1975 Appalachian Trail Mileage Facts
Below is a digital copy of “Appalachian Trail Mileage Facts August 1975” published by the Appalachian Trail Conference. This is the copy my brother Jim and I carried on our hike in 1976 and 1977. We left Baxter State Park on June 16, 1976 and hiked to near Natural Bridge, VA before discontinuing our hike. We returned July 28, 1977 to Springer Mt and began hiking northbound. I had to return to work after about a month of hiking but Jim continued on alone to complete the trail. I eventually completed the trail several years later. Most of the annotations are by Jim. Some of the notes contain information we received from passing northbound hikers or shelter registers. Other entries are comments from Jim. I added much of the relocation information from information I gleaned from copies of the “Appalachian Trail News”.
As you probably know long distance hikers back in the 1970’s did not have the wealth of information that is available today. Many of the comments in this publication were collected from the trail grapevine. I remember many of times stopping along the trail upon meeting a hiker coming from the opposite direction. We would pull out the “Fact Sheet” as we called it and exchange information. Back then trail names were not very common but we were known to other southbound hikers as the Ohio Brothers.
I hope others will find this glimpse of hiking in the 1970’s interesting and enjoyable. I know I got a few chuckles after reading it again after almost 40 years.
Richard "Ohibro" Gehring
Appalachian Trail Mileage Facts - August 1975 (annotated)
As you probably know long distance hikers back in the 1970’s did not have the wealth of information that is available today. Many of the comments in this publication were collected from the trail grapevine. I remember many of times stopping along the trail upon meeting a hiker coming from the opposite direction. We would pull out the “Fact Sheet” as we called it and exchange information. Back then trail names were not very common but we were known to other southbound hikers as the Ohio Brothers.
I hope others will find this glimpse of hiking in the 1970’s interesting and enjoyable. I know I got a few chuckles after reading it again after almost 40 years.
Richard "Ohibro" Gehring
Appalachian Trail Mileage Facts - August 1975 (annotated)