AT Extension into Canada

[Former Admin]

Comments ........

[dionalaniz]

I'm gonna go for it on my 2004 hike. All the way to the east coast of Quebec baby! I've heard the Matane reserve is the most beautiful part of the entire AT+IAT trail. Hopefully, i'll have a personal opinion on that in about a year.

[icemanat95]

If they want to run a trail from Abol Bridge up to The Gaspe, that's fine. Someday I might even hike it, but it ain't the AT and it'll never be the AT.

[dionalaniz]

I'm not sure I quite understand. The Appalachian mountains don't stop in Maine. They keep on going to the coast of quebec. Same appalachian mountain range that started down in Alabama, right?

I've heard talk about linking up the portions of the scattered trails along the appalachian range to actually hook up with Springer Mountain. Personally, I think it would be fantastic to have a foot trail all the way from the start of the appalachians in alabama to their natural termination point at the coast of Quebec. That would be a fantastic trail.

Don't get me wrong. The current traditional AT route is great and i'm looking forward to it, but who could be against the idea of a trail that truly followed the *entire* appalachian mountain range?

[Grimace]

Doesn't that trail already exist? Can't you get from Springer (Bentopn McKaye Trail) to the Alabama Trail and then hike all the way down to Key West on the Florida Scenic Trail?

[Youngblood]

Originally posted by Grimace
Doesn't that trail already exist? Can't you get from Springer (Bentopn McKaye Trail) to the Alabama Trail and then hike all the way down to Key West on the Florida Scenic Trail?

Not exactly. Sure some folks have done it and some are probably doing it right now, but not many. The way it works right now is that when you finish the AT at Springer Mountain, you take the Benton MacKaye Trail northwest to the Georgia Pinhoti, the Georgia Pinhoti southwest to the Alabama Pinhoti which continues southwest until it ends at Talledega Mountain, which is the end of the southern Appalachains. (The so called East Coast Trail continues by road walk to the Florida Trail and beyond.) The Benton MacKaye Trail part of it is in great shape as well as the Pinhoti Trail in Alabama. The GA Pinhoti Trail is a work in progess. My understanding is that it is erratically blazed and much, if not most of it, is road walks. GOOD information about the GA Pinhoti Trail is not generally available, if it is available at all. The Georgia Pinhoti Trail Assocation needs help, as it is a big job.

Youngblood

[icemanat95]

Dionalaniz, The AT is a specific entity stretching from one point to another. It has existed as such for a long, long time. Katahdin has been the northern terminus of the AT since the very beginning and Springer has been the Southern terminus since the forced move from Oglethorpe by development. The termini are also fixed by congressional mandate in the National Scenic Trails Act. Changing a termini would require another act of congress.

Yes the Appalachian Chain extends from further south than Springer and extends farther north than Katahdin. Actually, geologically it may technically stretch to Scotland (albeit broken by the Atlantic Ocean which is a later geological feature than the Appalachian Chain). There are literally THOUSANDS of trails and trail systems touching just about every peak in the Appalachian Chain, but they are not the Appalachian Trail either. But by your reasoning, since they are part of the range, they should be.

Benton MacKaye was fully aware that the trail he envisioned did not cover the full extent of the Appalachian Chain, in fact, his original proposal was for a shorter trail stopping at Mt. Washington in NH, those that took over the project from MacKaye (who was a dreamer not well suited to actually getting things done) pushed it through to Katahdin. The path has wandered a bit since then, but the northern terminus has always been fixed and the Southern Terminus only moved by necessity. The trail itself is not intended to be changed by a whim, and we have struggled for several generations now to get the AT fully protected along it's entire length. We still have not accomplished that goal. Legally adding to the trail both north and south would necessarily decrease the resources available to complete the pathway as it currently exists, that would be bad. We need to get the AT's path permanently protected ASAP.

As far as creating an Eastern Continental Trail that encompasses the AT or parallels it along other trails the AT misses, I'm all for that, but the AT is the AT.

[meBrad]

I have come to understand that my participation in this forum is counter productive. In an attempt to ammend this I am deleting my posts and have requested to have my account deleted

[dionalaniz]

"but it ain't the AT and it will never be the AT". That just sounded like you had negative feelings toward the IAT. I was just trying to understand why.

