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View Full Version : AT article in New York Times Fri., Sep. 10th



Stray Cat
09-08-2004, 04:22
Howdy Ya'll,
Ain't it 'funny' how things come full circle?
Like many of you, I've been hikin' on Appalachian Trail since I was Cub Scout. Then, in 1996 I became forever a part of the AT family. Now, 8 years after an 1100 mile trek on the AT, I find myself in Canaan, NH, helpin' hikers along our section of the trail here in the Hanover/Dartmouth College area.
I operate a small transportation company here, Apex Car Services, and 2 years ago, began offerin' supplies, support and transportation for hikers passin' through here from all over the world.
"Okay. Where's he goin' with this?"
Well, this Friday, I will be fortunate enough to get my "15 minutes of fame" when the New York Times runs an article about hikin' on the AT. A month or so ago I was interviewed by a NYT staff writer inquiring about my services for the hikers and to gather some local trail information. Last weekend, a staff photographer came out to take some shots for the article. We met in Hanover and took a short 3 mile hike on the AT near Velvet Rocks. We met 2 nobos, a birder from New Mexico and a couple of Russian ladies pickin' mushrooms. He got some pretty great shots.
Anyway, if you have any interest at all, grab a copy of The Times on Friday, September 10. Look at the 'Escape' section, (cover page, I'm told) and there may be a shot of me and a blurb or 2.
Beyond that, yesterday I began emailin' friends and family about the article and received a response from a client of mine, Crista, at Dartmouth College. Along with the cordial congratulations, she informed me that Dartmouth has a Special Collections department (no, not overdue accounts) that has many mauscripts from Benton MacKaye regardin' the genesis of and his continued quest for the reality of an Appalachian Trail. Crista was the manuscript processor for these documents 20 years ago and she has turned me onto some people to contact to review them. Needless to say I will be spendin' many hours in the next copuple of weeks deep into his writings and visions.
The 'trail magic' continues after all these years and I am truly enjoyin' the paths in life that the Appalachian Trail has lead me down.
Ya'll Come See Us',
Stray Cat :clap

SavageLlama
09-10-2004, 09:02
Here's the article from today's NYT..



Hiking 2,100 Miles In Bite-Size Pieces
By MARK YOST
The New York Times (http://javascript<b></b>:NewWindow(%20'FIISrcDetails','?from=article&ids=nytf');void(0);)
September 10, 2004
(c) 2004 New York Times Company

EACH spring, about 30 hikers a day leave Springer Mountain in north Georgia, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, with the goal of hiking north to Mount Katahdin, the trail's end in Maine. Only a few, though, ever make the entire 2,174.1-mile journey. In 2003, for instance, just 391 of the roughly 1,800 hikers who set out from Georgia to make the roughly six-month trek managed to do so, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference, the organization that oversees the trail.

The Appalachian Trail is more commonly the domain of so-called ''section hikers,'' the estimated three to four million people a year who tackle a specific stretch of the trail, perhaps just for a weekend, with the crisp days of early fall an especially appealing time to go.

Not surprisingly, capitalism has made much of this possible. Along the trail's route are dozens of entrepreneurs who do a brisk business catering to people who want to start out in one place and then end up in another, and need someone to work out the logistics for them.

Want to hike from one end of Shenandoah National Park to the other, but aren't quite sure how to get back to your car when you've had enough of the great outdoors? Robert Bird of Rockbridge Taxi Service in Buena Vista, Va., charges $1.50 a mile to pick you up at your hiking terminus and shuttle you back.

Want to fly into Boston, hike for a couple of days through the White Mountains in New Hampshire or the Green Mountains in Vermont, and then fly back out -- and not have to worry about a car at all? Steve Lake, who operates Apex Hikers Shuttle in Canaan, N.H., can arrange it, for around $400 all told.

Many of the shuttle and trailside services are listed on the trail conference's Web site, www.appalachiantrail.org (http://www.appalachiantrail.org/). The site also has valuable information about trail crossings, parking lots, public transportation and buses that stop near the trail. For instance, a note about the parking lot at Highway 19E and Bear Branch Road, near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, alerts hikers that it ''has a history of vandalism'' and recommends parking at the Country Store, a mile from the trail.

THE Web site is where my wife, Leslie, and I recently found Bill Johnson of Cherokee, N.C. He asked about our hiking skills (reasonably good for two suburbanites with day jobs) and the time we wanted to spend (two days), before agreeing to shuttle us to a nearby trailhead to begin an overnight hike.

