and often spend a night in a hostel and grab a restaurant meal) every three to seven days or so. It's also pretty common for them to take a day off of hiking (called a "zero" in thru-hiker parlance) every seven to 10 days. To most non-hikers, that schedule sounds plenty grueling — now imagine if, instead of hiking the trail at this pace, you ran it, moving for 17 hours per day, non-stop.

That's what ultrarunner Tara Dower did when she obliterated the record for the Appalachian Trail's Fastest Known Time (FKT) on September 21, 2024. She was 31 years old at the time. As of this writing, she remains the fastest human to complete the trail, having done it in 41 days, 18 hours, and 6 minutes. In doing so, Dower bested the previous record-holder, a Belgian man named Karel Sabbe, by 13 hours. Endurance feats like this take so much superhuman grit that gender doesn't seem to enter into the equation, and men and women have traded the FKT title back and forth over the years. Sabbe, for his part, went on to shatter the Pacific Crest Trail FKT in 2023.

Tara Dower, who grew up in North Carolina and lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, ran the Appalachian Trail (AT) north-to-south, from Maine to Georgia, averaging 54 miles per day. That is almost like running two 26.2 mile marathons per day, for forty days. Now factor in the daunting elevation gain of 465,000 feet, which, as an article in North Carolina Rabbit Hole points out, is "the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest 16 times."

Dower first hiked the Appalachian Trail for fun in 2019 (at a normal pace), earning the trail name "Candy Mama" because she was a mama-bear caretaker-type with her fellow hikers, and ate huge amounts of candy. So much candy, in fact, that she had six cavities when she came off the trail, according to Rabbit Hole. "I peaked in life when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2019," Dower wrote on Instagram. "I camped almost every night for 5 months and hiked from sun up to sun down. Lifelong memories were created." The distance bug had bitten. Her first FKT was North Carolina's 1,200-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which she completed in under 30 days in 2020. She went on to bag several more records, including those for the stunning, 500-mile Colorado Trail and Vermont's Long Trail, America's oldest long-distance hiking trail.

For her Appalachian Trail FKT, Dower ran 17 hours per day, many of them in the dark, wearing a headlamp. She was joined for long stretches at a time by pacers, supportive crew members who would run alongside her and help carry her food and water. Early on, she encountered some delays in the challenging White Mountains of New Hampshire, which meant that to make up time, she logged up to 60 miles on some days.

Dower's feat was accomplished as a supported FKT, meaning that she had the assistance of a crew. There are also categories for self-supported and unsupported FKTs. Self-supported means the hiker or runner can buy supplies, mail supplies to themselves along the route, or stay in a hotel or motel, for example, as long as no one assists with the arrangements. Unsupported means the hiker or runner carries all food and gear from the start to the finish, replenishing only water from natural sources (the longest unsupported FKT is believed to be Art Brody's hike of the 800-mile Arizona Trail, and his pack weighted 87 pounds at the outset).

On September 21, 2025, one year to the day after Tara Dower's supported record, Jeff Garmire (trail name "Legend") set the self-supported Appalachian Trail record in under 46 days, beating the previous record by four hours. Garmire's attempt was put in serious jeopardy when he opened a resupply box he had mailed ahead to himself, only to find he had sent himself two left shoes. Instead of quitting, he used duct tape to hold his old shoes together and carried on bravely.

Of course, not all impressive records involve speed. In 2021, 83-year-old M.J. Eberhart (trail name "Nimblewill Nomad") became the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, completing it in 261 days (it was his third time hiking the trail overall). Eberhart is living proof that you don't have to be an ultrarunner — or even a spring chicken — to get out there and tackle America's most challenging hiking trails.