Lenny Bernstein photo
A conversation with a Smokies hiking expert
Danny Bernstein celebrates completing all 900 miles of trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Danny Bernstein has been a lot of things in her life. Originally from New York, she began her career in computer science “way before computing was cool,” working as a software developer and then as a college professor before moving to Asheville in 2001.
These days Bernstein, 72, conquers any trail she can find. She is the author of four books that include two hiking guides, leads hikes for Friends of the Smokies and the Carolina Mountain Club and has completed a variety of long-distance trails, including the Appalachian Trail and the Camino Santiago, and has hiked all 900 miles of trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
What brought you to Asheville?
My late husband and I did the A.T. while we were working in sections over many years, two-to-three-week backpacks, and we discovered this was the absolute best area. We drove around Asheville, walked around Asheville one day and I said, “There is something here,” and he laughed. And then way before we moved we got hooked up with the Carolina Mountain Club because the Carolina Mountain Club is the Appalachian Trail maintaining club. So we moved for the hiking is the short answer.
How did you get hooked on hiking?
I grew up in New York City and my husband grew up in Miami Beach so we were not rural people. We just saw an ad in the local paper for a local hiking club—come and join a hike that particular Saturday. We were in our 20s and we said, “Really, people do this without kids?” We had always associated that as something people did with their children. We went and we found people our parents’ age that we couldn’t keep up with and kept coming back. We enjoyed the people. We enjoyed the physicality of hiking, and we were amazed as to how much public land there was around the northern New Jersey, New York area.
At what point did you decide to give guidebook writing a try?
By the time I thought about writing a guidebook I had been in the Asheville area for five years and I had done a lot of hiking. You go with a club and you learn a lot of stuff and that’s great, but there’s also the danger that you’re just following people, and I tried not to do that. I started just putting hikes down that I knew, and the thing just grew.
You’ve hiked a lot of places. What’s special about the Smokies?
We had been in the Smokies twice from New Jersey on vacation and really loved the Smokies from the beginning, loved the way the trails are so well-maintained compared to other governmental units. The Smokies even on their worst days are going to be maintained better than the Pisgah (National Forest), for example, so good trails to me translate to easy trails. If you have a smooth trail it’s going to be a lot easier than a lot of rocks that stick up, or going straight up as opposed to switchbacks. When we came here and started looking at the Smokies I thought I’d died and gone to hiking heaven.
What’s your favorite trail, and why?
The favorite trail is the one I’m on at the time. I really can’t pick out a favorite trail. I’ve got more trails than clothes—I have a trail for every occasion. Trails for my grandkids, trails for someone who really is afraid of hiking, trails for the Carolina Mountain Club, trails for Friends of the Smokies. What I’m saying is I feel that I know the Smokies well enough that I can pick out trails for different situations, and also the weather. I personally am not going up Mt. LeConte in February. For the people who do that, that’s wonderful. That’s where I stay low. And that’s another thing. You’ve got such a wide distribution of altitude, from 800 feet to 6,600, if you really play your cards right you can see the same flower from February to July.
Bernstein’s Books
Danny Bernstein is the author of four hiking-related books:
- Hiking the Carolina Mountains
- Hiking North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains
- Mountains-to-Sea Trail Across North Carolina: Walking a Thousand Miles through Wildness, Culture and History
- Forests, Alligators, Battlefields: My Journey through the National Parks of the South
To order, visit hikertohiker.net.