The Great Eastern Trail is born, 1700 miles from Florida to New York. A project of the American Hiking Society linking together a vast network of existing trails, an alternative to The Appalachian Trail.
"The Great Eastern Trail would start at the Florida-Alabama line, rolling through gentle forest before climbing up clifftop vistas as the path edges north. A ring of old logging roads would stretch the trail through Georgia to Tennessee, where the trail would pass Chattanooga and border river gorges and rocky outcroppings on its way to the mid-Atlantic states.
Through caves and crags, ridges and overlooks, the trail would then scamper through Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. It crosses the narrow width of Maryland next, piggybacking on a historic towpath that's probably the trail's easiest segment.
In Pennsylvania, it wanders through thick, dark forests using old logging roads, etching a path through Paddy Mountain on the trail's only tunnel before ending a few miles north just across the New York border."
Sue Turner a.k.a. Hammock Hanger is the first person to attempt the entire through-hike of the new trail, she is pictured here at the starting kiosk on April 1, 2007. Her online journal is here, click on last to read the latest entry.
~trail building pictures and articles quoted from the AJC and MSNBC
~Great Eastern Trail web site and trail map
~American Hiker article about GET spring 2006
~American Hiking Society web site
~American Hiking Society hiking blog - Southern Appalachians Initiative
