Reunions

May 28, 2015May 28, 2015 / jim fetig / 14 Comments

Harpers Ferry, WV, May 26, 2015 –There I was doing my best Captain Kirk impression as I sat in the command chair behind the counter of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) visitors center when the door opens and I hear a cheery, “Hi Sisu!” (Sisu is my trail name.)

To my delight, in walks Emily Leonard. At least that’s who she was when I camped next to her and her husband on Springer Mountain, GA in early March. Now she is “Black Bear,” an awesome thru hiker who remembered me promising that I would take her ‘half-way photo’ if she reached ATC HQ on a Tuesday, my volunteer day. Well, she did and there I was wearing a giant smile in salute to her presence and accomplishment.

Emily is a former teacher and soccer coach who lives in Maine. She sounded and looked strong. After the formalities, I treated her to a healthy, read leafy green-colored, lunch at a quirky local restaurant. Our conversation quickly established that she’s having a wonderful time walking in the woods. You can follow her blog at: http://happyhiking.bangordailynews.com/category/home/ I really hope that Black Bear goes — ALL THE WAY!

By way of additional insight, I wrote about Emily anonymously in one of my blogs from Georgia. She was a hiker with the ultra light Cuban fiber tent pitched with so much slack that I worried might blow away in a strong wind. After staying the first night, her husband returned home to Maine and work while Emily hiked on. That wasn’t the first time I learned to never judge a pack by its cover.

Of note: It turns out she ditched that tent for a range of reasons and is using the one her husband had. So much for hi tech.

Separately, a hiker named “Bonafide” aka “Winter Walker” phoned me from Bears Den hostel last night. I first met him in Tennessee in December 2013 during my thru hike. That year his doctor told him to lose some weight, so he walked from his home state of Vermont to Tennessee and back to Harpers Ferry. This year he decided to thru hike and I met him plowing through the north Georgia snow back in February.

Sisu and Winter Walker in Mount Rogers Outfitters, Damascus, VA in Dec. 2013

His call was to check in being that he was nearby. When I mentioned that the movie, “A Walk in the Woods” would be out in September, he unleashed a tirade about hikers who mess up the woods and don’t follow Leave No Trace principles. It was instructive to say the least. It seems like time and distance don’t weed out all the bad apples.

The “Walk in the Woods” trigger was this: The Bill Bryson book features many scenes like the ones I reported from Georgia with people tossing trash and worse all over the trail.

He asked me what I thought the answer might be. My response was one word: Babysitters. That’s what you get when you act like a child.

Here’s the trailer for “A Walk in the Woods:” It promises to be a fun movie.

http://news.moviefone.com/2015/05/27/robert-redford-walk-in-the-woods-trailer/

Karma Comes to the Back Country

May 10, 2015May 10, 2015 / jim fetig / 12 Comments

Gene from Brooklyn gets a “Trail Karma” award for picking up other people’s trash.

Appalachian Trail, Sunday May 10, 2015 — People are loving our national hiking trails to death. The Appalachian Trail (AT) alone is estimated to see up to three million visitors per year.

Looking at it one way, that’s enough boots on the ground to bruise the rocks rather than the rocks having the opposite effect on the hikers’ feet. It’s sort of like hammer vs. nail in role reversal isn’t it?

The collective environmental impact generated by all these people is enormous. They generate human waste, leave trash, trample vegetation, erode trails and mark their passage in many other unwelcome ways. There are many means to mitigate this impact, but before we talk about that, here’s the back story.

Most people experience our national parks and forests in what is known as front country. Front country is civilized, distinguished by infrastructure such as roads, picnic tables, flush toilets, trash cans, concessions and parking.

You know about more about front country than you may think. That’s where Yogi, Boo boo and Mr. Ranger did their Jellystone schtick. You get the idea.

The back country is a very different animal. In contrast to front country, about the only evidence of civilization are the marked hiking trails. The AT’s primitive shelters and privies are a notable exception. Otherwise it’s supposed to be a “wilderness” experience. (Not to be confused with designated wilderness areas. That’s a separate matter.)

