National Scenic Trails
Official Sites:
Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The non-profit organization charged with managing the Appalachian Trail. Site covers trail news and conditions, management, volunteer opportunities, car shuttlers. Books and guides available.
Continental Divide Trail Alliance. The Alliance site covers news about trail routing and volunteer maintenance projects. Books and guides available. Note: problems with wesbite/links; we are checking into this, but in the meantime, go to the CDTS, below.
Continental Divide Trail Society. As of fall, 2002, this site is under development. Temporary site offers books
and guides. The CDTA is the premiere source of detailed trail routing information for long-distance hikers.
Florida Trail Association. The site offers guides and books, long distance hiker news, routing info, volunteer info and more.
Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation, Inc. This site offers a general overview of the trail's route and general county-by-county descriptions of the terrain it crosses, but no specific information. It also lacks long-distance hiking information. Foir hikers, most useful as a place to start looking for information.
Natchez Trace Trail Conference, Inc. (no website).
North Country Trail Association. This exhaustive and thorough site contains reams of information about the NCNST, with links to member organizations.
Pacific Crest Trail Association. Another excellent site with links to thru-hiker journals, info on trail conditions, permit info, guides and maps, a calendar of events and more.
Potomac Trail Council. This site is geared more for volunteers, trail planners, and managers than for hikers, but it's a place to start looking for info on the Potomac Heritage Trail.
Other National Scenic Trail Resources
Other AT Sites
Appalachian Trail Home Page. Dating from early 1995, this is one of the oldest AT sites out there. Contains a cornucopia of AT info, including hiker journals, links to individual hiker sites, outdoor links, and more. Recommended.
Other PCT Sites
PCT.com. Don Rogers, son of PCT co-founder Warren Rogers maintains this site, which focuses on memorabilia and historic information.
Pctplanner.com. This unique PCT site offers a useful tool that should save you a lot of planning time. You type in your mileage and how many hours you want to walk per day along with how much longer it takes you to climb 1000 feet of elevation (Have no idea? The average is 1/2 hour per 1000 feet). The trail planner then calculates how many days it will take you to get from one resupply point to the next. Warning: water sources and available campsites may make the computer-generated schedule impractical; you'll still have to look at a guidebook to fine-tune your planning. Also on this site: Look on the "about the PCT planner" page for a link to trail co-founder Clinton Clark's historic book, "The Pacific Crest Trailway, which describes the Pacific Crest Trail route back in 1946. Recommended.
ADZPCTKO Super Site. What's ADZPCTKO? You'll have to click here to find out. Site contains the low-down on the annual kick-off party for thru-hikers, along with essential information about starting a PCT thru-hike and a ride board to help you get to the trail. Recommended for thru-hikers.
Miscellaneous National Scenic Trails
National Park Service trail websites. Click on "visit your parks." Then scroll down to the trail you're interested in. However, these sties contain only basic overview information; mostly they send you to the other resources listed in this directory.
GORP.com's national scenic trail pages and thru-hiker pages. Gorp's NST pages have spotty coverage and are marred by incessant and inexcusably annoying pop-up ads. But the thru-hiker pages contain professionally produced trail journals of Y2K thru-hikes of the triple crown trails. Includes links to other sites and short articles about various aspects of hiking the AT; the state-by-state guide is superficial and the discussion board is sleepy.
backcountry.net. This site contains links to discussion groups for the major national scenic trails. Archives are also available. This is a terrific information resource for those planning long hikes: Ask a question and you'll start getting answers within minutes from people who have been there, done that. Recommended.
Trailjournals.com claims to currently have 21,067 journal entries, representing more than 215,400 miles of hiking, 12,144 trail photos, and 1118 hikers in its directory! The directory is indexed by trails and year, so if you want to find someone who has done the Inca Trail or the Camino de Santiago da Compostela, all you have to do is scroll for the name of the trail. There are opportunities to post your trail journals and participate in the live chats and the forums (which are a little sleepy). Recommended.
National Scenic Trails information updated August 2007.
This directory is copyrighted by Karen Berger, www.hikerwriter.com, 2002 -. Not part of it may be reproduced in any media without the express written permission of the author.
