Hiking Mt. LeConte in Roman Armor, May 2006
In May of 2007 Daniel Pigg and Robert Wear of the Fifth Legion hiked Mt. Leconte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Roman Legionaries could supposedly march atleast 10-15 miles daily on a campaign with their armor, packs for food, and everything they would need for months on the trail. We wanted to know if we were anything near being up to the task. We chose the 5 miles up and 5 miles back down of Alum Cave trail. If you've ever hiked it you'ld know its rather steep. We also wanted to test out some different ways to carry the various roman necessities to see which ways were most effective.
The gear
We brought with us helmets, armor (Robert in hamata and Daniel in segmentata), shields, swords, pugios, belts, sandals, water, bread, honey, some dried fruit, pateras (roman cookware) loculus bags, cloak, all the non-armor stuff we had strapped to the furca t-pole. We also brought a minimum in modern equipment like a couple cameras to prove we did infact hike it and modern boots. Yes I realize modern boots are cheating and no I don't care. After using caligae a lot I'm sure we wouldn't have been able to do it with them. Its too rocky for me to take a chance with hobnailed shoes, and caligae are painful enough without marching 10 miles with Roman packs.The Hike
We woke up that morning after making shields the night before and went outside and realized how clear the sky was. Robert looked to Daniel and said, "want to go hike a mountian in armor today." Daniel replied, "OF COURSE!" and it was on. We started around noon (a little late in the day to start that hike on any day because of the sun). Normally I can hike leconte up and back in 4 Hours plus an hour stop for lunch at the top. In Roman armor it took us 11 hours.We reached the lodge about 6:00 and everyone wanted pictures of us, and wanted to know why we were crazy enough to hike alum cave trail in armor. We had eaten all the food already because apparently you eat about 3 times as much food when hiking a mountain in armor. Luckily we were able to trade some pictures with random people for a couple apples. I think those apples were the best apples of my life! About 6:30 we reached the cliff tops which is the highest spot at LeConte. Thats where most of the pictures were taken.
It took us so long we had to hike our last couple hours at night. Of course we had Roman gear which didn't include a flashlight and there was no moon (that was fun let me tell you). Why no flashlight? because we already had 50+ pounds of crap and when we were leaving the cars we culled EVERYTHING we didn't think we would use. I also didn't think it would take longer than 9 hours to hike. Instead I brought the stuff we would need to spend the night at the shelter up top if we had to (which we almost did). I had a video camera, so we used the LCD screen for a hint of light. Those narrow tree bridges are definately more frightening in the dark with no light and with 50 pounds of armor and gear that make it impossible to swim. Other than that it was a great!!
