Total number of road crossings, GA to ME

[Alleghanian Orogeny]

While I've seen some online maps depicting road crossings, I've not seen a simple count of how many there are between Springer and Katahdin. With the GSMNP, the Whites, and parts of ME having the only segments with > 25 miles between crossings (I think, please correct if I'm wrong), and with some familiarity with the Southern Appalachians and the relative density of road crossings, I figure there must be somewhere in the neighborhood of 300, maybe even closer to 400.

Just curious--is that a trail statistic within one or more of the guidebooks?

AO

[Slo-go'en]

Just curious--is that a trail statistic within one or more of the guidebooks?

Not that I've ever seen. If you got some time to kill, go through a guide book and count them for us

[Wise Old Owl]

I cannot imagine why this would be relevant .. the govt. trail at one time was a lot of connected roads.

[Captain Blue]

You would need to define what a road crossing is. There are vary degrees of what a road is along the AT. Paved road, dirt road, 4WD road, Jeep road, ATV road or what?

[thebrewguy]

I'd be curious to know a rough idea of how many. But what about if you walk along a road but don't cross it. Or crisscross it like Skyline Dr

[Brock142]

I'd be curious to know a rough idea of how many. But what about if you walk along a road but don't cross it. Or crisscross it like Skyline Dr

I thing if walk with road side then you can't see the really beauty of land scape. Try to avoid crowds and go those places where you can chill out for a while and become a part of that spots.

[Lone Wolf]

i love road walkin'

[Lone Wolf]

georgia has 13 road crossings

[Alleghanian Orogeny]

And surely I thought of taking the digital maps and counting them up--I'm just not THAT curious. And doing surgery on the figure which would require definitions as to exactly what a road it, how to categorize parallels, etc, is also beyond my curiosity. It's really just the simple notion of what the answer to the question of: With 2,184.5 miles of current trail length, there is public road access (Interstate, US highways, State Highways, county roads, Forest Service roads, and National Park roads at "X" points along the way, for an average of one every "Y" trail miles, where the ultimate question is then the numerical value of Y.

AO

[10-K]

My 2 favorite road walks are taking FS 278 to skip the climb out of Spivey Gap northbound and getting on Unaka Mt. Road at the base of Unaka Mt. going southbound. Both save a lot of effort and time.

I've hiked the trail so many times that I appreciate the ease of walking on the road over the trail.

[Gray Blazer]

My 2 favorite road walks are taking FS 278 to skip the climb out of Spivey Gap northbound and getting on Unaka Mt. Road at the base of Unaka Mt. going southbound. Both save a lot of effort and time.

I've hiked the trail so many times that I appreciate the ease of walking on the road over the trail.

Where do you access the AT from Base of Unaka on Unaka Rd heading Southbound? Cherry Gap?

[Gray Blazer]

My 2 favorite road walks are taking FS 278 to skip the climb out of Spivey Gap northbound and getting on Unaka Mt. Road at the base of Unaka Mt. going southbound. Both save a lot of effort and time.

I've hiked the trail so many times that I appreciate the ease of walking on the road over the trail.

I reread it and got it now. You are heading southbound on the AT and you get on the road at the base of Unaka.

[10-K]

Right... Deep Gap.

There are trails all over Unaka if you know where to look.

[10-K]

And technically, everything between Indian grave gap and iron Mountain gap is Unaka mt.

Most folks refer to climbing up and over the peak as "Unaka mt".

[Slo-go'en]

Okay, this isn't 100% accurate as I used an old 1987 data book for the info. I counted the number of times a road was indicated by the letter "R" in the book, these are usually road crossings, but not always. I didn't count CT, as the '87 book has the old route before it was shortend. PA might be off a little too, as the '87 book also had the cumberland valley road walk crossing instead of the new walk through the farmers fields route.


ME - 15 roads in 279 miles average 18.6 miles between roads
NH - 21 roads in 158 miles average 7.5 miles between roads
VT - 27 roads in 137 miles average 5.1 miles between roads
MA - 32 roads in 86 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
CT - ? roads in ? miles average ? miles between roads
NY/NJ - 65 roads in 161 miles average 2.5 miles between roads
PA - 65 roads in 228 miles average 3.5 miles between roads
MD -15 roads in 41 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
VA - 135 roads in 536 miles average 4 miles between roads
NC - 50 roads in 372 miles average 7.4 miles between roads
GA - 15 roads in 77.5 miles average 5.17 miles between roads

So, you can see that you don't have to go far on average to come to or cross a road. Maine has the largest average distance between roads with NH and NC pretty much tied for second.

