Finding power and internet to post to a blog while hiking for half a year up the Appalachian Trail doesn't seem like a very likely combination, but nowadays some people manage it in various ways.

I've read and enjoyed three or four books about AT thru-hikes, but blogs are a more immediate, interactive medium. I've been following with interest a group who came down with food poisoning as they hiked along the Holston Mtn. ridge in my "backyard" and look forward to reading about others as they pass by.

So, I'm aggregating all such blogs I can find for the 2009 season on a page I call Planet A.T.. It's a nice way to read these contrasting accounts juxtaposed together in real time.

One includes cell phone photos and fairly frequent updates of a hiker who's already reached Damascus; another is frequently updated by Blackberry by a guy I could well have crossed paths with on Roan this week; another has more infrequent, interesting long essays by a hiker who has just reached Tennesee; another is a teacher sending educational videos home to his school. There's even an 86 year old who I understand is the oldest person to hike the whole trail -- and is doing it again.

I thought I'd only find a few blogs, but I've now added over a hundred! So maybe one in ten of all thru-hikers this year have a blog. And the number of bloggers will presumably dwindle toward twenty-five before they reach the end in Maine.