100 Years, 100 Miles
It’s not too often that celebration of a century on Earth gets commemorated with a vow to hike 100 miles.
For the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, however, that’s exactly what the plan is. The National Park Service turns 100 in 2016, and park units across the nation are devising their own ways to celebrate the milestone. In the Smokies, the focus is on the Hike 100 Centennial Challenge.
“Our park has such diversity to explore,” says Christine Hoyer, backcountry specialist for the park. “It’s not necessarily about hiking to the highest peak in the park. It’s about getting out there and enjoying the benefit of being active and being outside and breathing fresh air and enjoying what nature has to offer.”
Meeting the challenge requires only that park lovers hike 100 miles of trail within the park by December 6. Those 100 miles can be done on easy paths like the Oconaluftee River Trail or up grades such as the trek to Mount Le Conte. They can be logged through a series of daring backcountry adventures or a steady schedule of after-work strolls. They can be solo excursions or group outings. Or they can be done with the help of a passel of officially organized hikes designed to support the Hike 100 challenge.
Park Superintendent Cassius Cash is leading several hikes himself, aiming to show firsthand the importance and reward of getting out on park trails. He’s doing a pair of “y’all come” frontcountry hikes—August 20 on the Gatlinburg Trail and December 3 on the Oconaluftee River Trail—as well as limited-attendance backcountry hikes—June 25 on the North Carolina side of the park and October 8 on the Tennessee side.
Cash is also working to extend the Smokies experience to populations who otherwise wouldn’t likely make it to the park. Grant funding is helping the park bring in groups of kids, especially from urban areas, to show them what the park is all about.
It’s a personally important initiative to Cash, who grew up in urban Memphis, and it’s also strategic to ensure the park’s future.
“Who’s coming behind all of us to really be caring for these places?” says Hoyer. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to connect them to it in some way first.”
Other opportunities for guided hikes exist as well. Friends of the Smokies organizes a monthly hike to one of the park’s iconic trails, and the Great Smoky Mountains Association offers a monthly program of Hike 100 guided excursions.
For more information, see nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/gsmnp-hike-100.htm.