I get about 440 road crossings, excluding CT, with probably has at least 15 or so. So, call it 455 crossings for an average of 4.8 miles between roads for the whole length of the trail.

[Alleghanian Orogeny]

Okay, this isn't 100% accurate as I used an old 1987 data book for the info. I counted the number of times a road was indicated by the letter "R" in the book, these are usually road crossings, but not always. I didn't count CT, as the '87 book has the old route before it was shortend. PA might be off a little too, as the '87 book also had the cumberland valley road walk crossing instead of the new walk through the farmers fields route.


ME - 15 roads in 279 miles average 18.6 miles between roads
NH - 21 roads in 158 miles average 7.5 miles between roads
VT - 27 roads in 137 miles average 5.1 miles between roads
MA - 32 roads in 86 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
CT - ? roads in ? miles average ? miles between roads
NY/NJ - 65 roads in 161 miles average 2.5 miles between roads
PA - 65 roads in 228 miles average 3.5 miles between roads
MD -15 roads in 41 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
VA - 135 roads in 536 miles average 4 miles between roads
NC - 50 roads in 372 miles average 7.4 miles between roads
GA - 15 roads in 77.5 miles average 5.17 miles between roads

So, you can see that you don't have to go far on average to come to or cross a road. Maine has the largest average distance between roads with NH and NC pretty much tied for second.

I get about 440 road crossings, excluding CT, with probably has at least 15 or so. So, call it 455 crossings for an average of 4.8 miles between roads for the whole length of the trail.

THANKS Slo-go'en!

Purely cocktail party trivia material, for the time being. I would think that cutting out the NC/TN mileage within GSMNP would shorten up its average considerably (what, around 75 miles from Fontana Dam to I-40, with only Clingman's and US 441 crossing/touching in-between?), and cutting the 27 mile gap in the Whites out of the calculation would do the same for NH.

And, overall, that's what it's been looking like to me without counting up the crossings as you did. I simply figured an average of between 5 and 6 miles between them and came up with between 350 and 400+, and your much-appreciated effort proves that to well within the level of accuracy required for cocktail party trivia authority.

AO

[atraildreamer]

If you have the time, see how many times the term "cell phone" occurs in all the posts at the WB website.

[Pedaling Fool]

FWIW, Captain Blue brought up a good point, I think. Many of the roads listed in my guidebook were barely recognizable as a road due to nature reclaiming it. Just because it's listed as an "R" in the guide/data book doesn't mean it's paved, not only that, but it also doesn't mean it's well defined dirt road. Many of them look like overgrown gulleys and some I really had to look at to see the "road"; easily would of missed it if I were'nt looking for it.

You would need to define what a road crossing is. There are vary degrees of what a road is along the AT. Paved road, dirt road, 4WD road, Jeep road, ATV road or what?

Okay, this isn't 100% accurate as I used an old 1987 data book for the info. I counted the number of times a road was indicated by the letter "R" in the book, these are usually road crossings, but not always. I didn't count CT, as the '87 book has the old route before it was shortend. PA might be off a little too, as the '87 book also had the cumberland valley road walk crossing instead of the new walk through the farmers fields route.


ME - 15 roads in 279 miles average 18.6 miles between roads
NH - 21 roads in 158 miles average 7.5 miles between roads
VT - 27 roads in 137 miles average 5.1 miles between roads
MA - 32 roads in 86 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
CT - ? roads in ? miles average ? miles between roads
NY/NJ - 65 roads in 161 miles average 2.5 miles between roads
PA - 65 roads in 228 miles average 3.5 miles between roads
MD -15 roads in 41 miles average 2.7 miles between roads
VA - 135 roads in 536 miles average 4 miles between roads
NC - 50 roads in 372 miles average 7.4 miles between roads
GA - 15 roads in 77.5 miles average 5.17 miles between roads

So, you can see that you don't have to go far on average to come to or cross a road. Maine has the largest average distance between roads with NH and NC pretty much tied for second.

I get about 440 road crossings, excluding CT, with probably has at least 15 or so. So, call it 455 crossings for an average of 4.8 miles between roads for the whole length of the trail.

[johnnybgood]

Of the 135 crossings in Virginia, 48 are in Shenandoah National Park . This kinda skews the math a little.