2017 Hiking Plan Summary
For some time, I had planned to walk across the Southeast from the Carolinas to Alabama on trails other than the Appalachian Trail. Later, I began to think about hiking the Great Eastern Trail, a newly developing trail to the west of the Appalachian Trail. After I saw a map showing that most of the gaps in the GET were in the Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky sections which parallel my Southeastern Traverse idea, I decided to combine the two projects. This page describes my thoughts and plans.

Map Data
There are so many intersecting trails and overlapping maps in the east that I found the project incomprehensible until I produced a Map of Southeastern Trails & Maps and a similar Northeastern Map. Refer also to 2 pages (Appalachian, Potomac) listing and discussing various maps of the Appalachian Ranges or east coast states.

Alabama
South of Coosa WMA, in southern Alabama, the Great Eastern Trail is on hundreds of miles of road walks, which don't appeal to me. In southeastern Alabama and western Florida are the Florida, Alabama, and Conecuh Trails, which I've done, and I won't repeat in 2017.

A Coosa WMA map can be printed for the 11½ mile Coosa Trail, south of Flagg Mountain, and for the Pinhoti from Flagg Mountain to Weogufka.

Alabama's Pinhoti National Recreation Trail, from Flagg Mountain to Cave Springs, Georgia, on which the GET is routed, is adequately described for both navigation and resupply by Talladega NF's Pinhoti map and a printable guide.

Georgia
I would cross Georgia on the Pinhoti and Benton MacKaye Trails. Navigation information is adequate on USFS Chattahoochee National Forest (for the Armuchee Ranger District) and TI777. Supplies are available in Cave Springs, Rome, Dalton, and AT towns.

Bypassing Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky's GET
The Great Eastern Trail diverges from the Pinhoti shortly after entering Georgia. Little trail in Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky is complete, and I'm not inclined to walk roads. Furthermore, Mother Nature's Son and I walked most of the completed sections of Tennessee's Cumberland Trail in 2015. I've decided not to follow the GET here in 2017. In a separate table below, I further detail GA, TN, and KY's gaps in the GET.

Kentucky's Pine Mountain Trail is part of the GET route, so I may want to hike it sometime. I have a 12 page pdf guide to the 26.4 mile Birch Knob Section, and a 9 page pdf for the 14.7 mile Highland Section of the PMT.

Tennessee, Carolinas
NGTI 781, 784, 229 provide Benton MacKaye navigation coverage.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Permits
The Oconaluftee Visitor Center is on the south side of the Smokies. All backcountry campsites and shelters in Great Smoky Mountains NP require an online permit. The online process for hiking permits is difficult and unreliable. Fees are $4 /person /night, with a $20 maximum. Infrequent users should first call the Backcountry Information Office at (865) 436-1297, open daily from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time). As a general rule, I like to avoid the crowds and kooky administrations of the most popular National Parks.

Mountains to Sea Option
229, 785, and 780 cover the south end of the Mountains to Sea Trail. To walk the BMT and MST through GSMNP would require either camping permits or a modified course with side trips to camp in the Nantahala NF.

Bartram Trail Option
229, 784, 785, 778, and 780 cover a swing to the southeast. After a day hike on the BMT in GSMNP, I would head southeast over Fontana Dam and along the Appalachian and Bartram Trails, to South Carolina, then northeast along the Palmetto and Foothill Trails. A 20 mile roadwalk or hitch in National Forest land would take me to the Art Leob Trail, which would take me to the MST.

With either option, I would then follow the Mountains to Sea northeast, using maps 779 and 773, across North Carolina. A gap between maps 779 and 773 will require a state road map or a local map of some sort.

Bicycle Option
Yet another option is that I could buy a cheap bike in Asheville and ride the Blue Ridge Parkway, New River Trail, and the 2 roadwalks to Pearisburg, where I would return to walking on the Appalachian and Allegheny, etcetera, Trails. This plan has the advantages of speed and of making two very long roadwalk days into easy bike days. A disadvantage is that it skips Linnville Gorge and other off BRP sections of the Mountains to Sea Trail.

