He’s known simply as B-Man, the go-to guru for anyone in Western Pennsylvania who wants to hike The Appalachian Trail. The guy has 16,000-plus trail miles under his boots — and about that many trail stories to share
I met him last month in his indoor element, among the backpacks, tents and sleeping bags at REI in SouthSide Works, where he’s worked for 10 years. A veteran hiker had told me B-Man is a must-see before any long walk in the woods, so I strolled in with a full pack of borrowed gear. He broke it down as only he could.
He pulled the sleeping bag from its casing and tossed the latter, saying the pack itself would keep the bag dry. He shoved it into the bottom of my pack so the heavy stuff would ride higher on my spine. He adjusted straps and tossed out advice such as “less gear, more beer,” and told me to come back the next day so he could give me his stove and air mattress. He’d already handed me his Penguins lighter.
At that point, he didn’t know me from a bucket of trail mix, but his gear often goes on hikes without him. His stuff has been to every continent including Antarctica and he’s never been in an airplane. If you think it makes no sense for a salesman to give away what he might sell, see it his way: If a guy like me has a good first taste of The Trail with borrowed gear, he’s going to come back to buy his own lighter pack, tent and provisions again and again.
I bought B-Man a cup of coffee last week after I spent three nights on The Trail in the woods of Maryland. He told me again how he first fell in love with “every step” of the 2,191 miles.
It was 18 years ago. He was 30 and a Squirrel Hill partier. A Civil War buff, he’d read that the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac had marched 32 miles before its lead elements fought that evening of the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. He wondered how that was possible.
His buds said, well, there’s a trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine. They dared him to go down to Georgia and walk to Gettysburg.
Why not? Jerry Garcia had died and the Grateful Dead had stopped touring. He had nothing better to do that summer. So he loaded a ridiculous 115 pounds on his 165-pound frame and started walking from Springer Mountain, Ga. He carried a hockey stick, wore a leather Civil War cavalry hat that “probably weighed two pounds by itself,” and started on April Fools’ Day.
“I’ve never seen anyone as ill-prepared to do what I was going to do as I was.”
But he proved the history books right. Three and a half months later, his pack long since stripped to essentials, he hiked into Gettysburg fit enough to fight anybody. But he had no desire to tangle with a soul. The people he’d met on the trail had humbled and changed him with their generosity, casual displays of kindness, and humor. Brian Hannan had become B-Man.
Now, at 47, he’s hiked alone to Gettysburg five times from Georgia, 15 times from Pittsburgh, and he’s thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail twice. He’s met and helped more than a thousand hikers, but one stands out.
Jolene Minyon walked into REI in 2012 having just quit her marketing job and wanting “to get the heck out of everywhere,” she said. B-Man, 20 years her senior, told her he was taking a woman a couple of decades his senior on a walk through the Maryland woods and she ought to come along. She did, liked it and liked him, too, and the next spring he dropped her in Georgia so she could walk to Maine.
She ran out of money when she got to New York and came home, but the next year, 2014, he met her in southern Maine to finish the trail. By then, they were in love. He brought her father, Mike, along and proposed at trail’s end with a ring bearing a stone from Mount Katahdin, the Trail’s northern terminus. She said yes and found out later she was pregnant. Their son, Blue, who turned 3 Wednesday, had been conceived somewhere in Maine.
And now the couple that fell in love on The Trail and conceived their son on The Trail intends to be married on it, too. They plan to wed in a Catholic church here — he’s taking her surname because his father was never good to him — and have a second ceremony in Pen Mar Park, near the Mason-Dixon Line, where their first hike together ended. The dates aren’t set but their hearts are.
“The Trail’s done so much for me,” B-Man said. “Within the first week [on it], I pretty much made myself a canvas. A blank canvas. I was like, ‘Let the trail paint who I’m going to be’.’’
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill
First Published: June 10, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
