Veteran Hiker Calls Appalachian Trail Too Much of an Uphill Battle

An 80-year-old man who has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail three times says the nation’s most famous footpath has been made too difficult in the 50 years since he first walked the Georgia-to-Maine route.

Earl Shaffer finished hiking the trail in October on the 50th anniversary of the first time he did it. He said he felt like quitting because it was so tough.

“It was never intended to be that way,” Shaffer said. “I’d like to see it put back the way it was originally.”

Hiking the trail today means climbing 34 peaks, wading 25 streams and rivers, and crawling in and out of caves. And that’s only in Maine. The trail’s tallest mountains are in the South.

“It’s an almost impossible trip,” said Shaffer, who turned 80 on Nov. 8. “Who wants to go out and wade across a 100-foot icy river barefoot?”

But Shaffer and others had better get used to it.

With $15 million in federal funds available, federal agencies working with the Appalachian Trail Conference are poised to make land purchases that will lock in the trail’s route for future generations.

Those who manage the trail say most hikers favor the wilderness experience that now pervades its 2,150 miles. But Shaffer, who lives in York Springs, Pa., said it has strayed from the original vision of a footpath connecting camps from Georgia to Maine.

He said one section heads straight up the side of a mountain “just to be nasty.” He joked that portions need to be leveled with dynamite.

Thus continues a debate over the trail that dates to its creation in 1937, 11 years before Shaffer completed his first end-to-end hike in four months, four days. He walked the whole way again in 1965; that time, he started from Maine to become the first person to walk the entire trail in both directions.

Shaffer wears flannel shirts, a tattered pith helmet and an Army-issue backpack like the one he used in 1948. He carries no tent or cookstove and sleeps in shelters or on the open ground, covered with a tarp.

Benton MacKaye, who envisioned the trail, was a dreamer who wanted a wilderness experience featuring work camps along the way where city folks could get back to nature. Myron Avery, who saw the project through to its completion, was a pragmatist whose route often followed logging roads and even paved paths in addition to forest trails.

In 1968, the trail came under federal protection. The local groups that maintain it decided that the path should follow mountain ridge tops, abandoning roads and towns as much as possible.

David Field, chairman of the department of forest management at the University of Maine, personally laid out much of the 170 miles of new trail established in Maine from 1970 to 1990.

Maine, which includes the Mahoosuc Mountain Range, has some of the most rugged portions. One 30-mile stretch covers 10,000 feet of elevation, and a one-mile stretch in Mahoosuc Notch forces536870913hikers to crawl in and out of icy caves.

The Maine Appalachian Trail Club even has a policy of keeping bridges to a minimum, in part because raging water and ice jams tend to tear them down.

Shaffer said he never would have attempted the trail had he known that he would be wading through icy water in Maine.

“In 1965, the trail was perfect, but they were not satisfied,” he said. “They seem to be obsessed with the idea you have to make it as rough as possible.”

Part of the problem is that those who hike the trail end-to-end have less patience as they near the northern end atop Maine’s 5,267-foot Mt. Katahdin.

Field makes no apologies. “The guidelines of the trail tell you you’re supposed to be in the high country, looking at the landscape,” he said. “If you want to hike the shoulder of Interstate 95, that would be easier. But that’s not what the trail is for.”

The debate whether the trail should remain tough has been rendered moot along much of its path because of land purchases over the years.

The day Shaffer completed his end-to-end hike, President Clinton signed a budget bill that includes money for the remaining 293 tracts of private land in 14 states. The purchases will cover about 10,000 acres, including 27.6 miles of trail and right of way.

Shaffer knows he can’t change the route on purchased land, but he intends to lobby for changes where the trail crosses federal and state parks. But he acknowledged that it is an uphill battle.

Perhaps more obtainable is his goal of warning hikers about what lies ahead. He said walking for hundreds of miles of rugged terrain is not as glamorous as the media make it out to be. “It’s a series of obstacle courses,” Shaffer said.