Future Mountains to Sea - Palmetto hike
A future 1500 mile U (⊂) shaped hike of the Mountains to Sea and Palmetto Trails, beginning and ending on the Atlantic Coast, looks attractive on my Southeastern Trails Map Page. But there won't be enough time on the 2017 trip to hike east of the mountain sections.

The Virginias
To jump from the Mountains to Sea Trail to the south end of the New River Trail at Galax would require a ~ 25 mile road walk or hitch on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Stone Mountain State Park to the Cumberland Knob Recreation Area then north on Virginia Road 89.

I could follow the New River Trail, then the 68 mile Virginia Highlands Horse Trail, continuing north on the Appalachian Trail to Pearisburg. Alternatively, from the end of the New River Trail at Pulaski I could roadwalk or hitch to Pearisburg, perhaps 25-30 miles, with some NF land for camping.

North of Pearisburg, the Allegheny Trail departs northwest from the Appalachian Trail.

In one option, I could leave the Allegheny to join the Tuscarora Trail, head northwest on the C&O Canal Towpath, and head towards the Mid State Trail near the Paw Paw Tunnel. I've recently walked both the Tuscarora and the C&O Canal. This is the west option Great Eastern Trail route.

The east option Great Eastern Trail route continues north on the Tuscarora Trail and Standing Stone Trail to the Mid State Trail. Since I've recently done the Tuscarora, I'm not considering that route.

In a third option, I could follow the Allegheny to its northern end and make my own route through Forbes SF and Game Lands 51 to Ohiopyle SP. Gaining the C&O Canal, I would head southeast towards the Mid State Trail near the Paw Paw Tunnel. An advantage to this option is that I could walk the Laurel Highlands Trail near Ohiopyle. Another option is that from the north end of the Laurel Highlands Trail I could connect to the Baker Trail, and to the North Country Trail and then the New York Finger Lakes Trail System through the Allegheny National Forest.

Maryland, Pennsylvania's Mid State Trail
From the Paw Paw Tunnel I would hike through Maryland's Green Wood SF, and continue on the Mid State Trail to New York, and join the Crystal Crystal Hills Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail System. This is the Great Eastern Trail route. A guidebook and paper maps cover navigation for most of the Mid State Trail. But I need to print the Greenwood SF map and 4 maps for the Northern end of the Mid State.

Optional West Rim and Pine Creek Rail Trail Side Loop Hike
The 30 mile West Rim Trail through Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon was highly recommended to me during my 2016 Appalachian Trail Hike. In northern Pennsylvania, I could leave the Mid State Trail near Blackwell, hike the 30 miles north, and return via 17 miles of the easier and riparian Pine Creek Rail Trail. PDF maps Tioga SF, Pine Creek Trail North, and 2 sheets of West Rim Trail provide navigation information. At its largest, the canyon is about 800 feet deep and about 2,000 across. Pine Creek's direction of flow was reversed due to blockage from to glacial ice and debris perhaps 20,000 years ago.

Upstate New York
The Finger Lakes Trail System (which carries the North Country Trail) connects the Allegehny NF, to the southwest in Pennsylvania, Niagara Falls to the northwest, the Adirondacks to the northeast, and the Catskills to the southeast. There is also a 360 mile Erie Canalway Bike Trail. The plan might be to run out the season hiking around upstate New York. Or the plan might be to attend a family function mid summer and quit whereever I have to.

There are many bus and train routes that might be used to avoid walking trail segments both ways. It might be reasonable to hike the low regions of the White Mountains of New Hampshire with bus or AT hiking connections.

The New York Long Path connects the south of the Adirondacks and Northville-Placid Trail south to New York City. In between, it intersects the Catskills Branch of the Finger Lakes System, and the Appalachian Trail near Delaware Water Gap. I have an HTML file which is a town guide and data book, and 8 PDFs comprising a text trail description, all of which would print in black and white. Perhaps the northern 75 miles (North of John Boyd Thacher State Park near Altamont) is road walking, and is described in PDFs 7 and 8, or sections 33-39 and 40. South of these guide sections, NYLP is shown on NGTI 755 Catskill Park, with 755 and 737 mapping south to the intersection with the Appalachian Trail and to Delaware Water Gap. PDFs 2-6 cover the same areas, with many possible loops. A relocation map and 4 Shawangunk maps would be color prints, but probably are not necesary, as the NGTI maps cover the same area.

