Hiking in the East

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

I have 850 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail left to hike in 2022. 200 of that is in the Sierra and 650 is in Oregon and Washington. I won’t start hiking those miles until this summer. Before that, I plan to hike in the East.

First, I’ll hike the Benton MacKaye Trail (BMT) in Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. This trail is 293 miles long.

Then I’ll hop north to hike the Tuscarora Trail (TT) which passes through parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. This trail is 254 miles long.

I start this adventure in a few days.

I will be posting to my blog during this Eastern trek. I’m sure you’ll quickly see the difference between the Appalachian Mountains of the East and the mountain ranges of the West.

I’ll never get above 4500 feet on my Eastern hike, but that doesn’t mean the mountains there aren’t rugged.

I’ll also never get above treeline. Instead, most of my hike will be through thick deciduous forests. At least in the beginning, these forests will be leafless. These forests are the result of all the rain the East gets year-round. I’m sure I’ll be hiking through quite a bit of rain myself.

In many places I’ll be walking along country roads instead of on a trail. I’ll see far fewer hikers because both the BMT and the TT are lightly traveled, but I will see many local residents.

I’m looking forward to this trip. I grew up in the East, so I did a lot of hiking there as a teenager and young man.

I moved to California in 1996. In the 26 years since, I’ve only gone on one Eastern hike. That was a weeklong hike with my son William in 2017 when he was thru hiking the Appalachian Trail.

The Appalachian Mountains of the Southeast are the mountains of my youth. I grew up in the nearby rural countryside. I’m sure I’ll experience a lot of nostalgia on this trip.

That’s it for now. I’ll catch you from the trail.