Hello everyone,
A friend and I are planning on hiking the North Carolina portion of the AT in July. He lives in NC, and I’ll be flying down from Canada. From what I understand the trail is 97 miles and camping permits are not required. It’d be nice to see some of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, but it would the rules for sleeping in designated shelters unless the shelter is full seems a little more strict than I’d like. That said, the NC portion was our priority anyway.
One of the things that has been on my mind is that we are only planning on being on the trail for 5 days, which is quite a number of miles per day. The furthest I’ve walked was 62 miles and that took me about 36 hours. The thing is, that hike was within Ontario, which doesn’t really have any mountains. So obviously a worry is that we won’t be able to walk the whole thing within our timeframe. That said, we both recognize that if it isn’t in the cards, then it’s not in the cards. We are ok with walking as far as we can and then organizing a shuttle.
My question for you guys is:
1. What you guys think of our current plan of starting at the NC/TN border, walking south to GA, then taking a shuttle back to the car. I’ve heard that it might be smarter to park, then take a shuttle, and walk back to the car, but if we don’t make it the whole way, then we would have to organize and pay for more rides.
2. What do you think would make a suitable start point where we could park, and where should we plan to stop?
Thanks! You guys have quite an awesome community going on here. Glad I found it
A friend and I are planning on hiking the North Carolina portion of the AT in July. He lives in NC, and I’ll be flying down from Canada. From what I understand the trail is 97 miles and camping permits are not required. It’d be nice to see some of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, but it would the rules for sleeping in designated shelters unless the shelter is full seems a little more strict than I’d like. That said, the NC portion was our priority anyway.
One of the things that has been on my mind is that we are only planning on being on the trail for 5 days, which is quite a number of miles per day. The furthest I’ve walked was 62 miles and that took me about 36 hours. The thing is, that hike was within Ontario, which doesn’t really have any mountains. So obviously a worry is that we won’t be able to walk the whole thing within our timeframe. That said, we both recognize that if it isn’t in the cards, then it’s not in the cards. We are ok with walking as far as we can and then organizing a shuttle.
My question for you guys is:
1. What you guys think of our current plan of starting at the NC/TN border, walking south to GA, then taking a shuttle back to the car. I’ve heard that it might be smarter to park, then take a shuttle, and walk back to the car, but if we don’t make it the whole way, then we would have to organize and pay for more rides.
2. What do you think would make a suitable start point where we could park, and where should we plan to stop?
Thanks! You guys have quite an awesome community going on here. Glad I found it