If some group worked hard to establish access and gain new public lands so that, for example, the PCT, CDT, and AT were all connected resulting in one humongous up, down, up (or inversely, down, up, down) I don't see what would be wrong w/ that either. People who still just wanted to hike the PCT, CDT, and AT proper could do so. Those who wanted to hike the entire combined link-up could also do so.

I'm all for anything that gets more land out of the hands of developers and permanently reserved for public use as a wilderness environment.

[icemanat95]

I'm actually for keeping government from gobbling up all the open land. When government owns all the means of production, you just walked into a feudal state where the people are subjects of government rather than sovereign citizens.

I strongly support government giving private citizens incentives to put their land into conservation rather than selling it off for development while keeping it private. This country was not created to hand everything over to the government.

That said, I also consider the idea of linking up hiking trails into a super-system to be a fine idea, but just because you link up a trail to the AT doesn't make it part of the AT.

The AT is already a subsystem in an already huge trail system. Just in New Hampshire there are thousands of miles of trail other than the AT. Maine has a pile as well, lets not forget about North Carolina and Tennesee.

There is a trail that ties all the other trails together, it's called the American Discovery Trail. There are a variety of trails in the Northwest that link the CDT and PCT already as well. The Lewis and Clark Trail is one of them.

I still think we need to finish what we've got before we start drawing off public and federal support for another trail project. It's that simple. THere is only so much money in the purse and you've got to allocate it responsibly.

[Lilred]

...and while we wait to get the AT 'perfect', other lands are gobbled up by developers.....

[dionalaniz]

Virtually all land here in Texas is privately owned non-government land. Because of that you can't go on any hike of significant length here in Texas unless you want to hike along highways or spend the entire time wandering around BigBend alone.

Last summer I went on a great long distance hike in the High Uintas Wilderness area in Utah. I'm very very grateful that wilderness area is government owned and accessible to people who want to experience the mountains on a long hike. If it were privately owned i'd have no chance to hike it and it would probably already be a parking lot by now.

No, the government is not a big black helicopter conspiracy to mind control you through alien mutant domination. It's actually there to do you some good. You can whine, or you can work to make it better.

[meBrad]

I have come to understand that my participation in this forum is counter productive. In an attempt to ammend this I am deleting my posts and have requested to have my account deleted

[dionalaniz]

In NH, as you say, your planned hike is *mostly* through government owned land with occasional private property. Thus, you only have to make a few calls/visits to get permission for that final private property - a manageable distraction. In Texas, over 98% of the land is privately owned. Thus, for any hike of length you are facing a logistical nightmare trying to contact, let alone identify, the hodge-podge of private land owners. So, maybe it's easier if you decide you want to hike across some massive expanse of land owned by a single private owner, right? Wrong!

Basically, the King Rang is a private family owned ranch that owns virtually all of the land in south texas. If you want to do a long distance hike in the beautiful desert of s. texas you've got to get king ranch permission. Should be easy, right? It's just one family.

Wrong.

The King Ranch is basically a commercial empire. No matter how hard you try (and I tried hard) you will never get ahold of anyone with the decision making power to actually give you the permission unless you're some big powerful political big-whig or you have contacts in high places who can get your request directly to the King family. Good luck!

You are in a MUCH better situation in NH where it sounds like much more of the land is government owned. I especially liked the concept of the High Uintas Wilderness area. It's not really even a state or national park. Just a big wilderness area. Basically, the government says: "You wanna come hike? Fine. You wanna graze some cattle? Fine, but no motorized vehicles. You'll have to do all your work w/o engine power." It's a great concept.

[meBrad]

AI have come to understand that my participation in this forum is counter productive. In an attempt to ammend this I am deleting my posts and have requested to have my account deleted

[dionalaniz]

Thanks for the link meBrad. When i tried contacting the KingRanch it was in my college days before the Internet. Maybe they've gotten better. However, the link you've supplied states a $5,500 fee for 3 days lease. Yikes! I just don't have that kind of $. Maybe they will lower the price if i negotiate w/ them.

