Leaving the Valley for a Walk in the Woods

In 2018 I left my job as VP Manufacturing at a VC-funded hardware startup to attempt a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I left the chaos of startup life (and hardware manufacturing!) to live in the woods for 6 months. I indeed found my wilderness out there, and in the process learned a lot about the trail and myself, physically and mentally. In the post below, I examine my reasons for hiking, review data from my hike, and talk about the transition back to the hardware startup world.

BACKGROUND

First off, for those who don’t know me, my name is Ryan Vinyard, and I have a background in mechanical product development specializing in early-stage startups. In 2018, I took time off the startup grind and hiked Appalachian Trail. I was given the trail name “Stretch” for my double-jointed arms, and (without any trimming in between) this is what I looked like on Day 1 (March 12) and then 6 months later:

Some context on the Appalachian Trail (AT for the rest of this article) for those who don’t know about it, or maybe are familiar but don’t understand the scale of the trail.

- It is the original long-distance wilderness hiking trail. It runs from Georgia to Maine through 14 US states. It was conceived in 1921, formally finished in 1937, and successfully thru-hiked (hiking the entire length in one year) for the first time in 1948.

- It is (was) 2,190.9 miles in 2018. The trail typically grows in mileage every year because of re-routes, temporary closures, etc. 2190.9 will always be my AT number, and every thru hiker has a different number that is near and dear to their heart.

- It is (was) 464,500 feet of total elevation gain along the trail (1/2 ascent, 1/2 descent). This was the equivalent of summiting Everest 16 times while running 84 marathons.

- Approximately ~4,000 people attempted to thru-hike the AT in 2018, and it is estimated ~20% “complete” their thru-hike in one way or another.

I think of it as an amazing adventure, and I’m quick to point out to people who ask me about my 6 month “vacation” that on vacations you do not typically plan to encounter roaring bears or sleep in sub-freezing temperatures for weeks at a time. Check out my trail journal if you want to hear more specifics, but I wanted to attempt here to crystallize some answers to the first question that I get a lot — and you may be thinking yourself after reading about bears roaring and 16 Everest summits — why did I hike? It’s a pretty complicated answer, but I’ve tried to distill my reasoning into a few points here:

1. Wilderness. According to Benton MacKaye, who conceived the AT, it is “a footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness.” While I have always done a lot of backpacking, camping, and hiking, I was intrigued by the idea of a thru-hike and the deeper wilderness experience it affords. I found woods, forests, lakes, ponds, and trails. I saw 11 black bears, countless poisonous snakes, a porcupine, and a marten — none of which I had seen before. I forded rivers, climbed rocks, fell down roots, scaled ladders, and have gotten cuts, bruises, and all sorts of strains in the process. I feel overall the hike helped me get more in tune with the natural rhythm of animals and nature — I did indeed find the wilderness I sought. It has also made me greatly appreciate the wilderness in my own backyard. I’m excited about being back in California with so much wilderness so readily accessible. The wilderness aspect also led to my one largest “epiphany” on the trail — while I have been a strict vegetarian for 18 years (e.g. no leather, down, or silk for the entire trail), the trail inspired me to go fully vegan.
2. Burst the bubble. I live in San Francisco and work in tech, with my whole career in hardware startups. It’s a bubble in a bubble in a bubble. I did need to make a job change, but had no intention of major life changes like most out there. I do love my world — I am one of the few on the trail that genuinely liked my career; however, I did have a desire to get out and meet more people in a broader spectrum of professional fields, as well as political views. I met nurses, students, retired lawyers, retired military, yoga teaches, and a smattering of other jobs other than the engineers I’m used to interacting with. I have met democrats, republicans, liberals, conservatives, independents (who in New Hampshire insist it’s something special?), and a few outright racists. I have been helped by many of the people I met. At the same time, it has restored my faith in humanity, reminded me that there will still always be one jerk somewhere, but overall given me more confidence in community. It encouraged me since I’ve been back to start volunteering at the local food bank, as well as to get involved in the broader hardware startup community again. I’m excited to be working back around hardware startups since it has always been my passion!
3. Carpe Diem! AWOL put it best in his AT book that “I had become jaded with the idea of ‘later’.” I am definitely not a jaded person, but I had to break the perpetual “I’ll do that some day” that is natural human tendency. In particular, losing family and friends too young in recent years was a major inspiration for me to start doing things earlier in life — you never know how long you have. I am so grateful for the opportunity everyone around me created for this hike, especially the sacrifices my amazing wife Lizzie has made. It was a truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I will always cherish it. I encourage everyone to seize their day — enjoy every single day of your life, and while you’re at it, go plan one big thing!