Our route traversed the Nantahala National Forest, in western North Carolina, home to an ever-growing population of black bears, and ended not far from where the trail enters the southern part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Rather than sticking to the lush river valleys that have cut a path through hard granite peaks over the millennia, we chose a hiking itinerary that offered a roller-coaster ride up and down some of the steepest terrain in the southern section of the trail.

At Mr. Johnson's suggestion, we set up camp the night before our hike at Rainbow Springs Campground, just outside Franklin, N.C., and a mile from the trail. The campground has tent sites, rustic cabins, hot showers, washers and dryers, a shuttle service to and from the trail, Internet access and a camp store with dehydrated foods.

Mr. Johnson met us early the next morning at Rainbow Springs, where we arranged to leave our car for $3 a day. For a flat fee of $65, he drove us about 20 miles along Forest Service roads to Deep Gap, one of the access points in the area. Although we drove to North Carolina, it would have been just as easy for us to fly into Knoxville or Johnson City in Tennessee or Asheville or Charlotte in North Carolina and have Mr. Johnson drive us to and from the trail.

As he drove us to the trailhead, he told us about how he sometimes gets a frantic call from a through hiker who has had enough and about recurring problems with bears along this section of the trail. ''Be sure to hang your food,'' he cautioned.

Once at the trailhead, he insisted that we pose for a picture, something he does with all his customers. With our Appalachian Trail section map and a point in the right direction from Mr. Johnson, we set off from Deep Gap to the Carter Gap Shelter, about eight miles up the trail.

Within the first mile we met Chad Twigger, 29, of Statesville, N.C. This spring, Mr. Twigger had set out as a through hiker. He made it as far as Dick's Creek Gap, near the Georgia-North Carolina border, before deciding to take a break. The rest of his group, mostly buddies from the Army, had continued, and the last he knew, they were somewhere near the Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border.

Mr. Twigger had gotten back on the trail a few days before he met us and was hoping to get to Hot Springs, just west of Asheville, in a few weeks. Like many hikers, Mr. Twigger was doing a little soul-searching. He had recently left the Winston-Salem, N.C., police force and was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. ''Hiking the trail is very meditative,'' he said. ''I also want to get back in shape. I need to lose this cop weight'' -- here he gestured toward a slight paunch.

We hiked through mature forests of beech and hemlock, with woodland ferns and blooming rhododendron crowding both sides of the trail. Once we were up on the ridgeline, there would occasionally be a gap in the foliage that would reveal sweeping vistas of the rolling blue-green peaks and valleys that earned the Blue Ridge Mountains their name.

Keeping a brisk pace over trails that were sometimes dominated by knotty tree roots, we made it to Carter Gap just after lunch. Carter Gap has two shelters, large lean-tos that provide cover from the rain, and several fire rings. There's also water nearby. We ate a lazy lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sunned ourselves in a break in the trees, and dozed briefly before pressing on.

Toward the end of the afternoon, after spending much of it walking downhill over a hardscrabble trail of rocks and roots, my wife's knee became inflamed. We spent the night at Betty Creek Gap, a trail crossing about 12 miles from where we had started but only 500 yards from the network of Forest Service roads that crisscross the wilderness here. There was also a fast-moving stream nearby that afforded us fresh water. We set up our tent in a natural recess beneath a foliage canopy just off the trail. Mr. Twigger camped there, as well, resting up for the next day's ascent of Albert Mountain, one of the highest points in the area.

''According to my friends, the last quarter mile you're scrambling on all fours,'' he said, a slight note of dread in his voice.

When we woke up the next morning, my wife's knee was still inflamed, so we decided that she would stay at camp. I would set out alone and finish the hike, then drive back in along the Forest Service roads to get her. That's one of the benefits for novice hikers of the Appalachian Trail: while parts of it are remote, most of it is not far from a crossroads that lead to civilization.

So, I struck out with just a day pack. I said goodbye to Mr. Twigger as he packed up and prepared to scale Albert Mountain.

I took the Forest Service road that only went about three-quarters of the way up Albert Mountain, then skirted the summit and dropped me off on the other side. A brief rain had made gnarled sections of thick, uneven roots and rocks particularly slippery. But in about three hours I made it the last 10 miles to the Wallace Gap trail crossing, just a mile along paved roads from Rainbow Springs, where our car waited.