However, when i went to hike the High Uinta Wilderness in Utah I didn't have to negotiate anything. I just drove out there, parked my car, put a very minimal fee in a box for my car parking, and then went hiking. Also, I didn't have to worry about a private land owner and whether they were properly husbanding the land (were they properly balancing their own self interest with the needs of the environment?). If I saw a problem on the land while hiking it I knew I could have *some* impact or influence on whatever policy was causing the damage because it's my land too.

All in all, I think it's much preferable for wilderness land to be in public hands than private hands. However, I will try again to contact King Ranch and see if i can cut that $5,500 fee down to somewhere around $20 and see if my little mini-lease could be extended to a longer/skinnier tract of land than the squarer tract of land typically leased out to hunters.

[JojoSmiley]

Just for everyone's info. The IAT does not end in Gaspe, Quebec, it has been extended as of last year to include Newfoundland and Belle Isle, an island 24 miles across the Straits of Belle Isle. Aprox. 540 more miles.3 of us have hiked it thus far, Swamp Eagle of FL, Nimblewill Nomad currently of MO and myself last year as a thru-hike. Cherrio. :)

[icemanat95]

Originally posted by dionalaniz
Virtually all land here in Texas is privately owned non-government land. Because of that you can't go on any hike of significant length here in Texas unless you want to hike along highways or spend the entire time wandering around BigBend alone.

Last summer I went on a great long distance hike in the High Uintas Wilderness area in Utah. I'm very very grateful that wilderness area is government owned and accessible to people who want to experience the mountains on a long hike. If it were privately owned i'd have no chance to hike it and it would probably already be a parking lot by now.

This is a ridiculous statement (the bit about the parking lot). As you say, most of Texas appears to be privately held and most of Texas is not a parking lot. As a matter of fact, most of Texas is open land, despite being in private hands. It might not be accessible to you, but it isn't a wasteland of rampant development.


[/B]
No, the government is not a big black helicopter conspiracy to mind control you through alien mutant domination. It's actually there to do you some good. You can whine, or you can work to make it better. [/B]

No the government is not a big black helicopter conspiracy out to control our minds. Frankly, even if the government was of a mind to do so, it couldn't because the federal bureaucracy can't do ANYTHING efficiently. If the government instutited and efficiency program that actually worked, 50% of the government bureaucrats and functionaries would find themselves without any work to do and therefore, no jobs. In my opinion, that would be a good thing. Too much of our public policy is being run by people with no direct accountability to The People, who are ultimately The Boss. They spend their budgets anyway they can, and submit new budgets with a sizeable increase tossed in each year for good measure whether they need it or not, whether their entire program is needed or not. And no-one is willing to shut them down because that office is someone's pet project.

Government in generally is horrendously inefficient. To some degree this is necessary. Some inefficiency is necessary to maintain checks and balances on personal power, but the inefficiency has been taken to such a level in our government that it protects some folks' personal power (the unelected bureaucrats) and dismantles the checks and balances through obfuscation and byzantine org charts.

Now none of this is really intentional, not on the big scale at least. Mostly its just functionaries protecting their own little fiefdoms and trying to build their own power-base a little bit every year. Each of them on their own aren't that big a deal, but when you add up the tens of thousands of them, you find that between Federal, State and Municipal governments, fully 25% of the working population is employed by government, their salaries, benefits, insurance and pensions paid for by the other 75% who are also taxed to pay for non-working people, welfare recipients, social security recipients, their own children and sometimes their ageing parents, etc. What's left over goes into the economy. Frankly, this is a recipe for long term economic disaster.

Now sure, we'll have the federal government buy another 5 million acres of land up at a cost of tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, and then we have to hire the staff to administer, patrol and maintain those lands, all of that coming out of the pockets of the 75% of the population that doesn't work for the government. And the tax load rises even more, because you've got to get the money from somewhere. Keep doing that and the economy dies completely because folks don't have any extra money to feed it.

Frankly, that's pretty freakin' scary.

[dionalaniz]

Anyone who's been around texas long and has strolled around the Austin, Dallas, Houston area knows that forest land is turning into strip malls just about as fast as they can be built. Sure, no one has turned the open west texas wasteland into a parking lot year because suburban sprawl development hasn't reached there yet.

