Davie: America has some of the most breathtaking hiking trails in the world -- thousands of miles of rugged paths through deserts and canyons, over snowcapped peaks, past the deepest lakes and tallest trees you'll ever find.

Hi, I'm Mick Davie.

I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker.

I'm exploring America's great trails and the unique wonders they offer us all.

In this episode, I'm hiking the Great Allegheny Passage, also known as the GAP.

Also, I'm going to be exploring the most famous long-distance hiking experience in North America and possibly the world, the Appalachian Trail.

♪♪ ♪♪ Today I am here in scenic Point State Park in the historic city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- "Steel City" -- at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers.

This is the beginning of the Great Allegheny Passage.

The GAP is a relatively short trail on a scale of the trails we've been exploring in this series -- a 150-mile journey from the industrial city of Pittsburgh, western Pennsylvania, to the Appalachian mountain town of Cumberland, western Maryland.

While the mountain and valley scenery is beautiful, it's not a journey into a wild and impossible terrain.

It's wide and well-kept path is easy for hikers and perfect for bikers.

It's more a journey into America's past... ...for the GAP connects the story of the founding of this country and the dawning of its industrial age to the region's rebirth as a destination for adventure sports enthusiasts, hikers, and cyclists.

This is a trail that oozes with history from your very first step.

In the first half of the 18th century, the French reigned supreme in the Upper Ohio River Valley, and in 1754 they built a fort in the clearing just over there -- Fort Duquesne.

From here, the French could expand in all directions and trade with Native Americans in this area and beyond.

Naturally, the British wanted control of this strategic point.

After two previous defeats, they mounted a successful attack, one in which future American president George Washington participated as a colonel.

The French, rather than surrender their fort, burned it to the ground.

So the British built a new fort, Fort Pitt, and the city of Pittsburgh rose up around it.

Pittsburgh would become one of the most powerful and influential cities in world history, and it gives our trail an easy-to-access starting point.

For the first 10 miles or so, the Great Allegheny Passage travels a very urban landscape, and remains of Pittsburgh's industrial revolution are around every bend, the most impressive of which are these -- the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Towering 92 feet high, these furnaces fueled the first billion-dollar corporation in the world -- US Steel.

These blast furnaces operated at full tilt for nearly a hundred years.

♪♪ In its prime, 3,000 people worked here... ...producing more than a thousand tons of iron every day.

This steel was used in the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the battleship Missouri, the mighty warship that was the site of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II.

These buildings are the greatest surviving monuments to Pittsburgh's industrial legacy.

Pittsburgh slowly lost its economic might.

But from the late 1970s to today, another movement, a revolution of a different kind, has shown the world a new and exciting future for post-industrial regions like this.

The rails-to-trails movement is a nationwide environmental initiative based on the idea that abandoned railroads and industrial sites can be harnessed as popular public spaces for hiking, cycling, and other forms of outdoor recreation.

The Great Allegheny Passage was created between 1978 and 2013 with about $80 million in private and public funding.

It's a network owned by about a dozen different entities and pieces together sections of railway, pipelines, riverways, bridges, tunnels, and viaducts.

The entire trail is a testament to renewal, turning relics of the past into assets for the present.

As we leave the city and its satellite towns, the trail becomes a little more rural.

We're now in Fayette County, on the banks of the Youghiogheny River.

Tucked away from the grit and grime, it's a really quite beautiful and leafy landscape.

Now, this area was once coal country.

The Pittsburgh Coal Company started mining here in the late 1800s, and coal extracted from the hills around me was shipped downstream to the steel mills of Pittsburgh.

Of course, when the steel industry went into decline, the mines were abandoned.

But a remarkable thing has happened here in the past eight years or so.

In 2015, a mosaic artist by the name of Rachel Sager, the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners, purchased the abandoned mine buildings and began transforming them.

She calls it the Ruins Project.

Sager: Hi, Mick.

Davie: Hi.

Sager: Welcome to the Ruins.

It's nice to meet you.

Davie: Yeah, very nice to meet you too.

♪♪ This is a mosaic museum in an old coal-processing plant.

Sager: Yes.

Davie: Wow.

Wow.

And what -- where did this inspiration come from?

Sager: Well, it was an accident.

I say I bought a coal mine by accident.

I've been a mosaic artist for half of my life, so 25 years now I've made it my life.

And this little place popped up on a foreclosure site, and I just jumped and did it without quite realizing that I was getting all of this with it.

And I found out, you know, pretty quickly that I had bought a piece of history.

The coal that came out of these little hillsides, and this mine in particular, quite literally fueled the industrial revolution.

So the coal went to Pittsburgh and made Pittsburgh what it is.

Davie: Coal from these mountains around here.

Sager: Right here.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the Rust Belt and all of that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for this coal, because at the time it was the best coal in the world.

Davie: And I think I can hear... Sager: That's the train.

Davie: Is that the coal train?

Sager: It does carry coal, yes.

On the other side of the river.

It's just far enough away not to be deafening.

Davie: Right, right.

Sager: [ Laughs ] ♪♪ Davie: Is this the coal train?

Sager: It is.

It was called the Little Giant because it had such a short run.

It really only went from Pittsburgh to Connellsville, but it carried so much material -- coal, coke, iron ore, and limestone.

It was a very hardworking little train.

It's my honor to live on this trail and to be telling this story.

Davie: Why?

Sager: My heart is broken for the people that come from here.

Really.

It's broken.

They lost their stories along the way somewhere.

Pittsburgh has been so great at reinventing itself and capitalizing on its history, becoming something new.