Most people never see the back country and hardly realize it’s even there. The primary reason may be that a lot of muscle power is usually required to get into the back country. In other words, you have to sweat.

Been to the mall lately? Observations suggest that fewer and fewer Americans are up for back country excursions. Supersize soft drinks aside, nevertheless there’s no shortage of back country hikers.

The problem comes when people show up in the back country and don’t know how to limit their impact. Within my experience, they fall into two primary groups.

One group fancies themselves as romantic throwbacks applying their survival skills and living off the land in ways promoted by Jack London, the Boy Scout Handbooks prior to the 1970s, or the Bear Grylls TV series today.

If everyone behaved this way in the back country, it wouldn’t be long before they’d turn paradise into a denuded moonscape. When you spy someone with a axe, hatchet, machete or (the very heavy) Bear Grylls brand gear on a national hiking trail, you might be looking at one of these folks.

Machete damage. Green trees don't burn by the way.

Machete damage. Green wood doesn’t burn by the way.

The other group is simply clueless. Finding no back country trash cans, they just drop their garbage where they stand because they don’t come prepared to carry it out. They befoul water sources with human waste. They trample vegetation. Overall, their practices put the back country environment at risk.

Ignorant people leave their trash in fire pits. It doesn’t burn completely.

Unburnt trash.

When the backpacking craze developed as boomers came of age in the late 1960s, it threatened to overwhelm the environment. Minimal impact techniques emerged as ways to mitigate the damage generated by the hiking hoards of that era.***

In time, minimum impact morphed into the Leave No Trace ethic. Leave No Trace is based on seven principles designed to help not only to minimize human impact, but also to maintain the highest quality wilderness experience possible.

Principles were developed for both the front and back country. Much more at: https://lnt.org/ These are the back country principles:

Plan Ahead and Prepare: Poorly prepared people, when presented with unexpected situations, often resort to high-impact solutions that degrade the outdoors or put themselves at risk. Proper planning leads to less impact.
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces: Damage to land occurs when surface vegetation or communities of organisms are trampled beyond repair. The resulting barren area leads to unusable trails, campsites and soil erosion.
Dispose of Waste Properly: Though most trash and litter in the backcountry is not significant in terms of the long term ecological health of an area, it does rank high as a problem in the minds of many backcountry visitors. Trash and litter are primarily social impacts which can greatly detract from the naturalness of an area.^[5] Further, backcountry users create body waste and waste water which requires proper disposal according to Leave No Trace.
Leave What You Find: Leave No Trace directs people to minimize site alterations, such as digging tent trenches, hammering nails into trees, permanently clearing an area of rocks or twigs, and removing items.
Minimize Campfire Impacts: Because the naturalness of many areas has been degraded by overuse of fires, Leave No Trace teaches to seek alternatives to fires or use low-impact fires.
Respect Wildlife: Minimizing impact on wildlife and ecosystems.
Be Considerate of Other Visitors: Following hiking etiquette and maintaining quiet allows visitors to go through the wilderness with minimal impact on other users. (Wikipedia)

Leave No Trace plastic tag at bottom right. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)

Fortunately most hikers are aware of Leave No Trace. It’s promoted everywhere. Unfortunately these principles are practiced selectively and conveniently. In other words, hikers reason their one insignificant transgression won’t have any harmful effect.

The reality is the opposite. The impact of small Leave No Trace lapses grows exponentially when “everybody” does it.

Now back to the reason for this story.

Too many younger hikers were not following Leave No Trace ethics, yet hikers 18-24 make up the majority of AT thru hikers. More challenging, the traditional messages and delivery means were not working with this group.

Trail Karma awards and promotional stickers.

Enter Trail Karma as a new outreach program: http://www.trailkarma.com. It is a website targeting younger hikers. The Trail Karma awards component of this program allows ridgerunners and trail ambassadors to reward good behavior on the trail when it happens in real time.

The Trail Karma Award is a nice AT medallion with a serial number on the back. Hikers can register the award on the Trail Karma website and even pass it along when another good turn is observed.