The grotesque concrete development around the Houston, Dallas, Austin area is proof to me that you are wrong iceman. When land is in private hands it does not ensure that the owner will think about what's best for the environment. These private owners are selling out to developers and trading the trees for parking lots just as fast as the $ is offered to them.

I think you have a naive view of the integrity of a single individual human when acting alone as a private property owner. Fine. Government is inneficient. Work to make it more efficient. But your solution of "abolish the government and turn all land over into private hands" is way too simplistic. Humans are the same greedy, negletfull imbeciles when acting as individual property owners.

[icemanat95]

Dionalaniz,

you are arguing from a polarized position and twisting my statements to your point of view. I never said and do not believe that the government should be abolished. Government is necessary to protect the nation and enforce law and order between people and entities. Government does not exist to micromanage our daily lives. Nor does it exist to spend our money for us without any accountability or thought of efficiency. Every red cent the government spends is OUR money, the government does not generate ANY of it. It takes that money from us, effectively involuntarily, and spends it . Therefore government has an obligation and a duty to spend that money efficiently and on things that benefit the common good. They also have a duty to defend our rights rather than abridge and usurp them.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that it is in the nature of governments to usurp the rights and powers of the people and it is in the nature of the people to abdicate their rights and powers to the government out of sheer laziness (I'm paraphrasing here). His observation holds true however. Since WWII, our government has grown exponentially as the people have handed off more and more of their responsibilities to the government, trading fewer personal responsibilities for a higher tax rate. Used to be about 5% of our income was turned over to the government in taxes, now, after federal, state, municipal, property,s ales, excise and other taxes are accounted for many of us turn as much as 30-50% of our income over to the government. I'm not going to argue that we should cut it back to 5%, the world has changed, and that's just not feasible, but we have got to demand greater fiscal responsibility from our government and we've got to stop handing our responsibilities to the government, we also have to stop passing out money to every tom dick and harry who walks in with a sob story. Thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens enter the US every year just to go on welfare. That's simple thievery.

Likewise there are too many pork barrel projects and there is massive inefficiency in government contracting, all of that needs to be dealt with.

As far as your cynical statements that: "Humans are the same greedy, negletfull imbeciles when acting as individual property owners" is concerned, your misanthropism is disappointing. It is a shame that someone should hate their own species so much. Nevertheless, the reason why many people liquidate their property is because regulations and taxation essentially force them to. When you pay 200,000 dollars for 25 acres of land and get taxed on it at a rate of 20 dollars per thousand of assessed value per year, it becomes impossible to hold onto it for long without doing something with it. Hell, even if you inherit the land and didn't have to pay a cent for it outside of legal fees, the taxes immediately start piling up. Estate taxes to begin with, and they aren't going to levy an estate tax based on the pruchase price of the land twenty years ago, they are going to levy it based on its value today on the open market. Whether it is held in current use or agricultural use is not material to the tax collectors ( though you can fight the assessment if you choose at the cost of additional legal fees) they will try to assess at the highest rate they can get. Now, the land is reassessed officially and they will start collecting property taxes from you. Every year you own that property, the government is squeezing money out of you. Unless you can cut several thousand dollars of firewood off it every year or hunt a substantial amount of meat out of it, owning that land even as an inheritance free and clear, costs you money. Unless you are wealthy, it makes little sense to just hold on to it. Hell, even if you are wealthy it doesn't make much sense to just hold onto it, most wealthy people got that way by working hard and making smart decisions with their money. An investment that doesn't provide income is a losing investment.

If the government wants people to hold onto land and keep it in a more natural state, it needs to adjust its way of looking at that property. Instead of taxing it as potential building lots, the government must provide incentives to private land owners to maintain their land in an undeveloped state. Instead the incentive is on building. Develop the land and liquidate the asset so you don't get the living sh*^ taxed out of you on it.

