Thru-Hiking Dreams At Dahlonega Trail Fest

Trail Fest '14.

Last weekend (March 9) I was at Amicalola Falls to celebrate the start of the Appalachian Trail’s Thru-Hiking Season. Well Saturday the town of Dahlonega held its own gathering to honor the AT and the people who enjoy it. The three-day festival is the annual Dahlonega Trail Fest.

Booths for Trail Fest.

The festival takes place in the downtown area and is a celebration of everything AT. Dahlonega is what's called an AT Trail Community and since it's the closest town to Springer Mountain a lot of people go through it on their way to the trail.  I went on Saturday, which is the busiest day of Trail Fest. Unfortunately, Deb couldn’t go because she had been sick since Wednesday and it also limited how long I could stay at the festival, because I need take care of her.

A course there was booths of all kinds, some selling things and some looking to raise awareness of different outdoor related issues. I talked with with people from the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club (GATC), LeaveNo Trace (remember my last blog), filled out petition cards for my Senators (Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss) to increase the size of Georgia’s Wilderness Areas, but the most important people I met might be the group for Save the Georgia’s  Hemlocks.

Booth for expanding Georgia's Wilderness Areas.

The red marks the expanded area.

If you don’t know this group is trying to save the mighty hemlock tree, which has been decimated in the southeast by the evasive Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. If you know anything about this problem you probably heard of how it has attacked trees in the Smoky Mountain National Forest. However, it has also been destroying trees here in Georgia, 19 counties at last count have these destructive pests. Also at their both I was also informed by Cindy Tyas about a new threat to the hemlocks, a needle fungus called Rosellinia Needle Blight. Moisture and high humidity (climate change anyone) help fuel the fungus, but a lot is not known about it. I told them at the both that I had seen this on a hemlock before and they asked if I did again to document it and let them know, which I will.
 

The spread of the Adelgid in Georgia.

Hemlocks among the dead trees at Clingmans Dome.

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid.

The white on the tree is the sign of this deadly pest.

Llamas!

With Gene Espy.

Also another cool booth was the one for the Southern States Llama Association. At Trail Fest they had seven llamas that you could pet and interact with and it was fun. While I enjoyed the booths at Trail Fest, my favorite part of the day was the talk given by the second person to thru-hike the AT, Gene Espy. He is a really nice man who reminds one of their grandfathers. He had some funny stories about his thru-hike on that “Government Trail” (he says that was what the AT  used to be called). I also talked with him at his booth where he was selling his book The Trail of My Life: The Gene EspyStory, Gene is just a interesting man and it was an honor to meet him. If I had $20 I would have bought his book there, but I will be getting it soon.

Gene Espy speaks.

Another speaker I caught was Danny Bernstein; she wrote a book on her adventures on the Mountain-to-Sea-Trail (MST) called The Mountain-to-Sea-Trail Across NorthCarolina: A Thousand Miles through Wildness, Culture and History. I also met Johnny Molloy, who wrote a book I already own The Best Tent Camping: Southern Appalachians and Smoky Mountains. Funny thing is Molloy lives in Johnson City, TN on the tree streets. I told him I graduated from ETSU, so we swapped JC stories, what a small world.

Overall, I have to say that the AT Trail Fest was an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.