The idea is to reinforce the positive. I thought the two Trail Karma Awards I was able to present during my time in Georgia had a positive impact, both on the hikers who received them and those who observed the presentation.

Yesterday’s mail brought a CARE package of new Trail Karma awards and promotional stickers. I can’t wait to find good behavior to reward.

***The trails weren’t pristine before the boomers showed up. In the earlier era, hikers and campers built lean-tos, cut pine bows to make beds, chopped tent stakes every night, disposed of food cans willy nilly and practiced a multitude of other sins. Their smaller numbers helped limit the damage which was was eventually cleared up.

Rembrandt I’m Not

April 19, 2015 / jim fetig / 9 Comments

Shenandoah National Park, Sunday April 19, 2015 — Patomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) North District Hoodlums Trail Crew gathered Saturday for its monthly outing. As usual, we divided into several work groups to clear, clean, repair and improve the trails in the park. We got a lot done.

A few of us camped in the park in order to get early starts on our individual trail sections this morning.

Trail maintenance can be pretty mundane. Today was painting day, but not just painting any old thing.

No sir. Today I was painting almighty white blazes. These are the very symbol of the AT and the center of attention for hikers. Miss the wrong one, and you could wind up in Rhode Island sometime.

Some blazes have faded over the years.

I thought this spot needs a white blaze.

A blaze had once been there, but its host tree died after a 2011 fire burned through the area.

So I picked a close neighbor to be its new forwarding address.

Now nobody gets lost.

Could Rembrandt have done it better? I’m not so sure of that. 😊

Eating the Elephant

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 / jim fetig / 9 Comments

Springer Mountain, Georgia, March 21 – 26, 2015 — My volunteer period is complete. I’ve hauled my last load of hiker trash out of the North Georgia hills. It’s now up to someone else. Some end of tour observations follow.

It’s a free country. You can tell that from the range of people and their degree of respect for nature, the environment and the hard won Appalachian Trail infrastructure. I just wish more hikers would come to the trail better prepared.

The overwhelming majority of people naturally do the right thing. They practice “Leave No Trace” outdoor ethics by taking only photos and leaving only footprints. Everything they truck in, they haul out from cigarette butts, Charmin flowers, and uneaten food to unwanted gear that’s unneeded or too heavy, excess clothing, or used dental floss.

My pleasure was being with these folks. They’re plumbers, pipe fitters, surgeons, teachers, nurses and bus drivers. They share a common love and respect for the outdoors and are excellent students of how to do well out here. They love being outdoors and live to be one with nature.

A lot of hikers come to the AT overwhelmed. They struggle to grasp all 2,189 miles at once. It’s like the old aphorism about how you eat an elephant – one bite at a time. The average AT hiker goes to town every five days. If that’s so, hiking the AT is simply 35 consecutive five-day hikes. Put that way, it’s much easier to get your arms around the magnitude of the task ahead.

My hope is that more hikers would better prepare themselves. I follow a blogger from Colorado who wrote an interesting post this week about Colin Fletcher who wrote some of the seminal books on hiking including the all time favorite, The Complete Walker. His post can be read at this link. http://www.pmags.com/the-complete-walker-iii-colin-fletcher I just wish more people would read Fletcher, or at least check out the enormous amount of information available on line.

Here’s a fellow dressed in cotton (cotton kills). He also could learn a thing or two about packing.

Others are far less attuned to ethical behavior in the back country. They do what they do back home. Twice hikers even tried to argue that I was hiding the trash cans from them. These would-be-thru-hikers had a hard time appreciating that thru hiking is supposed to be a wilderness experience. You pack it in. You pack it out. No trash cans. End of story. I was ignored more than once.

Food containers do not burn completely.

Nothing should go into the fire pits or privies that’s not supposed to be there.

Bill Bryson had it right in his book A Walk in the Woods. It’s been made into a movie which will be in theaters later this summer. Bryson wryly observed the unprepared throwing their gear overboard and much more. Why people come out here so poorly prepared is beyond me, and a hellova lot of others too. You don’t have to look far for classic examples. It’s a topic of continuing conversation among the properly prepared.

