On the Trail: Matthew Hengst
During a recent conversation with my parents, I mentioned that it was a shame that no one had recently surfaced on the Trail Journals site with a journal of a hike on the Eastern Continental Trail. Ever since I hiked the ECT in 2012, I’ve been keen to read other people’s experiences. Sadly, very few seem to take on the challenge of a hike covering the length of the East Coast in the United States as well as a portion of Canada. Of course, I know that not everyone publishes their hiking efforts online, and of those who do, not everyone uses the same website which I used when I hiked the trail. So, I did a quick search on the internet to see if by chance I could find information elsewhere, and I happened to come across Matthew Hengst!
Matthew started hiking North on the Eastern Continental Trail just before New Year, which is about the same timing as the beginning of my own hike, way back in 2012. He is already an experienced thru-hiker, having just finished the Pacific Crest Trail last year. He also has a nice website, with links to his Instagram and YouTube accounts, both of which have good content.
It’s rare to find someone hiking the Eastern Continental Trail at all. It’s even more rare to find someone doing the trip and simultaneously putting out good content. When I did the trail, I personally struggled to write down my thoughts into journal entries, often having to take time to write entries for the past several days all at once. For that reason, I’m impressed that Matthew is able to compile videos of a decent length every few days. I’m sure it takes a lot of work. I have been enjoying the videos, as I know the trail and I understand a bit of what a hiker experiences on this trail. Through the videos, I can see that Matthew is going to do well on his thru-hike.
The first portion of the hike, from the Southernmost Point in the Continental United States to the beginning of the Florida Trail, can easily discourage hikers and get them to quit the hike before it has really begun. There were few good spots to camp in the Florida Keys back in 2012, and it can only have gotten more difficult since then. Increased traffic and COVID-19 can only made hiking harder, but Matthew has taken it all in stride.
He has not started out doing needlessly ambitious days of more than thirty miles like I did, and he seems to have done a better job planning his stopping point for each night well in advance. Hiking in the Keys, while a unique experience, can be uniquely frustrating, so from my perspective the fact that Matthew can just accept these frustrations and move on shows that once he gets onto more secluded trails in Florida, there won’t be much stopping him from succeeding.
I think Matthew is going to enjoy the trail, and I hope that others enjoy his videos and photos. I’m a big advocate of the Eastern Continental Trail, and the best way to advocate for it is to show off all the cool stuff there is on this trail, in places like Florida. Even the unique experience of hiking along the Overseas Heritage Trail in the Florida Keys is something many people in the hiking community haven’t seen. Matthew is doing a great job of showing off what the ECT has to offer, and I’ll definitely be following along with this journey and rooting for him all along the way.