Paramedic Conquers Burnout by Hiking Appalachian Trail

Burnout is a neverending challenge for healthcare providers in the EMS field. So when Amanda King — now a paramedic with Novant Health New Hanover EMS in Wilmington, North Carolina — reached her limit, she decided to combat the problem with hiking, taking on the entire 2,194.3-mile Appalachian Trail. Known as the ‘A.T.’, this trail runs 14 states from Georgia to Maine. King began her solo trek at the Georgia end on February 23, 2022, and finished in Maine on October 8, 2022.

“Hiking the entire A.T. is a grueling and demanding endeavor,” the website AppalachianTrail.org cautions. “It requires great physical and mental stamina and determination. The terrain is mountainous for its entire length, with an elevation gain and loss equivalent to hiking Mt. Everest from sea level and back 16 times. The treadway in many places is rocky or filled with roots or mud. Maine, and sometimes other states, requires fording of streams that can be hazardous after heavy rains. Sections that could be described as flat or smooth seldom last long.”

“Out of all the long-distance trails in the country, they say it's the physically the hardest because of the gain elevation and gain loss,” agrees King. “I tried to do at least 15 miles a day, which is low for most ‘through hikers’ pushing to the end. Most through hikers average about 20 miles a day.”

Why She Did It

There is no doubt that Amanda King needed a break in early 2022.

“I felt like I was incredibly burnt out with work,” she recalls. “Besides, there was a property behind my house that was being developed, so instead of my house backing up on the woods, it was going to back up on a new neighborhood. Since it was the perfect time to sell it, I reasoned that if I sold my house, I wouldn’t have to go to work and if I didn't have to go to work, I could go hike.”

But why walk nearly 2,200 miles through the eastern United States to escape from burnout? “Without getting too spiritual, I felt like the stars were just aligning,” replies King. “And it had been something that I had been thinking about since 2018 when I first started hiking sections of trails.”

Training on the Trail                                  

Although she had read extensively about hiking the Appalachian Trail, Amanda King did not train for her trip. “I went from my couch watching TV to climbing mountains,” she laughs.

As a result, hiking 15 miles a day over mountainous terrain was “very tough. I mean, if you've ever gone without working out for a really long time and then done a difficult CrossFit workout for an hour, and your whole body kind of hurts a day or two after? That’s what it was like at the beginning, except that it lasted for weeks and weeks.”

Eventually, the pain went away “when I got in shape after doing a lot of miles every day,” King says. “Then it came back towards the end because the White Mountain range was just really, really tough. New Hampshire and Maine are nothing but climbing up mountains.”

“That was grief. Yeah, it was more climbing than hiking, for sure.”

To survive her trek, Amanda King had to carry everything she needed with her. “I wore an Osprey 50-liter backpack full of water and food,” she says. “It weighed about 25 pounds on average: That's not bad. As far as food was concerned, I carried anything that I could get my hands on that was high-calorie, low-weight, and packable. So a lot of ramen, instant mashed potatoes, oatmeal with dehydrated fruit, and macaroni and cheese, which I would just heat it with water and then add the powdered cheese. And then a lot of candy: I ate candy 12 hours a day! I should probably go to the dentist soon.”

The Toughest Part

According to King, the toughest part of her Appalachian Trail journey was the 122-mile section through the White Mountain range in New Hampshire. The worst of the worst was the climb up Mount Washington; at 6,288.2 ft the highest peak in the northeastern United States, and one that is notorious for terrible, ever-changing weather.

“The weather on Mount Washington is completely unpredictable,” says King. “The temperatures both drop and increase very suddenly, so you're constantly taking off and putting on layers of clothing. And then the wind speeds are just insane. The summit of Mount Washington holds the record for the highest wind speed ever recorded, which was over 200 miles per hour.”

The winds on Mount Washington clocked in “only 45 mph when I summited it,” says King. “The temperature was about 30 degrees — but when you're that high up, it is really cold and really windy.”

What She Got From It

Amanda King’s trek along the Appalachian Trail was not one continuous journey. When she became exhausted or dispirited, she took what hikers refer to as ‘Zero Days’, when she did laundry or just relaxed while her emotional and physical batteries recharged.  “That's probably what took me seven and a half months instead of the average, which is about six,” King says. “But I wouldn't trade that time for anything because I used it to sit and read a book. That was something I never had time to do when I was home and at work.”

Along the way, she made friends with fellow hikers, got to know ‘Trail Angels’ who provided her with food and lodging from time to time and decompressed from years of on-the-job stress.

So what else did she take from her trek? “Other than empathy, I would say listening to my body,” says King. “Part of the reason why I got burned out is because I didn't listen to my body. When someone asked me to do something, I'd say, ‘Yes, I'll do it. I'll come in on my day off with no sleep and I'll do it for you because that's just the kind of employee I was. But now I listen to my body more because when you’re out on the Appalachian Trail, it's the only body you have for 2200 miles. I also learned how much I appreciate food and sleep. When I got to a town and ate actual food, I enjoyed it more. And I appreciated getting eight hours of sleep every night.”

Today, Amanda King is back at work as a paramedic, after spending nearly eight months hiking the Appalachian Trail. “I'll be curious to see how I correlate the lessons I learned on trail with being on a truck again,” she says. “And I do believe that if you were to ask me if my EMS training helped me succeed on this hike, I would say yes. It boils down to your mindset and your persistence. It’s going to be 30 degrees today. It's going to be windy and rainy but walk. That's your only option. Walk.”

James Careless is a is a frequent contributor to EMS World.