This was my final trash run. The load included a discarded tent, new boots, wet cotton clothing and uneaten food. Total pack weight was close to 70 lbs.

Considering how much excellent information is readily available on the internet or from recent books, there’s no excuse for being unprepared. Some self-identify with so-called survivor show heroes and want to give it a whirl. Others are just clueless. Somehow almost all of them manage to learn one thing – that is to wind duct tape around their hiking poles. A precious few don’t even find that out.

There are two basic hiker types out here. There are the thru hikers. They are self-evident. Only one in four will finish. Still, this is their season. They’ve got until mid-October to climb Maine’s Mt. Katahdin before it closes. They’ve got to get going.

Some folks are old school.

Then there are all the shorter distance hikers, sometimes called section hikers. Of them, about half are on spring break – families and college students alike. This is one of the only times during the year when they can come. They identify with the AT brand and are in Georgia because it’s where the southern terminus of the trail is, it’s warm and the logistics are easy. They’re not going away.

There’s an interesting subculture among section hikers. A significant number of these hikers want to share in the excitement of the great spring migration – to be there, to rub shoulders, to share the thrill and/or to relive their own adventure and reignite memories of years past.

Some come every year. It’s muddy form of March Madness where they get to be on the court with the actual players themselves. Later they will follow hikers they’ve met and root for them. It’s hard to beat.

The challenge is that, in the first 30 miles of the trail, for every 10 thru hikers there are 8 section hikers. The infrastructure is taxed to the max! Even the privies fill up – ugh.

This is the second shift cooking dinner at the Gooch Mountain shelter. These were some of the folks tenting in the rain.

Overcrowding has its downsides. Earlier in the week, the Georgia Health Department issued a noro virus warning. A case had been reported in the state. Funky hikers who don’t know how to stay clean in the wilderness, living in close proximity, form a perfect petri dish. In spite of the beauty, it can get really ugly out here. Nevertheless, it’s worth it.

Blood Mountain on Saturday morning. Some of the thru hikers showed me the trash they’d collected.

Many hikers are tuned in to Leave No Trace practices and collect trail trash as the hike. I gave one hiker (from Brooklyn, NY no less) a “Trail Karma” award for carrying out discarded clothing and other trash.

Gene from Brooklyn gets a “Trail Karma” award.

Someone creatively tried to hike the space blanket they no longer wanted.

Someone creatively tried to hide a space blanket they no longer wanted.

Still, hikers are excited to be on the AT whether the trail viscosity matches a hot fudge sundae on a summer day in Georgia or it’s frozen over. In many cases they are living their dreams.

Drying out at Hawk Mountain.

Her dreams are one step away from becoming reality.

During my stay the seasons changed – at least twice.

This year the Appalachian Trail is 90 years old. It was built by volunteers and is maintained by volunteers as originally envisioned by its founder Benton MacKaye. It’s thrilling to play a small role in that legacy.

Springer Mountain memorial to Benton McKaye who envisioned a hiking trail along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia.

Fifty Shades

March 19, 2015 / jim fetig / 9 Comments

Neels Gap to Springer Mountain, GA, Saturday March 14 to Monday March 16, 2015 — This is a dirty story. In fact it’s going to be filthy! But, it’s not about what you think it is. It’s about Georgia mud.

When this patrol started, it had been raining nonstop for eight days. The trail is a sodden River of viscous mud. The hikers are coated with it. Their soggy tents have been pitched in it. They’re filthy and everybody needs a break.

The aphorism on the AT is “No rain. No pain. No Maine.” Well, we’re breaking in the AT Thru Hiker Class of 2015 the right way. Between the epic snow, cold and endless rain, for sure they’ll have earned some bragging rights.

I started my new patrol from Neels Gap (mile 30). So far I’ve run into many hikers I met earlier in the week on Springer Mountain. They were a cheerful lot having come this far. But, to a person, they want to dry out.

Ditto for the hikers who dragged themselves into the Top of Georgia hostel where I’ve set up my base camp. At least hostels are a safe haven from the elements.

Some people are damp because the don’t know how to stay dry. Rain gear alone isn’t enough.

