Hey Kent, if you're up this way and willing, I'd love to take a crack at something you feel is appropriate for John and I. I'm generally pretty flexible with work, so whatever suits you best. Just give me as much advance notice as possible so I can clear the path. It would be great to see you again - especially if you're buying! Also, you and the catpappy will get along great.
By the way, do you have Sierra plans this year? I know you're hooked after your trip last fall!
Re John's comment about my considering the Southern Appalachians "wimpy" - that's not entirely true. The local north Georgia mountains will kick your ass in slope and steepness - the reason that so many AT through-hikers quit before they're ever out of the state. You will burn some cals hiking here, so that's not the kind of "wimpy" I mean.
What I love about hiking anywhere out west is the vistas you are exposed to. The scenery along even the most mundane western trail is grand compared to the best local hikes here. There are trees in the Rockies, Sierra, Cascades, yes, but not in anything like the numbers here. North Georgia is nothing but a hilly/mountainous, super-dense forest. You can hike for hours and never see anything but foliage - thick and close. I've done numerous hikes here where I never saw a damn thing from start to finish but deep forest. That gets real old. I used a description on a thread here a while back to describe the experience: in some sections of north Georgia Bozo the Clown could be 100 feet away, riding a pink elephant and waving a neon sign, and you'd never see him. No BS, folks. You want to see dense forest, swing this way. The only thing I've seen in the US that's comparable is the North Woods in Minnesota, and some lower-elevation sections of the Cascades.
John, think of the view we had from Corkscrew Peak in DV at a measly 5800 feet of elevation - compare that to the view from a (rare) 6000-foot peak in North Carolina. To me it's no contest. Doesn't mean it's not beautiful in and of itself - it just means I'm personally sick of trees blocking my view, and a little rock and open space looks pretty doggone good as an alternative. That's probably why I love the desert so much.
Some of that love for vistas is undoubtedly a product of spending most of my 53 years in Atlanta. There's simply no such thing as a horizon. Your horizon here is either a tree-line a hundred feet away, or tall buildings (factoid: Atlanta has more tall buildings than any city in the US other than NY or Chicago - read that in the local paper a couple of weeks ago). I've spent most of my life not seeing beyond the nearest man-made structure or tree trunks, and getting to hike with a glorious view out west really charges me up.
It's apples and oranges, and a degree of personal bias, all rolled up. I'll trudge through the local forested mountains 'cuz I love to hike. But the Bulldog fun-meter goes up dramatically when I get to do the same in Colorado, California, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, etc!