DATA ANALYSIS

As an engineer, I always approach things quantitatively in addition to thinking through qualitative aspects like the above points. I was interested to see how my pace changed over the trail, how days off and trips to town affected mileage, and also how raw trail miles compared to what my Fitbit was telling me. I diligently recorded my mileage each day in a notebook and then processed the data when I got back to civilization using Google Sheets. Some of my preliminary data analysis is below, and I’m happy to share the raw data if there is any interest. A few big picture statistics:

186 days to hike 2,190.9 miles

11.8 average miles per day

25 “zero” days (a day in which I hiked 0 miles on the trail. As you will see below, this doesn’t actually mean walking 0 miles)

13.6 miles per day ignoring zero days

Comparing that data against my Fitbit records led to some other trends:

4.4 average miles per “zero” day. This isn’t a huge surprise to me as the logistics of getting food and supplies in town necessitates more walking than an average non-trail day. Walking around towns in rural America makes you yearn for the simpler things, like sidewalks, painted crosswalks, and pedestrian signals which just don’t exist in these towns. It also made me appreciate the local bus routes that saved me miles of town walking.

40% average “scaling factor” between Fitbit miles and trail miles. That is to say if I did 10.0 trail miles in a day, Fitbit would on average report ~14.0 miles. Essentially this is me stripping out any zero days and trying to see how “accurate” my Fitbit is. This is, of course, a completely arbitrary metric, but I found it interesting. This difference comes from a blend of the fact that I walked many steps each day that weren’t on the AT (going to water sources, tent sites, views, etc.) and the general tendency of Fitbit to over-count miles. It’s actually closer to 20% on most normal days as the extreme ratio days (300+% days doing 2 trail miles into town) swing the overall average. This generally matches with what I’ve seen with Fitbit in the real world — Over-estimate by 20–25% in order to compensate for all those 20-step trips to the printer that it doesn’t pick up on.

When I started to graph the data set, a few things stood out. This first graph compares the mileage over days on the 2 halves of the trail. The blue line is the first half of the trail and the red line is the second half. You can see I sped up and did the second half in 86 days as opposed to the 100 days I needed for the first half. The mileage progression graphs are interested because its slope is essentially my average miles per day. The flat portions (e.g. days 63–65 on the blue line) represent multiple zero-days which you can tell becomes the biggest factor extending out the first half of the hike.

This second graph shows the difference in trail miles and Fitbit miles over a certain section of trail. This essentially shows the delta I was describing in my “scaling factor” metric. The blue is the trail miles per day and the red is the recorded Fitbit miles. This data shows all of Maine, which is a great example since I’m fully at my pace so there’s no asterisks there. The data is also clearer to interpret than most sections — good examples are day 1 and day 19. Day 1 is a zero day, hence Fitbit miles without trail miles. Day 19 is the summit day, so only 5.5 miles technically on the trail, but another 5.5 coming down the mountain and all the rest to get to and around town. You can see overall the data is pretty consistent, but does vary a good bit day to day.

In conclusion, the AT was a phenomenal adventure, and of course no data sets or graphs can capture all capture the terrain, weather, and logistical factors involved. Looking back at everything really brings me back to the trail mantra “hike your own hike,” meaning to experience the AT (and of course life in general) in whatever form, pace, and perspective you want. I have lots of other data, graphs, and trends I’ve noticed through them, but I’ll save those for future posts if people are interested in the data side of things. I’d love to talk to any hikers considering the AT (or any other thru-hikes) if I can offer any perspective, and my advice will definitely be to take the leap and go do it! In general, I hope to use my new Medium profile to do a few more trail-related posts and then transition into more tech topics as I get deeper back into the hardware world. I thought a lot about the tech world, and specifically hardware startups, while I was on the trail and came to the conclusion that I can make the biggest impact by consulting and working with many startups at once.

NEXT STEPS

I have joined my lovely wife back in San Francisco, and since returning I have found a healthy ecosystem of hardware startups. It may not be the buzz and bubble that hardware was 3 years ago, but the serious hardware entrepreneurs are getting some great products across the finish line into reality. I’ve come back to find many hardware startups in my network who need help in areas I can contribute to, so it was a natural fit to go independent and start consulting. So far, I’ve been able to work with some great startups in Silicon Valley, most clients being directly in the sustainability space, and even got the opportunity through the World Bank and ASME to travel to Morocco and help startups there working on energy solutions. I am working to help hardware startups create stable and scalable frameworks to achieve success, focusing on bringing manufacturing knowledge earlier into the product development process. It has been great to be able to contribute to many startups at once, and I’m really excited to be consulting!

I’ve been developing my brand and am happy to announce that today that I am launching VPD (Vinyard Product Development) www.vpd.io . Please email me at ryan@vpd.io if you’d like to learn more or just to grab a coffee and talk about hardware — I love talking about the industry!