For example, tent pitching is a good place to start. There are ways to pitch tents in the rain that minimizes the opportunity for water to wet the sleeping compartment. The secret is getting the fly up first, then ducking under it to hang the sleeping compartment. Reverse the process when striking the tent.

I’ve demonstrated this technique several times. I love it when you can see that little flash bulb go off when the hikers get it. It doesn’t eliminate all dampness, but it’s a huge improvement over the alternative where rain pools on your tent floor after beating its way through your mosquito netting while you struggle with the rain fly.

Unfortunately after a week of nonstop sop the damp infiltrates everything no matter what you do.

The rain finally quit on day two. The viscosity of the treadway morphed from soup to solid in just hours. It was almost as if a miracle occurred right under my muddy clodhoppers.

Without rain to lubricate the trail, the hikers joy returned. The thousand yard stare yielded to the warmth of days 30 degrees warmer than what they’d been experiencing.

From rain soaked to salt stained.

Of course the heat cooked up its own challenges. Dehydration eats you from the inside out. Thirst is a hard master, so be careful what you’re wishing for.

Late middle age can be unforgiving in these conditions. I encountered a proud former Philidelphia cop struggling up hill. His burdens were typical for early hikers – too much gear, out of shape (but not overweight), serious dehydration and mental doubts. He was thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?”

This is when the unfit begin to realize how far their apple can fall from the tree of success. They begin thinking of the comforts of home, and some succumb.

I stayed with this hiker until he consumed enough water and refined sugar products to get a mental grip. Then I moved on.

The day ended atop Springer, that perpetual well spring of hope and optimism. The sun was shining and the Warrior Hikers were present to start their long healing march the next morning. It doesn’t get better than that out here.

Hope

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 / jim fetig / 12 Comments

Springer Mountain, GA, Tuesday March 10, 2015 — It’s raining with liquid sunshine dominating the forecast for eight out of the next ten days. Yet on Springer, hope is not dampened. Hope is eternal.

This is the beginning of the great spring migration to Maine, that’s 14 states to the north of here. It’s five million steps, but what the hey!

On the first day everyone has a more or less equal shot, or so they think. It’s all about optimism and the anticipation of dreams long in the making.

For the next couple of days I’m spelling one of my colleagues who is the caretaker here. My job is to educate hikers on Leave No Trace, gather data and help the hikers.

On the first night I helped a woman who was setting up her ultralight tent for the first time outside of her living room floor. I asked how well she thought it would withstand high winds. The tremendous amount of slack in her rain fly and the obvious swayback in the middle was my prompt.

Later we learned how to hang food bags on the bear cables. Within that context, the opportunity was right, so we learned to throw a bear line and hang food without tying it off to a tree. That way a smart Yogi or Booboo wanna be can’t break the rope and score a meal. She survived the night intact.

Springer is a place of optimism and farewells. Fathers and mothers, grand parents, husbands, wives, even sisters and brothers trundle to the summit from US Forest Service road 42, just 9 tenths of a mile down the hill.

The nonhikers gaze deeply into their loved one’s eyes in search of doubt. You can catch them furtively glancing about for danger as they hug their dears and even blink back tears. Then they mug for photos, sometimes even asking the caretaker to be their shutterbug.

At the trailhead parking lot come the final hugs and tears. Then, with an adrenaline rush, the hikers are off on one of life’s great adventures while the loved ones return home to quietly worry and hope for success.

The hikers come by ones, twos and small clusters. It’s sometimes the first time they meet their fellow thru hikers. No matter where they’re from, their age or reason for hiking, they bond instantaneously in common cause.

Me. After introductions, bears are my first topic, followed by a bit on Leave No Trace.

I specifically mention “pack it in. Pack it out.” But I’ve learned to mention cigarette butts, cat holes and for the women, packing out their TP after taking a pee. I’ll mention pee rags, Diva Cups and Go Girls if appropriate. Believe me, most of them need to hear it. Charmin flowers are not appreciated.

My last mention is the large number of hikers on the trail. Crowding in shelters and at camp sites is to be expected.

