In March, the AT hiker stopped in Southwest Virginia.
The mountains are where Andrew Eaton ’07 can always go to test his own limits with a long hike or a difficult climb. Last summer, it’s where he met up with some kids facing far tougher challenges.
Eaton was a counselor at a camp for children who had suffered serious burn injuries and were trying to recover from their physical and emotional wounds. One 11-year-old boy, he said, was at the Estes Park, Colo., camp just a few months after suffering severe burns. He went backpacking with Eaton and other campers. “We had to have a nurse on the trip who changed his bandages every night,” he said. “But he was the happiest kid, so happy to be hanging out with the older guys. It really affected me.”
Now Eaton, 27, is trying to raise money to help burn camp programs. He’s in the middle of a 2,180-mile hike of the Appalachian Trail and has a goal of raising $10 per mile. He’s working with Peaks for Peace, a group formed last summer by two of Eaton’s fellow camp counselors who also were profoundly moved by their experiences with the children. Through its website, blogs, and social media, this year Peaks for Peace is helping mountaineers, climbers, snowboarders, and skiers raise money for the Children’s Hospital Burn Camps Program.
On the trail just a few miles south of the Delaware Gap in mid-May, Eaton described via cell phone his hike so far. He started in late February in Georgia and averaged 25 miles a day as he hiked north to near Waynesboro, Va. Then he got sick and had to leave the trail for a few weeks, but he returned in late April. He left the trail again at the end of May to spend the summer as a counselor at the camp in Colorado, then he planned to complete his hike north toward Mount Katahdin, where the trail ends in Maine.
Andrew Eaton overlooks the Appalachian Trail. Photo by Larry McLaughlin.
Eaton grew up in Chesapeake, Va. His sister, teacher Kelly Eaton, and her third-grade class in nearby Williamsburg are following his journey and sending questions, some of which he answered in an early blog video.
“Does it ever rain on you?”
Yes, it rains on me whenever it rains.
“Do you hunt animals for food?” No, the most hunting I do is trying to find the post office to get the food my mom and dad sent me.
The video and Eaton’s blog are at PeaksforPeace.com.
Some of Eaton’s favorite memories of UMW include playing for the Ultimate Frisbee team and practicing on Ball Circle. During his years studying political science, the team moved up in competitive play to face bigger schools, such as the University of Virginia and James Madison University. Eaton was team captain his senior year.
“That was a big part of what I did there.”