For my spring hike this year I am planning a three week thru-hike of the Benton MacKaye Trail (BMT). The BMT is a 300 mile trail that roughly parallels the first 300 miles of the Appalachian Trail. The northern terminus of the Pinhoti Trail hike I did in 2023 ended at about mile 70 of the BMT.
The BMT starts at Springer Mountain, Georgia and proceeds north into Tennessee and North Carolina. The last 100 miles or so are a transit of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) ending about 20 miles east of Gatlinburg at US40.
Over the 300 or so miles the trail has about 68,000 feet of ascent. I plan to do the trail in three sections of about 100 miles each. The last section will be entirely in the GSMNP. This works out to 20 hiking days, averaging about 15 miles a day.
While I am keeping my mileage well under 20 miles a day, most days have more than 3,000 feet of climbing and there are a lot of 4,000+ foot days. While the eastern trails aren’t high compared to the Rockies or the Sierras the climbs tend to be steep and difficult.
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