By the time Lyla “Sugar” Harrod was 1,700 miles into the Appalachian Trail (AT), she was largely on her own. At her pace of 42 miles per day, she’d left her fellow southbound hikers far behind, and even the slowest northbound hikers had already cleared the parts of southern Virginia and Tennessee she was heading through.
On most days, Harrod was also the first person on the trail. That led to some close encounters with the local wildlife.
“I walked through damn near every possible spider web that I could have walked through,” Harrod says. “I’m more well-acquainted with spiders than I ever thought I would be.”
A few arachnids weren’t going to slow Harrod down. On September 18, after 52 days, 18 hours, and 37 minutes of hiking, Harrod summited Springer Mountain in Georgia to become the fastest woman to hike the AT in self-supported style, and the first trans person to set a fastest known time (FKT) of any kind on the AT. She carried all her own food, water, and equipment, sleeping for four hours each night to cover enough miles during the day.
Harrod never wavered on her goal, but she did come close at the end of Vermont.
“The last 20 miles that I hiked down from the Long Trail to the Mass-Vermont border were some of the most excruciating miles I’ve ever hiked,” Harrod says. “That was really a crux for me mentally and for my body to decide, ‘hey, are we doing this or not?’”
Instead of quitting, Harrod decided to cut her mileage for the day, get a motel for the night, and ice her leg. By the time she woke up the next morning, she was in better shape.
Moments of adaptability like this were key to her success. To achieve a self-supported FKT on the 2,198-mile AT requires more than just physical fitness. Careful route planning, gear selection, mental grit, and flexibility when things (inevitably) go wrong over the nearly two-month journey all play into the record.
“Your brain wants you to quit all the time,” Harrod says. “Your brain wants you to go toward comfort, to go toward safety, to go toward connection. So you’re sort of constantly having to deeply remember why you’re doing something.”
Harrod is now the fourth-fastest person to complete the trail self-supported in any direction, behind serial FKT-setters Joey Campanelli (southbound, 2017), Joe “Stringbean” McConaughy (northbound, 2017), and Jeff Garmire (northbound, 2025). She succeeds Heather Anderson, who finished the trail in 54 days, 7 hours, and 48 minutes in September 2015.
This isn’t Harrod’s first FKT: She currently holds the self-supported record on the 221-mile Bay Circuit Trail in Massachusetts, and she previously held the fastest unsupported time for the White Mountains Diretissima, a linkup of all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot peaks. Last year, she spent her summer blazing a new trail she deemed the “Divide-to-Crest,” covering 3,000 miles from the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail to the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. It was on that journey, she says, that inspiration struck for her Appalachian FKT attempt.
“Nearing the end of the Divide-to-Crest route, I was ready for community, I was ready for connection, I was ready for familiarity of places that I love and care about,” says Harrod, who lives next to the AT in New Hampshire. “The idea of being back home and being around other people was really appealing to me by the end of four months that I spent primarily by myself.”
Going self-supported meant Harrod had no crew to help her along her journey, having to source and carry all her own food and supplies. A supported style, however, favors trail runners who can pack light and move quickly, thanks to a crew accompanying them. That crown currently belongs to Tara Dower, who last year set the fastest time of anyone to complete the AT—regardless of gender—in 40 days, 18 hours, and 6 minutes. But while she didn’t accept help like hitchhiking or meetups with friends, being self-supported didn’t mean Harrod was alone.
“I tried to take moments when I could to chat with people,” Harrod says. “A lot of times, people were surprised—I ended up telling them what I was doing, they’d be like, ‘Wait, you should be moving, go, go, go!’ But in my case, I think that that’s something that helps keep me motivated. It keeps my morale high, and I know that when I am feeling that motivation and that morale, I’m gonna be a stronger hiker.”
Her journey, although physically and mentally demanding, was filled with moments of connection. She cowboy camped late at night with a friend she ran into on the trail, stopped to watch three bobcat kittens in West Virginia, and indulged in the famous pancake breakfast at Shaw’s Hiker Hostel in Maine. (She was, after all, constantly in need of food: “There was no amount of calories I could eat that would have been enough to satiate myself,” Harrod says.)
In addition to all the food she could reasonably carry, a lightweight sleep system, and other essential gear, Harrod also carried enough medication to supply her for the journey. She has been on hormone replacement therapy for more than seven years, and continued to take estrogen and anti-androgens while on the trail.
From the moment she announced her attempt, Harrod understood that doubters and deniers would come after her. Still, she doesn’t shy away from talking about her transness.
“If it’s truly about a lack of education, or people not understanding something, then I know that there’s people in my corner who will help to educate other people out there,” Harrod says. “I believe in this community. I believe in hiking, I believe in thru-hiking, and I believe in the heart and the goodness of the people who do it.”
Ultimately, being fully herself out on the trail is a big part of Harrod’s “why.” The AT was Harrod’s first big thru-hike in 2021, after a decade-long personal journey that included recovering from addiction and coming out as trans. This record, she says, is the “culmination.”
“It’s the return to where I started, where this all began. It’s a return to a place that’s now my home,” Harrod says. “It’s a celebration of all the things that have made my life what it is today. This FKT is such a perfect thing to tie it all together.”
The post ‘It’s a Return to Where I Started’: Lyla Harrod on Becoming the First Trans Woman to Hold an Appalachian Trail FKT appeared first on Outside Online.
