Appalachian Trail
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50 free Appalachian Trail trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Appalachian Trail follows the spine of the eastern United States from Georgia to Maine, and every year thousands of people set out to walk all of it. Most do not finish. The ones who do come home with stories about weather, blisters and a vocabulary nobody else understands. This quiz covers the whole footpath: the people who dreamed it up and the first to walk it end to end, the peaks, towns and landmarks along the way, the animals hikers meet, the customs and slang of life on foot, and the books, films and headlines that made the route famous. It is written for hikers, armchair hikers and anyone planning a trip. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few good stories even from the ones you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The lowest point on the Appalachian Trail, just 124 feet above sea level, lies inside what kind of attraction?
A zoo
A zoo at Bear Mountain in New York holds the trail's low point, right in front of the bear enclosure. The zoo itself began as a single bear den in 1926.
Q 02A full walk of the Appalachian Trail involves climbing equal to scaling which mountain about 16 times over?
Everest
Everest, 16 times: that is the total ascent the trail's conservancy counts along the route's endless ups and downs. Yet the highest summit on the path is less than a quarter of Everest's height.
Q 03Hikers reaching the Appalachian Trail's midpoint at Pine Grove Furnace traditionally try to eat a half-gallon of what?
Ice cream
Ice cream by the half-gallon is the midpoint ritual at the park's general store, and finishers win a commemorative wooden spoon. The official halfway marker stands just east of the park.
Q 04In 2009, which governor's staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail while he was really visiting Argentina?
Mark Sanford
Mark Sanford of South Carolina had flown to see his mistress, and a reporter met him at Atlanta's airport on the way back. He admitted the affair at a news conference hours later.
Q 05Hikers crossing Grayson Highlands on the Appalachian Trail often meet which animals, introduced in the 1970s?
Wild ponies
Wild ponies graze the open ridges there and are so used to people that they rarely stop eating as hikers pass. The herd is rounded up each year, and surplus colts are sold at auction.
Q 06The International Appalachian Trail now has branches in Europe and which African country, once joined to North America?
Morocco
Morocco's Anti-Atlas range rose in the same ancient collision as the Appalachians, before the supercontinent Pangaea broke up and carried the pieces apart. The trail's planners follow that old mountain belt overseas.
Q 07Appalachian Trail shelters have upturned tuna cans threaded on hanging cords to keep which animals out of food bags?
Mice
Mice cannot climb past the can, so a food bag tied below it stays safe overnight. Hikers call the contraptions mouse trapezes.
Q 08The Appalachian Trail crosses five of New England's six states on its way north; which one does it miss?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island sits too far east of the mountain chain, so the route runs through Connecticut and Massachusetts instead. In all, the trail touches 14 states.
Q 09Which travel writer turned an Appalachian Trail attempt with an out-of-shape old friend into A Walk in the Woods?
Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson set out in 1996 with a companion he called Stephen Katz, a pseudonym for his friend Matt Angerer. Katz had already appeared in one of the author's earlier books, about travelling in Europe.
Q 10Painted rectangles two inches wide and six inches tall mark the whole Appalachian Trail in which color?
White
White blazes mark the official route, while blue ones of the same shape point the way to shelters and viewpoints. Hikers who never skip a single blaze are known as purists.
Q 11Which state holds about a quarter of the entire Appalachian Trail, far more miles than any other?
Virginia
Virginia is where northbound hikers often meet the spring thaw and heavy rain. Long stretches run beside Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Q 12Which Maine peak, whose Penobscot name means Great Mountain, marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail?
Mount Katahdin
Mount Katahdin is the highest point in Maine, and Henry David Thoreau wrote about climbing it in the 1840s. Northbound hikers have to arrive before the summit path closes in mid-October.
Q 13Which Georgia peak has been the southern end of the Appalachian Trail since the terminus moved in 1958?
Springer Mountain
Q 21Which army veteran with no tent or stove claimed the first one-season hike of the whole Appalachian Trail in 1948?
Earl Shaffer
Earl Shaffer took 124 days, and trail officials at first assumed his claim was a fraud. He walked the route again in the opposite direction in 1965, and once more when he was nearly 80.