Using the topographic map we had bought for the hike, I followed a Forest Service road to within a few hundred yards of Betty Creek Gap. Walking into the campground, my wife looked out from the tent, surprised to see me so soon.

''Wow, that was fast,'' she said.

We gathered our gear, walked the short distance to the car, and within a half hour were ordering cheeseburgers and a couple of Cokes at the Shoney's in Franklin.

Photos: TAXI! -- Steve Lake of New Canaan, N.H., shuttles hikers to various Appalachian Trail access points in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont. (Photo by Bob LaPree for The New York Times)(pg. F5); WOW FACTOR -- The Appalachian Trail near Knoxville, Tenn. (Photo by Steve Dixon for The New York Times)(pg. F1)

SavageLlama
09-10-2004, 09:12
Picture from story..
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/travel/escapes/10APPA.html

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/09/10/travel/escapes/20040910_appa.jpg
WOW FACTOR The Appalachian Trail near Knoxville, Tenn.

SGT Rock
09-10-2004, 09:13
Outstanding. Too bad there wasn't a WhiteBlaze plug ;)

fatmatt
09-10-2004, 15:21
Awesome article, pretty cool too cause I was on that seciton of the trail this summer.:banana

max patch
09-10-2004, 16:00
"...Mr. Johnson met us early the next morning at Rainbow Springs, where we arranged to leave our car for $3 a day. For a flat fee of $65, he drove us about 20 miles along Forest Service roads to Deep Gap, one of the access points in the area..."

It may have seemed like 20 miles in the woods to the New Yorkers, but it's only about 7 miles on the FS road to Deep Gap. And maybe another 3 miles from RCS to the FS road. If the going rate for that shuttle is $65 I'm going to get out of the CPA racket and buy a van.

"...I took the Forest Service road that only went about three-quarters of the way up Albert Mountain, then skirted the summit and dropped me off on the other side..."

If I'm reading this correctly he went around Albert and DIDN'T hike up to the top???!!! Seems to me that if I'm writing an article for publication in the NY Times I just might take an extra half hour or so and hike up to the firetower and take in the views. A picture of the firetower and the views would have been perfect for his article.

fatmatt
09-10-2004, 18:48
A picture of the firetower and the views would have been perfect for his article.
A picture of the wacky rocks that you really do have to get on all fours to climb would have been priceless.

Miss Janet
09-10-2004, 22:35
"Mr. Johnson met us early the next morning at Rainbow Springs, where we arranged to leave our car for $3 a day. For a flat fee of $65, he drove us about 20 miles along Forest Service roads to Deep Gap, one of the access points in the area"

Just remember this... if Mr. Johnson has a permit to shuttle onto forest service roads he is paying thousands of $$$ for insurance alone to meet the Forest Service guidelines. Anyone who asks for a shuttle on a Forest Service road from a business can expect to pay a lot for it if the Forest Service continues to crack down.

Lilred
09-11-2004, 00:20
"Mr. Johnson met us early the next morning at Rainbow Springs, where we arranged to leave our car for $3 a day. For a flat fee of $65, he drove us about 20 miles along Forest Service roads to Deep Gap, one of the access points in the area"

Just remember this... if Mr. Johnson has a permit to shuttle onto forest service roads he is paying thousands of $$$ for insurance alone to meet the Forest Service guidelines. Anyone who asks for a shuttle on a Forest Service road from a business can expect to pay a lot for it if the Forest Service continues to crack down.


I've been from Deep Gap to Rainbow Springs and it doesn't take more than ten minutes to get there. $65 dollars is outrageous, especially when you can walk a mile up the road to Standing Indian campground and hike up the Kimsey Creek trail to Deep Gap. Didn't the reporter state that shuttle services usually charge $1.50 a mile??? IF the trip is ten miles, he just got charged $6 a mile. It doesn't matter how much the guy has to pay for insurance, with prices like that he'll run himself out of business. Oh wait, isn't Rainbow Springs for sale?? :-?

Macerc
09-12-2004, 11:38
As usual, the expectation was greater than the result. It was two-dimensional, in effect. Little information was provided on the actual lifestyle, challenges, and exhilaration experienced by hikers. The writer would have had to spend real time on the trail and interviewed more hikers with empathy.

fatmatt
09-12-2004, 18:12
Yeah that would be good, but what newspaper writer can get that much time off for just one story? I'm suprised they let this one do this story.