Some Rain, Worries and Great Times

On the 14th I did 20 miles and stayed at Brown Mountain Creek shelter. On the 15th I did 22.4 miles and stayed in The Priest shelter. On the 16th I did 22.3 miles and stayed on top of Humpback Mountain. On the 17th I did 12.4 miles and stayed at Stanimal's Hostel in Waynesboro.

Typical mountaintop view selfie...

The first day out of Glasgow I hit a section of trail that made me think of my moms Underground Railroad bike trip. The AT followed along a mountain creek and had some informational signs talking about how this area used to be a settlement of freed slaves. It was nice having some history of the area that the trail now occupies. I think this is something that could be expanded on quite a bit. There has to be other areas of the trail that had other things going on in the past. There are plenty of times I hike past what is clearly old ruins from a long time back. It is a shame that for the most part I have no idea of what was there before the trail got established.

Here is the view from that sign to let you know what it looks like now.

After a nice day out of town it decided to rain 3-4 inches on me. It wasn't the worst experience but it was a bit sad then the shelter 16 miles into my day was full and instead of setting up my tent in a downpour I just did 6.6 more miles. Luckily the next shelter was basically empty. If it had been full after almost 23 miles in the rain I would have been rather upset.

The day after the rain was fantastic though. It started with Nitrious (a guy I hiked with two years ago) doing some awesome trail magic and erasing any hard feelings I had for the trail after all that rain. Then after that I spent a fantastic day fording outrageously flooded mountain streams and climbing through a gorge. It really reminded me of Maine.

Last thing this blog I want to just mention how I am worried for the future of the trail. I'm sure many of you have read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It is a comedic narration of his attempted thru hike that does a decent job of portraying what a part of the trail is like. This book exposed a lot more people to the idea of the trail and because of that more people have been hiking it. This in and of itself is a fantastic thing but the southern section of the trail is getting pushed to its limits. The ATC is already trying to push people to do non traditional thru hikes that don't involve starting in Georgia in March or April.

Why this is worrying is that they are currently filming the movie adaptation of that book. It is not some small budget thing either. Robert Redford is playing Bill Bryson and Nick Nolte is playing his fictional hiking partner Katz. This is a big Hollywood adaptation with big names. It is slated to get released in 2015 sometime. What will the trail be like in 2016 and 2017. I'm all for more people experiencing this amazing thing but there will be a point where the trail itself can't handle the load of people. Hopefully this never happens and it remains as glorious as it is now for decades to come but it has me worried all the same.