17 Miles on the Appalachian Trail

OVERVIEW

It’s finally getting warm enough for hikes, so let’s celebrate by hiking 17 miles on the Appalachian Trail. This is a great two-for-one deal, because we’ll get to see the beautiful views of both Humpback Rocks AND Three Ridges. To give you a better idea of the topography:

-Miles 1-8: relatively flat, but with the usual hills
-Miles 8-12: 1250 foot climb
-Miles 12-17: very steep 3000 foot decline

I expect it’ll take an hour to drop the two cars off, so if we meet at 9:00AM, we should be on the trail by 10:30AM. We’ll try to hike a faster pace, so we can be done before it gets dark (7:16PM).

As far as logistics:
1) I would discourage you from signing up from this trip if you’ve never been backpacking or haven’t done at least a 10 mile day hike before.
2) Bring food to energize yourself during the day (high in calories, fat, and protein). To give you an idea, I might bring Poptarts, a Clif bar, beef jerky, M&Ms, and a sandwich. And of course, bring lots of water (3 liters, if we don’t have a water filter).
3) We need at least 2 cars (for the start and end point), so drivers will get priority off the waiting list. (You will be reimbursed for gas.) I may expand the trip if we have enough drivers and interest.