Just returned from a short weekend loop on the Appalachian Trail, Long Trail and a couple of side trails (NW Mass, S VT) as always, with a renewed sense of appreciation - for the High Sierra. As much as I have experienced read about the AT ad its kin, day hikes, section hikes, through hikes, I just don't get it. I have concluded that a few dozen miles in the Sierra can spoil you for thousands of miles any where else. Sections of the AT I have hiked, like this past weekend, are about 20 percent decently passable woodland, and 80 percent foot deep trench over some combination of mud, ankle turning rock and exposed roots. Often all three. You wouldn't think of woodland trails through these old, glacier worn, wooded gentle slopes as rough travel, but most of the mileage I covered this weekend was steeper, more worn, less maintained, and just plain harder walking than anything I have encountered anywhere in the Rockies or Sierra.
Denser population, easier access, shorter expanses between roads, all understandably contribute to the scene: lots of gunshots and two-stroke engines until sunset, a couple of guys in camo fatigues with ax and machete collecting firewood, and I kid you not fresh boughs, for shelter, a midnight snorer who pitched his tent not 20 feet from mine (sometime after lights out). Other things are inexplicable: the New Englander's refusal to build trails with switchbacks: ups and downs are almost always on the fall line. Insistence on ridge routes: all of the Long Trail (and much of the AT) was intentionally laid out on the ridges and peaks. Imagine the PCT literally on the crest.
And imagine the views! You have to imagine them, because you don't actually see any. Not one this weekend. It is a green tunnel, endless miles of vegetation interrupted by brief vistas of major highway intersections. I met one section hiker, w/1700 of the 2200 miles under his soles, who extolled the virtues of the AT as offering so much variety, and change, over its length. Every 3 or 400 miles the geology changes completely. Not that you can see it exactly, but somewhere in southern New Jersey, the limit of glacial progress, the rock, mud and roots changes completely - to mud and roots.
So remember, whatever the tribulations of MT, if the scenery never changes, either you're not the lead dog or you're on the AT.
Last edited by saltydog; 06/18/12 03:15 PM.