Many of us have goals. Some of them are short term, but others are long term that can take years of putting your best foot forward to achieve. Jason McVey is no stranger to accomplishing long-term goals, completing the Appalachian Trail hike after starting the adventure in 2015. 

“A lot of people will do what is called through-hiking,” said McVey. “That is where you start in Georgia and end in Maine and you just hike the whole thing straight through, and it takes months and months. I can’t really do that, having a family and a job, so I just took it weeks at a time and hiked it in sections over nine years.” 

McVey is a music teacher in the Warren County school system and said he used various breaks to complete the hike. “I started in Georgia and I spent a couple of weeks there starting out. I am a teacher here in Warren County, so I would do a little bit over summer break. For a while I was doing spring break as well. I would do four or five days to knock out a little section and just work my way up. That’s what I did every year,” McVey said.

McVey said many interesting things happened to him on the trail over the years, laughing that he could fill many books with the experiences he has had. “Everyone is always asking me about bear stories,” he said. “I have had multiple bear encounters. Some of them are pretty wild. Some of them involved mama bears and their cubs. It was pretty scary. People always want to know about the bears and ask about that. I have seen quite a few.” McVey noted he met a lot of interesting people along the trail as well and mentioned it was the biggest takeaway for him. 

Making his way down the last few miles of the trail in Maine, was an experience that McVey said was emotional. “It had taken me quite a while to do it. I didn’t really know what it was going to feel like to finish it. I could see the end of the trail at the northern terminus. You have to climb a pretty large mountain. It was pretty technical and pretty tough. There is a big sign at the top and everyone gets their picture taken at the sign. I didn’t know what I was going to feel. I had a pretty emotional moment at the top – it was a- it was a pretty big deal,” he said. 

McVey began his journey on Springer Mountain in Georgia and completed it on Mount Katahdin in Maine, the highest peak in the state. “It was almost 2,200 miles and it has taken me a number of years, but when you put it all together and look at a map, and all the distance I’ve covered, it is pretty hard to wrap my head around it. I have walked every single step of that.” 

Now that this journey is in the books for McVey, he said that he is probably going to look for his next wild adventure, though he is unsure what it could be at this time. Grateful for his wife and family, he said that none of this would have been possible without them. “I was grateful knowing I had so much support back home, specifically from my wife and family. I wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere without it.”