Last I ask who participated in the voluntary registration program, the purpose of which is to help hikers self disperse. Almost everyone who’s heard about it registered. Only a small minority thinks it’s a bad idea.

At the end of the day I am humbled and reminded that a journey of 2,189 miles begins first with hope; and it’s launched with that first step on Springer Mountain.

Ghosts of Hikers Past

March 8, 2015 / jim fetig / 6 Comments

Neels Gap, GA, Sunday March 8, 2015 — Neels Gap is where a lot of hikers go to die, that is if they make it that far. Around a third of the erstwhile starters give up at this spot, just under 40 miles from the start point.

Hikers quit for a range of reasons. This early it’s usually because they are so out of shape that they can’t continue or they realize that they are totally unprepared for the weather conditions – either low temperatures, snow or rain. Many are carrying very heavy packs stuffed with irrelevant gear or the wrong gear.

I met a young married couple and the husband’s brother last week near Neels Gap. They seemed fit enough, but said they were postponing their thru hike until they learned more about functioning winter weather. They realized they weren’t prepared. They made an intelligent decision. They also became a statistic.

If they make it to Neels Gap, the heavies have an option. The trail actually passes through the breezeway of a building in which a conveniently located outfitter just happens to be.

The staff at Mountain Crossings are all former thru hikers who perform pack shakedowns upon request. In this way hikers can dump their frying pans, coffee pots, axes, outsized gear and the like. Of course they can replace their iron with titanium or other miracles of modern materials science, all for a price of course.

My favorite part of Mountain Crossing is the boot tree. Ill-fitting blistering boots get tossed over its branches like Halloween decorations serving as a goulish reminders of painfully dashed hopes.

The trail from White Blaze serial number 1 on Springer Mountain to Neels Gap is well maintained and rather gentle compared to the AT over all. It’s primary terrain feature is Blood Mountain. It’s a well-switch backed trail but challenging to anyone in less than top shape humping a heavy pack. Blood Mountain is aptly named. The notches on it’s gotcha stick are many.

Trail magic helps a lot of folks get over the hump. Trail Angels cook hot dogs, pancakes and coffee at various road crossings. Bless them all!

Garbage Man

March 2, 2015May 22, 2015 / jim fetig / 12 Comments

Neel Gap, GA, Saturday March 1, 2015 — Beep – beep – beep – beep. That’s the sound of your friendly hiker garbage man backing out of a shelter with his pack full of detritus others have left behind.

When I staggered into the hostel at Neel Gap with ten pounds of junk. The most galling was the four liters of frozen water.

Seems some folks didn’t realize that you take your water bottle to bed with you when it’s freezing outside at night. So they left the frozen water behind for yours truly to haul thirty miles to the nearest trash receptacle. That’s not to mention the other junk in the photo.

This really isn’t a complaint. That’s why we are here, to help the hikers understand how to do the right thing. When they don’t, we remove the trash before it can serve as a bad example to others.

We also remove blowdown. Sawing keeps you warm, believe me.

In the morning the snow reminds me of a stiff starched white shirt. Sort of crunchy when you put it on. The weather is turning so by noon the snow is as limp as that same starched white shirt on a Georgia summer day. Today the slush was three inches deep with about an inch of water as a top coat.

Tomorrow the forecast is for rain. That’ll remove the snow and slush, but only by turning the trail into a river in the process.

Throughout all of this, the hikers seem intrepid. After all, they’ve come 50 miles. Maine can’t be far ahead.

Trail Ambassador

February 22, 2015 / jim fetig / 10 Comments

Role playing exercise

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, February 20, 2015 — I’ve spent the past week gettin’ ready for love. Oh, not THAT kind. I’ve been with a group of people training to assist hikers on the Appalachian Trail this year. We love the trail and the people who hike on it.

Our base camp is a modern style house from the late 50s or early 60s owned by the National Park Service. During the summer it is basecamp for the trail crews that work in the park.

Our mission is to educate hikers primarily on “Leave No Trace”™ principles, encourage them and help them in practical ways.

