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Behind the stripes

Daniel Simms

By Atlanta United FC

December 11^th, 2019

2,192 miles. 6 months. 1 outstanding accomplishment. It had been a goal for Daniel Simms for two years, but he conquered the Appalachian Trail. And he persevered through it all in a 5-Stripes kit.

“I started planning this when I was 28,” Smith said. “I wanted to do something big for when I turned 30.”

He wanted to leave a mark. 400 miles into his hike, Simms realized he had worn his kit the entire time. He decided he was going to finish the hike in his 5-Stripes fashion.

“I wanted to celebrate it and started wearing it,” Simms says. “Wearing it the whole time started a quarter of the way in. Even on the hottest day, guys would take off their shirts, I was like, ‘No I have to hike in this the whole way.’ I got nervous because near the end I had two holes in the kit, but it held up.”

Even though Simms had trained and had the gritty mentality Atlanta United embodies, he still was shocked the first few days. Luckily, Simm’s dad and little sister joined the first day with him and his friends to start off the journey.

“It killed pretty much all of us,” Simms laughs. “It was 8 miles. It was hard. You climb the stairs at Amicalola [Falls]. The trail goes up and down a couple of mountains. We were like ‘man this is just eight miles, how are we going to do this? We have over 2,000 miles to go.’”

Daniel continued onward. For the first few days, he only hiked six to nine miles and only up to four hours to start slow. Finally, they hit Franklin, North Carolina, the first city on the trail, 112 miles into the trek.

“Then, we started to get faster,” Simms shared. “We got to the point where we could do 100 miles in five days. Georgia was pretty short. It only took us 12 days to get through Georgia. It was a shorter section of the trail.”

After Franklin, Daniel really hit his stride, conquering the grueling 600 miles through Virginia, including highlights of the route like Dragon’s Tooth, McAfee Knob and Tinker Cliff. He even accomplished the four state challenge, hiking through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and both Virginias in one day. He traveled 44 miles in 23 hours.

“I started at 2:30 and did it in the rain and in the dark. I fell asleep when I went to take a rest break,” Simms shared. “I just passed out. I didn’t even inflate my bed.”

After the beautiful sights, Simms and his “tramily” (his trail family as many refer to on the trail), made it to West Virginia. On the trail, hikers burns five to six thousand a day, so fueling the body is important. For Simms, his food include pasta side dishes and lots of tuna, but even that wasn’t enough, so they would sometimes eat boxes of movie theater candy or just packets of sports drink powder to keep going. Sleeping isn’t much easier, especially when his sleeping pads popped.

“You have to wait a few days to buy a new one, and you have to sleep on the ground until you have a good one,” he says. “People donated their sitting pads for me to make me a pallet to sleep on it. Those were some of the worst nights of sleep I’ve ever had. They were beyond cold. It was no fun.”

Though Simms had his struggles on the hike, he found many friends as well, especially while representing his kit. One friend he made was from England and a huge soccer fan, so they watched Atlanta United matches together on the trail.

“Some places you could get service other times, we had unlimited data,” Simms said. “Sometimes, we found bars. One time we got to a bar and we couldn’t get the game up, so we watched it in the bar on my phone. There’s a photo of us all in this bar leaning on me to watch the ATL UTD game on my phone in the bar. It was a lot of fun.”

Besides watching matches on the trail, he also met other fans along the trail and would stop to talk with them.

“I would be hiking and someone in the opposite direction would yell Atlanta United! I bonded with a few people from Atlanta over it, too,” Simms said with a smile. “I ran into other team’s fans. We talked about the league and other teams.”

Hiking through many cities, Simms finally conquered the hike in September. His kit had sprung a few holes and had started to fade, but it was all worth it to create the memory.

“From the start, I was an Atlanta United fan,” Simms shared. “I played soccer since I was in elementary school. I was a big fan that we started a team. We put a lot of thought into it. It was nice to see a team of a sport I was familiar with and putting so many resources and making the team good and build the fan base.”

Now, that Simms has conquered the Appalachian Trial he cannot wait to gear up for the 2020 season and be around his 5-Stripe family.

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