Also consider it from another angle, every acre of private land the government takes over becomes non-taxable. It comes off the tax rolls and stops generating revenue for the local economy and municipal and state governments, but it still costs money to own. The government must administer it, fight fires on it, if there are trails on it for hiking and the like, the government must hire rangers to patrol it, spend money to build and maintain the trails and will often provide roads and campsites on it that must also be administered. Forest fires must be fought and/or timber cut to remove fuel and prevent fires. All of that costs money. That money comes from taxes. Taxes to pay for land that no longer generates taxes. There is only a finite amount of money to go around out there. Every penny that the government spends it collects for us. Every acre the government buys not only costs us the original purchase price, plus finance charges, legislative charges to authorize the thing, legal charges for the various litigations surrounding the purchase, etc., it also costs ongoing administrative charges. So each acre contributes to a growing governmental budget. It taxes us to meet that budget, taking that money from us so that we cannot feed it into the economy to make more jobs, fuel innovation, etc. When the cost of running government increases to the point that it consumes a certain percentage of the GDP, it's over, the economy collapses because there is simply not enough money going into it to keep it going. That's what happened to the Soviet Union. It's government outspent the GDP of the country in real value for so many years that eventually it couldn't support itself and collapsed. North Korea is on the brink of this same problem. China avoids this fate by embracing capitalism quietly. Cuba's communist government won't last past Castro's death.

As far as development around big cities is concerned, I don't actually worry too much about that for one simple reason, it is concentrated development. I would rather thave 12 million people concentrated in 10 miles of space than spread out over the land evenly. I love cities for that reason (I just don't want to spend any more time in them than is absolutely necessary). Can you imagine the suburban sprawl that would result if the population of the Five Burroughs of New York was spread out evenly in little half acre housing plots? Yeouch!

[dionalaniz]

You've got a good point about people being taxed heavily on their land even if they have no intention of developing it or using it for financial gain in any way. I do agree with you that is probably a contributing factor for many private land owners finally giving up and selling their undeveloped land to developers because it has simply become too heavily taxed to leave it undeveloped. And, to add more support to your point no doubt the tax rate goes up on undeveloped land as it is annexed by a growing city placing more pressure on the owner to sell it or fice higher property tax rates.

I'd probably disagree w/ you on the actual number of people who are in this boat - owners of undeveloped land who want to keep it that way (no cattle, no buildings, nothing) and make no money off the land, but there are surely some.

With respect to illegal aliens coming into america and getting on welfare, well - as the son of illegal alien Mexican grandparents I can tell you you're wrong on that one. No one comes here and works nearly as hard, and in such miserable conditions, as illegal mexican workers who, because of their illegal status, often work here below minimum wage doing jobs pampered americans wouldn't touch w/ a 10 ft. pole.

[gravityman]

There are many ways to reduce your tax obligation on undeveloped land. Varies by county and state. I know in MA you can get it zoned Forestry, give it to a local government to take care of it, and you can get it rezoned at the end of some set time period (10 years?). This has worked out really well for some people. Unforunately you aren't allowed to cut your own firewood on the land any more. You have to buy it back :P

Gravity Man

[icemanat95]

I used to live in Massachusetts, it is one of the most "generous" welfare states in the country. We have "immigrants" coming into MA with their welfare cards already in hand, direct from Puerto Rico. You may have a different experience, but there is AMPLE evidence of welfare abuse by immigrants, both legal and illegal.

Forestry rules are pretty strict in MA. You MUST file a management report every ten years, and it's really more of a tax deferal program than anything else, since as soon as you have a timber sale, you are liable for a pile of tax on that, which makes up for the taxes you did not pay in previous years. If timber prices are depressed, you may end up losing your shirt on the timber sale since the costs for harvesting and hauling the timber are fixed and escalate with inflation, while the price of the wood varies with the market.

It's still a good option if you've got enough land. In NH "current use" classification requires a minimal amount of acreage, I believe it's 10 acres, that is not either yard or commercially cultivated. While I own 13 acres in NH, and most of it is woodland, I do not meet "current use" guidelines because the previous owner turned about 4 acres into lawn for chipping practice. I'm considering planting trees and letting it grow in so I don't have too much lawn to deal with.

My desire for elbow room overcomes my greed. One of the reasons I bought the house was for the acreage to play in.

[eyahiker]

Whatever it's called for whatever reason, I'm always happy to hear about new trails, the more mileage to hike anywhere in N. Amer. has got to be a benefit to backpackers, somewhere.

Did that make sense, wow, I'm getting tired, need a nap