Local Authors Share Ideas for Hiking The Appalachian Trail

As spring weather beckons Georgians into the outdoors, Atlanta authors Carol and Jim Steiner have released a new guidebook sharing their expertise and adventures along the Appalachian Trail.

With a focus on day hiking, Carol and Jim encourage new and experienced hikers to venture out onto the trail to savor the beauty of nature. The book outlines short, moderate hikes as well as longer, more challenging adventures. The authors urge walkers to pair hiking trips with unique stops along the way to enjoy waterfalls, wineries, museums, pottery shops and more.

For the Steiners, a favorite stop was North Carolina’s Fontana Dam, which boasts a unique place in history and stands about as high as a fifty-story building. They heard docents tell the story of how some 5,000 laborers worked around the clock to build the dam in record time to provide power to nearby industries during World War II.

The book is uniquely geared to hikers who’d prefer to crawl into a bed at night instead of sleeping in the woods. The name says it all: The Appalachian Trail Day Hikers’ Guide: Downhill to Fine Wine and Accommodations. Carol and Jim point readers to places to stay where they’ve found delectable breakfasts, friendly hosts, and front porches that were perfect for an evening glass of wine. The book is filled with other planning tips along with tales from Carol’s hiking journals. The entries describe occasional mishaps on the trail as well as stories of encounters with nature at its finest.

Carol wants to pass along her love for hiking to people of varying skill levels who may not be aware of the beauty to be discovered on the trail. Non-hikers may not know, she says, that it’s possible to walk through tunnels of rhododendron and mountain laurel blooms that go on for fifty feet or more. Mother Nature is always unveiling surprises on the trail. “I did not expect to see mushrooms in red and yellow and purple colors,” she says. “Some people have no idea how much is out there God created.”

The target audience for their book is people over forty, but they have been surprised at how many younger people have embraced the concept of pairing day hikes with explorations of sights near the trail. Day hiking, for example, makes the trail accessible for young families who’d like to walk portions of it with their children.

Day hiking wasn’t always Carol’s first choice as a way to walk the trail. She planned a longer family hiking trip after her retirement, but she learned fairly quickly that sleeping in the woods was not her husband’s idea of a good time. Since 2007, the couple has hiked more than eight hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail. Carol takes notes in her journal while Jim records the hikes in photos. Their new book is the first in a planned series that will cover most of their hikes. The recently released first volume covers the portions of the trail that wind through Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

“There’s so much we’ve learned,” says Carol, “and we’ve been to a lot of places we thought people would love to know about.”

Carol (trail name: Ink Pen) is a retired public health nurse and state public health section director while Jim is a consultant and developer of computer systems. With a love for all things technological, he has been christened with the trail name of Inspector Gadget.

Planning a hike this spring? Frequently overlooked items on a packing list include paper maps and a compass, which are still vital, Carol says, even in the era of GPS and cell phones. “Lots of people think they don’t need to take a map and a compass. If they’re city people, they may think that surely the trail is an easy path like a sidewalk or an earthen path through a neighborhood park. They don’t realize there are other paths in the forest and that you might take the wrong path and that your cell phone may not work.”

Along with planning tips, the book details how to choose gear such as a daypack and what you need to put inside it for your hike. Other topics include fitness programs to prepare you for hiking the trail, how to find shuttle services to and from the trail, restaurant recommendations, and more. All of it is mixed in with the authors’ own experiences as they try out hiking gear and other products on the trail and describe what they’ve learned on their own adventures. Much of the advice is packed into lively journal entries in which the couple takes wrong turns, meets fellow hikers with colorful tales to tell, and discover hidden gems such as civil war grave sites and the site of an old cheese factory along the trail.

In the foreword, Anna Huthmaker, founder of Trail Dames, says, “I wish that I had had this book when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. . . . In a sea of publications about thru-hiking, blisters and struggle, what has long been missing is a book that focuses on the Appalachian Trail as part of the fabric of the larger community that it travels through.”

The book is available at Amazon.com.