h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For an amusing take on the Appalachian Trail as a whole, read Walk in The Woods by Bill Bryson, a very funny travel writer. It has loads of info about the trail, from bears and murders to geology and tree diseases. I've never hiked in my life and enjoyed the book very much. Annoyed my husband greatly by reading numerous funny bits out to him.

Absolutely! Bryson is hilarious, period. A Walk in the Woods is probably his best for any reader, but all of his stuff is great.

For those of you who have been to the park, but not in the last few years, a quick update. It is sad to visit the park these days. To say nothing of ever increasing traffic in the park, the park is under attack from nature itself. Many of the trees in the park are dying. It was a great shock to see almost entire mountains and hillsides with all the trees dead and dying. It looks much like a forest fire has gone through the area.

The culprit(s) are, if memory serves, some kind of boll-weevil, and a fungus.

A ranger mentioned that often days now the smokeys are not smokey, since the number of trees that have died are reducing the amount of water in the air. Sad.

It's true, the Fraser Fir and to some extent the Red Spruce trees above 5000 ft. are in decline.
And now some folks are saying that the hardwoods are also in trouble.
The Fraser Fir are attacked by an insect called the Balsam Wooly Adelgid, and it's likely that acid rain and
ground-level ozone pollution are also culprits. And yes, the traffic is...well, bad for the park.
Last year, several of the springs in the western half of the park were dry. I took a trip through the eastern half,
and I had to leave my cup in the spring for 5 minutes to gather water.

On the bright side, the park is protected from logging and development, unlike most of Western
North Carolina and Eastern Tennesse. I always have mixed feelings when writing about such places.
The more people visit, the more they "love it to death". On the other hand, some do learn to appreciate
nature for its own intrinsic value. Hopefully, some of those people become active in conservation.
Only a tiny fraction of the visitors ever venture more than half mile from their cars.
If you hike into the backcountry, you can still find solitude. Just be prepared for world-class snoring matches
if you sleep in the A.T. shelters!

A Smoky Mountains vegetation management specialist reports that beech trees in the
Smokies are being killed by a fungus which is spread by an exotic (non-native) insect
called the beech scale. The insect bores holes in the bark, promoting the spread of a fungus
called beechbark disease. The damage is most evident along the Appalachian Trail,
and appears to be concentrated in the higher elevations, where whole stands have been killed...
And the beech trees in our woods (about 60 miles east of the park, at 2400 ft)
appear to be suffering from black spots on the bark, and their leaves are dying.
Does the phrase "last chance to see" ring any bells?

On a happier note, I just got my copy of "A Walk In The Woods".