True Grit
Bernie and April Hester, aka Mule and Inchworm, hiked every mile of the cross-state Palmetto Trail—twice—in 2017 to raise awareness about MS.
Photo by Mic Smith
Her husband gave her the trail name Inchworm because she goes slow and stops often. After all, April Hester has multiple sclerosis, and while MS affects people in different ways, for her it can mean pain, leg problems and falls, even in everyday life.
Bernie Hester took the trail name Mule, not because he’s stubborn but because he becomes something of a pack mule while carrying gear and supplies. It’s April who’s stubborn, he says. He points to her tenacity as the reason they completed South Carolina’s cross-state Palmetto Trail not just once, but twice within one year—a feat that no one else has claimed before.
“She was always the positive one. I would always be the one that said, ‘We’re not going to make it to camp tonight. We’re going to come up short. We can’t get this done.’ And she would say, ‘No, we’re going to do it.’ And she was right. We always seemed to get there.”
Often grueling, long-distance hiking can be as much a mental as a physical test. To finish both of their Palmetto Trail “thru-hikes,” the couple had to push through challenges and setbacks. But April already had plenty of experience with that after living with MS the past 22 years. She sums up her approach to hiking and to life simply: “You can’t say, ‘I can’t.’”
Discovering the Palmetto Trail
April is 43, and Bernie’s 49. Each was previously divorced when they met online 11 years ago. She thinks her “brutal honesty” caught Bernie’s interest. He was not deterred by her MS, or her three sons. He has three sons of his own, and some of the boys’ ages overlapped. Once they married, they had their own twist on The Brady Bunch, but without girls. Even when Bernie’s oldest became a father, he added three grandsons to the family.
In late 2016, the couple moved from Beaufort to the nearby crossroads town of Okatie, and around the same time, they visited the Smoky Mountains, where they talked pie-in-the-sky about the Appalachian Trail. As they returned through South Carolina, a sign for the Palmetto Trail caught Bernie’s attention. “We got home, and I researched it and found out, ‘Wow, this is a big trail that we’ve got in our state, and we didn’t even realize it,’” he recalls.
They tried their first thru-hike of the Palmetto Trail in the spring of 2017, traveling from the sea to the mountains, and surprised themselves by finishing all 350 miles of the official trail passages and several of the unofficial connecting routes within 66 days. They also found April gained strength along the way—an extreme example of exercise benefits for those with multiple sclerosis.
With their second attempt at the Palmetto Trail, they added greater purpose by striving to raise awareness of MS and funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. They created a donation page, kept an online trail journal, posted on Instagram and took on the role of trail ambassadors from the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, which oversees and develops the trail.
They also encouraged others to push themselves in their own endeavors, and in that spirit, they made their second thru-hike of the Palmetto Trail more challenging, without support from a relief RV or extended breaks of “zero days.” They also hiked more connecting miles between official trail passages as they went from the mountains to the sea— starting at Walhalla in the Upstate and ending in Awendaw along the Intracoastal Waterway.
They put together supply caches in advance and placed them on the trail or had them shipped to post offices and the hotels where they occasionally stayed when they weren’t camping. Both of them work for Bernie’s family’s financial business, and while he brought his laptop with him to get some work done, the stresses of their lives back home largely slipped away as they settled into a focused hiking rhythm: Eat. Drink. Move. Sleep. Repeat again the next day.
Surprising kindness
Not everything went according to plan. But in the face of setbacks, they often experienced surprising kindness.
After Bernie posted about running out of fuel for the camp stove when they were on the Middle Saluda Passage, an Instagram follower and his two sons hid an emergency cache of fuel and other goodies by a log with the message: “Finish MS.” And when weather hazards from Tropical Storm Nate led the Hesters to seek refuge at the sold-out Orchard Lake Campground in Saluda, the owners allowed the couple to stay overnight in the banquet room.
Most of the other hikers they met along the way seemed to know someone coping with MS or a similar health challenge, and the Hesters were often boosted by online words of support they received from others, including those in the MS community.
“You feel like people are backing you up, and it just fuels you to keep going, and I think we needed that a lot of time. Didn’t we?” April says.
“Yes, many times,” Bernie agrees.
Toward the end of their trek, a woman whose son has MS and members of her family joined the Hesters as they walked several miles of the Santee Passage together. Bernie wrote about the moment in the trail journal.
“As they turn back and we move forward the realization starts to set in that we are building an MS family with everyone we’ve met. We just hope that in some way this hike has helped and we hope everyone stays in contact with us. We've been enlightened, humbled, almost brought to tears and so grateful we’ve met so many great people. It’s been a very tough yet rewarding adventure.”
Dreaming bigger
On Nov. 3, 2017, they completed the Palmetto Trail the second time in only 34 days after hiking an estimated 450 to 500 miles. They also raised more than $2,600 for MS, and while that falls far short of their ambitious goal of $100,000, the Hesters don't intend to give up on that either. They plan to “speed hike” the Palmetto Trail next, and admit they are contemplating a thru-hike of the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail for as early as 2019.
“I’m looking at the logistics of it,” Bernie says, “but that’s going to be a big challenge.”
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Get More
See pictures, videos and daily trip reports from both 2017 thru hikes at trailjournals.com/myjournals/21333 and on instagram.com/mule_inchworm/.
Learn more about the Palmetto Trail at palmettoconservation.org.
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Learn about MS
Multiple sclerosis involves an abnormal response of the body’s immune system directed against the central nervous system. It is thought to affect more than 2.3 million people worldwide, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, but can be difficult to diagnose. Most are diagnosed between ages 20 and 50, and the disease is at least two to three times more common in women than men.
Symptoms and signs: While they are often disabling, symptoms vary from person to person, the society says. A first symptom that many experience is numbness or tingling of the face, body, arms or legs. Another early sign can be vision problems, such as blurred vision, poor contrast or color vision and pain with eye movement. Other common symptoms include spasms—often in the legs—walking difficulties and fatigue, which occurs in 80 percent of cases. Weakness, dizziness and vertigo, other types of pain, cognitive changes, emotional changes and depression are also common.
Staying healthy: A healthy diet, exercise, not smoking, ongoing preventive care and management of medical conditions can contribute to the overall health of someone with MS, slow the disease’s progression and extend a person’s lifespan. Early diagnosis can help.
Get more: The National Multiple Sclerosis Society (nationalMSsociety.org) offers extensive resources and includes a Greater Carolinas chapter. Go straight to April and Bernie Hester’s fundraising page at main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/OurPTAdventure.