PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — An organization which monitors Appalachian Trail activity says COVID-19 is still a threat and thru-hikers should abandon any plans for a trek this year.
Morgan Sommerville, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's director of visitor use management, said long distance hiking on the trail is still potentially risky because of the pandemic.
"You know, crossing state lines, I mean, the current CDC guidance is not to travel and certainly a thru-hike is traveling quite a long distance through 14 different states," he said.
Sommerville said most thru-hikers understand the guidance and respect the call to stay off the trail, but for those who don't...
"There's very little way for anybody – whether it's us or the land-owning agency managers to limit the people getting onto the trail," he explained, "and about the only inducement that ATC had to try and discourage people was to say, 'Well, if you come out for a long-distance hike on the AT, we’re not going to recognize that.'"
Sommerville said it comes down to safety on a couple of levels.
"We're concerned about AT hikers, concerned about the communities along the trail that AT hikers – particularly long-distance hikers – need to go in and out of to resupply and rest," he said.
Sommerville said such hikes also place at risk the retired volunteers who normally come out to assist long-distance hikers as well as the various federal and state agencies who manage the trail.
He said important support structures that thru-hikers rely upon are shut down.
"In Pennsylvania, all of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry lands that the AT runs through, all those shelters are closed, about 10 or 12 shelters there," Sommerville said.
He added while the conservancy has no problem with day hikers taking to the trail, they need to avoid overcrowded trail entry points like those that developed last year.
"We had so much traffic at trail heads in Pennsylvania that cars couldn't get past," he observed. "So it's a safety concern not just for AT hikers but for emergency responders to get to emergency situations that have nothing to do with the AT."
Sommerville said the bottom line is preventing long-distance hikers from catching or spreading COVID-19.
"We're taking this very seriously," he said, "and hope that people will stay safe."