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The Appalachian Trail stretches across 14 states from Georgia to Maine in the US and runs almost 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers). It is the world’s longest hiking trail and millions of people hike parts or all of the trail every year.
After Hurricane Helene thousands of volunteers will be working to restore the trail after the hurricane left a path of destruction across several of the southern states, reported CNN. Much of the trail's main and side paths in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee saw widespread damage.
“We knew it was like nothing we’d ever seen. After the event, we shed tears. I shed tears,” Michelle Mitchell, director of recreation, wilderness, heritage and volunteer resources for the Forest Service’s Southern region told CNN.
This was the worst natural disaster to impact the trail in its 100-year-old history, according to a news release from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the organization that maintains and protects the trail. It could take months to fully assess the damage to the hardest hit areas, and years to fully restore the trail.
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Surveying the damage
The damage was caused by high winds and excess water that saturated the soil making trees uproot and crash into each other, Franklin Tate, an associate regional director for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, told CNN.
“There'll be two, three or four of them [trees] crisscrossing, and the root balls will be 10 feet in the air,” said Tate. “There are places where you lose sight of where the trail actually is. You can’t, you don’t know, unless you have a map on your phone or, you’re able to kind of crawl through it.”
Besides the physical damage to the trail, the storm has impacted dozens of towns that it runs through that depend on tourism to support local businesses which also suffered massive damage from the storm and may not be able to recover, reported CNN.
One business owner, Terry Wise, lost his hostel in Erwin, Tennessee; a place that many hikers stayed at or bought supplies from. When the Nolichucky River burst its banks, half of Wise’s cabins were flooded and the foundation of the store was ruined by mud and debris.
“Imagine throwing out everything, just everything,” Wise said. “The worst part is sometimes you think you can save things…I thought I could save the [hostel’s] store; I thought maybe we could rebuild the foundation. And every contractor I talked to was just like, ‘It’s not worth it.’”
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Reopening the trail
The number of volunteers who normally maintain the trail has grown in the past few weeks as more and more people join the clean-up and restoration efforts.
One group of volunteers, the Carolina Mountain Club, one of the oldest of the 31 clubs that regularly maintain the trail, has seen a big surge of people willing to lend a hand. Some of them have already worked to restore homes damaged by the hurricane.
The club has seen people coming with saws and axes as well as experienced chainsaw workers removing fallen trees and filling root holes with rocks, soil and leaves. “Our dedicated volunteer crews have been hard at work clearing debris and rebuilding trail across the 94 miles of the Appalachian Trail we maintain in North Carolina. We anticipate our section will be free of debris from Helene by the beginning of the year.” David Huff, councillor for communicationsfor the club told Goodnet.
But there is no timetable for when the Appalachian Trail will be fully reopened. The conservancy will post notices alerting people to problematic areas and to provide detour information. All the officials and volunteers agree that the trail will recover but it may be later rather than sooner. That’s because Mother Nature is getting a helping hand.
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