<TABLE cellSpacing=7 cellPadding=2 width=valign=top border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=j vAlign=top>
<IMG height=1 alt="" width=1>
Ala. officials want Pinhoti Trail, which comes through Floyd ... (http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/1-0&fd=R&url=http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm%3Fshow%3Dlocalnews%26pnpID%3D680% 26NewsID%3D889969%26CategoryID%3D18779%26on%3D1&cid=0&ei=zP7wR4b6KYquygTI6Y3UBA&usg=AFrqEzfViaGEH-pyvzpjioyOk6GXjH9-NA)
Rome News-Tribune, GA - <NOBR>36 minutes ago</NOBR>
Though the Appalachian Trail ends in Georgia -- at Springer Mountain in the Chattahoochee National Forest -- that could change if a group from Alabama gets ...
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
More... (http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/1-0&fd=R&url=http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm%3Fshow%3Dlocalnews%26pnpID%3D680% 26NewsID%3D889969%26CategoryID%3D18779%26on%3D1&cid=0&ei=zP7wR4b6KYquygTI6Y3UBA&usg=AFrqEzfViaGEH-pyvzpjioyOk6GXjH9-NA)
================================================== ===
I thruhiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 2006, going from Georgia to Maine through 14 states, all 2174.6 miles over 9 months. I intend to do it again in 2009, this time adding the Pinhoti Trail in Alabama and N. Georgia to it.
There are multiple reasons IMO why very few (currently about one in a thousand) of the roughly 1800 people who attempt an Appalachian Trail thruhike each year (only about 400 finish) currently or forseeably would tack on the Pinhotil Trail as well:
1) The AL section may be completed, but the GA section is not. There are 20+ miles of roadwalks remaining to be removed in the longer Georgia section to make it a finished hiking trail.
2) There are about 7 trail shelters in the Alabama section, a little under half the frequency per mile that the AT has in general (and that thruhikers would expect), but there are NONE in the longer Georgia section, with no plans by the Georgia Club to add them anytime soon. The latter is based upon recent e-mail exchanges I have had with several board members of the GA Club.
3) There are no hostels (reasonably-priced places of business where hikers can shower, wash clothes, have a food/gear package sent, make a phone call, and sleep a night indoors in particularly foul weather) along the Pinhoti. Note that nearly all thruhikers have to be careful with money, such that the going hostel rate in the U.S. south is $20 or less a night, so the occasional motel in Pinhoti Trail towns is little use to most of them. An occasional full-service truckstop with showers and laundry facilities would partially do, but there are few to none of those of which I am aware near the Pinhoti, either.
4) Local towns near the Pinhoti are not otherwise geared up for thruhikers, either, with locals not being accustomed to giving hikers rides between towns and the trail, few to no buffet restaurants (hikers have to eat a LOT with all the calories they burn hiking), no hiking equipment stores ("outfitters"), etc.
5) Multiple parts of the Pinhoti are frequently used by all-terrain vehicles, while horses and bicycles are explicitly allowed on much of it. These are notorious for damaging hiking trails and the ambience hikers go to them to find. The AT is a foot-travel-only trail in the interest of preventing trail damage, mess, and noise. Those users would have to be kept out as part of making the Pinhoti an AT extension, and ATV users in particular normally require substantial law enforcement attention to respond to no-trespassing rules.
6) The Pinhoti is so far south and low-altitude, it is too hot and insect-plagued as a practical matter to hike on during the majority of the year. Thruhikers commonly carry a variety of equipment to deal with biting insects, but more casual hikers hardly ever do, so there will probably never be very many day/weekend hikers (the bulk of current AT users) on the Pinhoti most of the year.
7) The Pinhoti in GA does not actually currently connect to the AT. It instead ends on the Benton MacKaye Trail, which then intersects the AT a number of miles north of the AT's actual beginning. The Pinhoti in GA needs to be rerouted directly to either Springer Mtn. or Amicalola State Park (the two places AT northbound thruhikers mainly start) to avoid thuhikers starting on the Pinhoti having to backtrack, hitch rides, pay a shuttler, or skip part of the AT. This current routing significantly discourages AT thruhikers from incorporating a Pinhoti hike into thruhiking the current AT.
#7, like #1 & 2, is a problem affecting hiker acceptance of the Pinhoti that the AL Pinhoti Club is powerless to fix, the apparently less-able GA club being well behind the AL Club in developing their section of the Pinhoti Trail to anything near AT standards.
Then, there's getting past the overt opposition of the anti-expansion/anti-change "We've always done it this way" Appalachian Trail Conservancy (main organization overseeing the AT), which for some reason does NOT want the AT expanded. This is despite the vision that Benton MacKaye (the "father" of the AT) had of the AT explicitly extending into Alabama to where the Applachian Mountains end there.
For these reasons, I don't expect many other hikers to add the Pinhoti Trail to an Appalachian Trail thruhike (as I am planning) during the next decade or two at least."