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  1. #1
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    Default Why Springer and Katahdin?

    These two peaks are the official start/end points for the AT, but can anyone tell me why? Wouldn't it make more sense to say the nearest town or park headquarters were the end points, since you have to hike about eight and five miles, respectively, just to get to the trail heads?

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    Well Katahdin means the greatest mountain and is a Native American word for it. How else could it be the greatest mountain unless the trail to it ascended 500,000 ft to it[s summit. As I once heard, if you want to hike Baxter peak, go to Baxter State Park, if you really want to hike Katahdin you will need to start at Springer Mtn in GA. The natives knew what they were talking about when they names it IMHO.

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    The original southern terminus was Mount Oglethorpe, the southernmost peak in the Blue Ridge Mountain chain. That was the reason to choose it. Privately owned property and smelly chicken farms forced the move to Springer.

  4. #4

    Default Kind of obvious...

    The Appalachian Trail is named for the Appalachian Mountain Range, so starting and stopping a thru-hike on a mountain peak makes sense to me.

    "To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." - T.S. Eliot

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    Quote Originally Posted by atraildreamer View Post
    The Appalachian Trail is named for the Appalachian Mountain Range, so starting and stopping a thru-hike on a mountain peak makes sense to me.
    The AT isn't the only trail with a terminus on a mountain peak. Another one that quickly jumps to mind is the JMT with a southern terminus on top of Mt Whiney (highest point in the lower 48).

  6. #6
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    Don't forget, the summit of Oglethorpe is now accessible again to the public

    http://www.summitpost.org/mount-oglethorpe/620888
    www.mtoglethorpe.org

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    There have been all sorts of ideas about what are appropriate ways to start and end a trail. The other two Triple Crown trails go border to border, and end, in effect, at fences. Some trails have gateways or portals marking their ends, which are otherwise inauspicious. Vermont's Long Path combines both approaches, with a sign for the path at the North Adams end, and a post at the Canadian border.

    I posted earlier about how a couple of long trails in New York end pretty abruptly. The current northern terminus of the New York Long Path is a STOP sign in the village of Altamont. Actually, one early vision for the Long Path had the interesting idea of having the termini be Manhattan, at the George Washington Bridge (that's still formally the southern terminus), and Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks. The idea was that it was possible, at least in principle, for a hiker to walk all the way from the great city to the north woods. Whiteface was chosen because even in the 1920s, it was rather a sacrifice to tourism. Marcy would have made a more epic end to the journey, but is much more in need of preservation; Whiteface is pretty much beyond help. In any case, the original vision will probably never come to fruition. Getting the trail through the developed lands in Orange County and in the Mohawk Valley looks to be an insurmountable obstacle.

    The 135-mile Northville-Placid Trail, perhaps the granddaddy of all long trails (it opened in 1922, even before Vermont's Long Trail, and certainly those two served as inspiration for the A-T), had its termini at train stations. Few people drove automobiles, particularly into the north woods, in those days, so putting the termini in places that people could reach by rail made sense. The original southern terminus is no more. It's under the waters of the Great Sacandaga Lake, pent up behind the Conklingville Dam. The bridge into the much smaller modern village of Northville is now the terminus. The north end is still the Lake Placid train station, which now is limited to running summer excursion trains. There's still rail through the park to Old Forge, but the prep work needed to run a train on it is ... complex, so it's seldom done. I seem to recall that they don't even snowplow the track in the winter any more.

    Perhaps the most appropriate attitude to the 'epic ending' is: you haven't climbed a mountain when you get to the summit. You've climbed the mountain when you get back to the car.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mags View Post
    Don't forget, the summit of Oglethorpe is now accessible again to the public

    http://www.summitpost.org/mount-oglethorpe/620888
    www.mtoglethorpe.org

    It looks as if from there to the start of the Approach Trail is about a 14-mile roadwalk, nasty, but surely doable in a day. It'd be an interesting add-on to a thru-hike, kind of getting back to the roots.
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  9. #9

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    The AT almost ended at Mt Washington. if it wasn't for Helon Taylor and Avery rushing to get a route in place the trail would be a lot shorter and far less interesting.

    Anyone that has looked east off Katahdin will realize that its pretty darn flat for quite a distance so Katahdin is the logical spot in Maine.

  10. #10

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    If it had been up to McKaye and Avery, and the Smokey Mountains Hiking Club, it would've ended on Cohutta Mountain in Georgia.

    Avery posted to Larry Stone, then state forest manager for Georgia, and asked him to form a club and build the trail to Cohutta. Stone replied that if it's going in Georgia, its got to go on the Blue Ridge. He then hired Roy Ozmer for trail blazing, and he and Roy blazed the trail along the blue ridge. Horace Kephart made peace between GA and the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club, as he found a good route between Bly gap and the Smokies.

    The GATC was formed later, by another GA forestry employee, Charlie Elliott, to maintain it.

  11. #11
    Getting out as much as I can..which is never enough. :) Mags's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Another Kevin View Post
    It looks as if from there to the start of the Approach Trail is about a 14-mile roadwalk, nasty, but surely doable in a day. It'd be an interesting add-on to a thru-hike, kind of getting back to the roots.
    IIRC, Monument Rd is essentially the old AT path (with pavement on top now of course)
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    And then there was Benton MacKaye's first idea. To connect the highest point in the north to the highest in the south.

    That would have had the trail going from Mt. Washington in New Hampshire Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina.
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    I guess my view is just colored by my first long distance hike being the Camino de Santiago (from Le Puy to Santiago, skipping a couple big parts due to time constraints). To me it just makes sense to start and end somewhere more accessible. But then again, the purposes of the two trails are completely different.

  14. #14

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    McKay was based in Vermont and no doubt influenced by the AMC. For many years the AMC white Mountain guide had a Katahdin Section and thus he was quite aware of Katahdin when his concept was developed.

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    Starting a hiking trail where there are likely to be soda machines and trinkets for sale doesn't make much sense to me. But, to each his own I guess.
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    Quote Originally Posted by moytoy View Post
    Starting a hiking trail where there are likely to be soda machines and trinkets for sale doesn't make much sense to me. But, to each his own I guess.
    ROFL..... I want to agree but I sure was happy to see the drink machine at the top of the Falls when I did the approach trail in July! Crappy trail and every time I say never again!

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Speakeasy TN View Post
    ROFL..... I want to agree but I sure was happy to see the drink machine at the top of the Falls when I did the approach trail in July! Crappy trail and every time I say never again!
    Yes sir! I've drank soda from that machine a few times.
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  18. #18

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    We were wondering this the whole time we were out there! Thanks for the info.

  19. #19

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    I think of the image of the thru hiker touching the northern terminus sign, having just earned the title of thru-hiker. There may have been others present, but those who make it to the sign(s) understand the undertaking. I would sure hate to have hiked over 2000 miles to get to "the end," and have to wait while some grandmother, who walked 20 yards from a parking lot, took a picture of her grandson eating an ice cream cone and standing on a sign at "the end" of the trail, so they could show everyone back home how they "hiked" the trail.

  20. #20

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    You could start in Damascus Virginia and hike up to Mt Rogers and then go back to Damascus and repeat this 20 times. It's just hiking in the woods. There is no significance to either Springer or Katahdin. Or you could spend a month hiking in the Cohutta wilderness. Getting out is all that matters.

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