Q 22Roughly how long is the Appalachian Trail, which takes most thru-hikers five to seven months to walk?
2,200 miles
2,200 miles is the round figure, though the exact length shifts a little each year as parts of the path are rerouted. The official count for 2024 was 2,197.4.
Q 23Which New Hampshire peak, notorious for a 231 mph wind gust in 1934, is crossed by the Appalachian Trail?
Mount Washington
Springer Mountain was picked for its remoteness after building crept up on the old endpoint. Many hikers reach it by an approach path nearly nine miles long.
Q 14Which forester proposed the Appalachian Trail in 1921 as a chain of work camps and farms for city dwellers?
Benton MacKaye
Benton MacKaye treated hiking as a side benefit of his plan for mountain communities. He wrote the proposal shortly after his wife's death.
Q 15Which 67-year-old Ohio grandmother walked the whole Appalachian Trail alone in 1955 wearing canvas sneakers?
Emma Gatewood
Emma Gatewood carried no tent or sleeping bag, just a shower curtain to keep the rain off, after a magazine article convinced her the walk would be easy. She completed the route twice more.
Q 16In the 2015 film A Walk in the Woods, who stars opposite Nick Nolte as a writer attempting the Appalachian Trail?
Robert Redford
Robert Redford had wanted Paul Newman as his co-star and shelved the project for a time after his old friend died. Emma Thompson plays the writer's wife.
Q 17Which state's stretch of the Appalachian Trail is so rocky that hikers say it is where boots go to die?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's ridges are strewn with jagged stones left exposed as the soil eroded away, which slows hikers and shreds footwear. The other nickname is Rocksylvania.
Q 18Which town, the site of John Brown's 1859 raid, houses the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy?
Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry is treated as the trail's psychological midpoint, though the true halfway mark lies about 75 miles farther north. The path crosses the Potomac there on a footbridge.
Q 19Which Great Smoky Mountains summit, officially renamed Kuwohi in 2024, is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail?
Clingmans Dome
Clingmans Dome stands 6,643 feet high on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, and the trail passes just below its top. The restored Cherokee name means 'mulberry place'.
Q 20On the Appalachian Trail, what do hikers mean by the term trail magic?
Kindness from strangers
Kindness from strangers can mean gifts, encouragement or a hot meal cooked at a campsite. More than 50 places along the route hold the conservancy's official trail community status.
Mount Washington is the trail's highest point north of Tennessee, at 6,288 feet. Around it the path stays above the treeline for about 13 miles.
Q 24What name is given to the Appalachian Trail's most isolated stretch, running through Maine from the town of Monson?
Hundred-Mile Wilderness
The Hundred-Mile Wilderness ends near Abol Bridge, just short of the park that holds the trail's final summit. For northbound hikers it is the last big test.
Q 25Which Maine waterway is the only crossing on the Appalachian Trail where hikers must be carried over by boat?
Kennebec River
The Kennebec River stands out because Maine's part of the trail has dozens of other fords, all of which hikers simply wade.
Q 26Hikers who finish the Appalachian Trail and two great western routes are said to have won which title?
Triple Crown
The Triple Crown adds the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails, for about 7,900 miles in all. Eric Ryback is credited as the first to complete the set, in 1972.
Q 27The Appalachian Trail runs through Hanover, New Hampshire, home of which school whose outing club maintains the path?
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is home to the oldest collegiate outing club in the country, founded in 1909. The club's own hiking path was absorbed into the trail in the 1920s.
Q 28What name is given to people who complete the Appalachian Trail in separate trips over months or years?
Section hikers
Section hikers get the same recognition from the trail's conservancy as people who walk it in one go, however many years the trips take.
Q 29A typical Appalachian Trail shelter, known in some states as a lean-to, lacks which part of an ordinary cabin?
A fourth wall
A fourth wall is left off, so most shelters stand open on one side above a wooden floor. More than 250 shelters and campsites line the route, usually a day's walk or less apart.
Q 30Which president signed the 1968 law that made the Appalachian Trail one of America's first national scenic trails?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson had called for public trails to serve what he termed the forgotten outdoorsmen of the day. The same law gave the Pacific Crest route its official status.