An estimated three million people walk at least some distance on the Appalachian Trail each year, so Leave No Trace is a big deal. The national scenic trails, of which the AT is only one albeit the most famous, are being “loved to death. The number of users continues to increase at a high rate. Therefore, the impact on the environment from human footsteps alone is enormous. Add their feces and urine, toothpaste, dishwater, dropped litter, abandoned gear, fires, animal disturbance and all the rest together and the sum is enormous.

Unfortunately, individual hikers fail to appreciate that their impact is additive to all the others. That’s why Leave No Trace is more than Pack it in. Pack it out. Hikers are expected to plan and prepare for everything they might encounter on their hike. Understanding how and where to camp prevents erosion and unsightly scars. Knowing how to dispose of human waste properly is critical to preventing water contamination and disease. Respecting wildlife, fellow hikers and campers, leaving what you find undisturbed and generally being considerate round it out.

Here I’m demonstrating how to hang a food bag in a way that is not tied to any tree. Bears have learned to break ropes tied off to trees and feast on what falls to the ground!

Human food kills bears. Once they become unafraid of humans, bears have to be trapped and moved, or worse, destroyed. They are magnificent animals. Being thoughtless has sad consequences. The AT-wide bear statistics weren’t encouraging. Bear territory is shrinking and the animals are only trying to find food.

Had a small bear encounter at the outfitter in Gatlinburg, TN.

During the week, the Forest Service taught us a lot about hiker/camper psychology and methods to be persuasive without confrontation. Nobody wants to hear that they are a screw-up. Above all, we learned to count small victories.

Then there’s the weather. Minus 23 at altitude in the Smokies! Holy frostbite Batman!!! My gear will get me to -15F at best with a miserable night. I’ve experienced and slept outside in -50F in Alaska and northern Minnesota. I can’t carry that kind of gear over these mountains. Best to stay in town when the weather forecast looks like this.

Today I drove to Hiawassee in north Georgia to visit a couple of hostels and assess trail and weather conditions. There weren’t that many hikers around. Several had been driven back to or into town by the subzero temperatures. They said the snow wasn’t a big deal, but that there were a lot of downed trees to impede progress.

Ridgerunners/trail ambassadors carry large pruning saws to attack blowdown up to about a foot in diameter. At a minimum, we can trim away the branches from a large trunk. The going will be slow next week. Can’t wait.

Tuesday the Georgia crew meets with the Forest Service and the local trail club for coordination. Let the games begin!

Dick’s Creek Gap today.

Same rock. Better weather!

Better than Disney World

August 8, 2014August 8, 2014 / jim fetig / 4 Comments

Kennebunkport, ME, Friday August &, 2014 — Reintegration back into non-hiking society began in earnest this morning with a visit to a local coffee shop called Morning in Paris. Can’t get much further from the back woods than that.

Later we jumped on my friend Ed’s Vespas and scooted to the beach to watch some friends surf. His daughter Katie is home from her job with the United Nations, so naturally we posed for our “life is a beach” pic.

The adrenaline drained from my system during the shuttle from Millinocket yesterday. I was too exhausted to join a party in progress at a local Irish pub. Instead, I sat on the front deck sipping wine and let the sound of the crashing waves massage my cares away.

I can tell that I’m still suffering from adrenaline withdrawal because I’m dragging a bit. It feels a lot like the aftermath of a long business trip.

I can’t get too far in front of my ski tips. I have two short sections of trail I skipped over, about 27 hours total hiking time. I’ll get the first six hours on Sunday and the remainder Monday and Tuesday.

Tuesday or Wednesday I hope to meet with some Appalachian Mountain Club officials to offer them some requested feedback centered on their brand image with thru hikers. These are the Appalachian Money Club folks.

Then it’s off to my cousin’s to retrieve the gear I Ieft there. After that it’s home to join my trail crew working next Saturday in Shenandoah National Park.

Thanks to everyone for your kind kudos since Katahdin, especially HOBO whose congratulatory text reached me on Katahdin’s summit. His timing was perfect.

Note the genuine Paris bistro chairs.

After you hike the AT, life truly is a beach!!!

A fork in the road

Yogi said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." So I'm following the white blazes.

Hiking