I got some of the data in this table from the Great Eastern Trail Newsletter;
Volume 5, Number 1, February 2016, by Timothy A. Hupp.

The purpose of this table is to understand how much hiking I've done on
the trails I'll use on my 2017 hike. It is somewhat inspired by Tim's request
for hikers to report how many miles of the GET they have completed.

I got most of the data in this table directly from the Great Eastern Trail Newsletter, Volume 5, Number 1, February 2016, by Timothy A. Hupp. I rearranged the quoted data so it made more sense to me. His data covers only the GET portion of the CT.

As of 2015, land acquisitions were 91% complete for the Cumberland Trail with an additional 5-6% “in the works”. In other words, 29 miles still required acquisition and 22 of those were in active negotiation.

Incomplete Sections: Cave Springs, Georgia to Pearisburg, Virginia
As far as I, Dan, can understand, only isolated short bits of the Lookout Section, between the Pinhoti north of Cave Springs, Georgia and the Cumberland Trail, are complete, making it presently mostly road walking. The same situation, little bits of trail connected by long road walks, dominates the gap from north of the Cumberland Trail to the Appalachian Trail near Pearisburg. The future Energy Trail and TuGuNu Sections are parts of this gap.

The exception is 44 miles of continuous completed Kentucky Pine Mountain Trail. Construction began in 1998 in the Jefferson National Forest. Since 2002 the Pine Mountain Trail State Park, it may someday stretch 110 miles from the Breaks Interstate Park to the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. Since there are many landowners in the multiple Kentucky and Virginia counties the trail would cross, it will take much time and dedication to complete.

December 2016: Georgia Pinhoti Trail Assoc is continuing to build trail between AL/GA state line north towards Cave Springs GA around Hematite Lake.

December 2016: In Georgia, the Lula Lake Land Trust is preparing to build the 6 mile Chattanooga Connector Trail between Covenant College next to Lookout Mountain Military Park trails & Lula Lake Land Trust property. That will leave a short road walk to the Cloudland Connector Trail.

December 2016: In Tennessee, the Cumberland Trail has a finished 7 mile section north of Crab Orchard along Hebbettsburg Rd. They also are working on connecting along McGill Creek between Greysville Mountain & Rock Creek Gorge sections.

December 2016: Out in Narrows VA, the Narrows Now Trail Club is building the Mary Ingles Trail (MIT) between Glen Lyn & the VA/WV state line along the New River. They hope to finish this coming spring 2017.

Printing Digital Maps
I have a black and white laser printer which I used for text descriptions of trails, etcetera. Laser printing is preferable to ink as water from rain, sweat, etcetera does not make the images run. I used regular paper. For occasional use in rain, I'll protect the maps with plastic bags. I would use waterproof paper for printing only if I was certain it would be wet most of the time, due to the additional cost and trouble.

For digital maps, I used color laser printers at copy shops. Each side of an 8½x11 or 8½x14 print was 59¢ + tax. Not all printers have legal size paper. Each side of an 11x17 print was $1.18 + tax. It's wise to bring a thumb drive with only what you plan to print, as not all printers are sophisticated enough to handle great quantities of files or to find one file among many. The printers were not able to print two sided unless one file contained both sides. Some software that can append many single side documents into a multi page document is required. It's wise to plan a few trips to copy shops, as each year new tricks must be learned to get the job done. This year's color printing was about $45.

Large Number of Maps
While a hike of a known trail might require just one book, etcetera, for navigation, making up your own route or hiking a composite route comprised of many individually mapped trails, such as the Great Eastern Trail, requires many maps, books, etcetera. Many mail order purchases were necesary as some documents are only available frmm trail clubs, not even massive internet stores have all maps in stock, and you won't know if a map or guide has adequate information until you've bought and read it. Start the buying iterations early. I developed a numbering system for the maps and guides, as every session of studying them left them in disarray. Considering 37 maps costing perhaps $10 each, plus perhaps $50 in copying, cost is clearly an issue. (But I didn't buy all the maps this year - some are from previous trips and others came free from other hikers, hiker boxes, etcetera.) From the table below, one can see that the volume and weight of so many maps will be an issue during the hike.