But these little villages that made -- made all of that happen with this coal just got lost in the mix somehow.

Davie: It's a wonderful contribution you've made to bringing those stories back to life.

Sager: There are people that are good at telling stories, and there are people who are good at making things.

But I think you need both in order to remember things.

Davie: Yeah.

The GAP offers not only thoughtful glimpses at history and wonderful people stories.

You'll find wildlife here too.

Out of Pittsburgh, you can often see heron and mallards.

Flocks of wild turkey often hug the trail.

Black bears are around, and there's always a chance you'll encounter a rattlesnake sunning itself on the path, so do stay alert.

And as you head southeast, warblers and woodpeckers become more common.

The other beauty of the GAP is that it connects a string of gorgeous scenic trail towns, like this little gem about 70 miles from Pittsburgh.

Welcome to Ohiopyle.

This is the smallest and, to me, the most beautiful of all of the trail towns on the GAP, set right on the whitewater rapids of the Youghiogheny River at the foot of lush, forested mountains.

Now, the name Ohiopyle is derived from European explorers mangling together a combination of Monongahela and Lenape Native American words for "white, frothy water."

And there it is.

That's the Youghiogheny in front of us.

♪♪ 18th and 19th-century farmers, hunters, and trappers established permanent settlements along the river, and Ohiopyle was one of them.

Today, it's a popular tourist destination.

River lovers come from all over the world to raft and kayak these rapids, and downtown is picture-postcard Americana -- cute mom-and-pop shops, adventure outfitters, cafés, and bars.

Ohiopyle State Park is one of the most popular state parks in Pennsylvania -- 20,000 lush acres with dozens of spectacular waterfalls like the 30-foot bridal-veil Cucumber Falls.

This area is known as Laurel Highlands and features, among other things, the 70-mile Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail.

It's also home to four structures by American architect and icon Frank Lloyd Wright.

Perhaps his best-known work, Fallingwater, is a World Heritage Site and museum just four miles north of the Great Allegheny Passage.

Far less known is that this area is also the birthplace of the entire GAP Trail.

As the story goes, the banks of the Youghiogheny River here in Ohiopyle State Park played a significant role in the formation of the Great Allegheny Passage thanks to a park manager with a penchant for fishing.

In the late '70s, park superintendent Larry Adams would finish work and head down here with rod and reel to try out different fishing spots, and over four years he built several miles of trail and secured them with materials abandoned in the park by Western Maryland Railways when the trains stopped running here in 1975.

Cyclists soon discovered Larry's work and started riding his path.

Word spread, and at some point the head of Pennsylvania parks caught wind of this unauthorized trail and phoned Larry.

Larry thought he was gonna get fired, but instead his boss asked him what was taking him so long and when he was gonna finish.

That was the humble beginnings, and the Great Allegheny Passage was finally completed more than three decades later.

It's now enjoyed by more than a million people every year.

What the trail lacked back in those early days was a name.

In 2001, a meeting was called to finally settle the matter, bringing together key figures in the trail's development, people such as trail manager Bob McKinley, and this man, mapmaker and writer Bill Metzger.

Bill is easy to spot out here on his modified, low-slung handcycle.

If you see him, tip him your hat.

He's the one man who actually gave the trail its name, or at least part of it.

Metzger: Well, I'm one of the guys who came up with the name the Great Allegheny Passage.

My word was "great."

Davie: Uh-huh.

Metzger: We all agreed on "Allegheny," and Bob McKinley -- the late Bob McKinley -- said, "How about 'passage'?"

And that was it.

Davie: And tell me, what do you think of the rails-to-trails concept, turning old industrial areas and railroads into beautiful paths like this?

Metzger: Well, it... it's a no-brainer.

And in Pennsylvania, we had at one time 12,000 miles of railroad.

About half of that is abandoned.

The potential is absolutely amazing.

It's 150 miles of adventure.

And you're seeing things and meeting people and visiting places that you wouldn't -- you couldn't possibly do in a car.

It just wouldn't happen.

♪♪ Davie: By the time we reach this, the Salisbury Viaduct, one of the most extraordinary structures on the trail, we're more than three-quarters of the way to the end.

And this viaduct is awe-inspiring.

It's a marvel of early 20th-century engineering.

Built in 1911 by the Western Maryland Railway, several men tragically perished during its construction.

At 1,908 feet, it's the longest trestle bridge on the GAP.

It soars 101 feet above the Casselman River, just west of the trail town of Meyersdale.

When it opened in 1912, hundreds of spectators cheered the first train crossing.

Abandoned in 1975, it was repurposed for bike and pedestrian traffic on the GAP in 1998.

The views from the midpoint here are stunning -- 360-degree panoramas of surrounding forests, maple farms, lush green fields, and agricultural land.

For the next 10 miles, the GAP climbs somewhat until, at the 23.7-mile mark, we reach this point, the Eastern Continental Divide -- at 2,392 feet above sea level, the highest point on the trail.

So we're about to leave Pennsylvania and get into Maryland.

But first there's this -- the Big Savage Tunnel.

At 3,294 feet, it's the longest of four tunnels on the GAP.

It was built by the Western Maryland Railway in 1912, making travel through the rugged Allegheny Mountains around us possible.

It operated for 63 years before closing in 1975, only to be refurbished for bicycle and hiker use on the GAP in 2003.

It's still closed during winter months, but in summer the 12-minute journey offers a cool place to walk or cycle.

Now, if you're curious about the tunnel's name, it comes from that of surveyor and inventor Thomas Savage.

Savage was stranded here on this mountain in the winter of 1736 with the rest of his party, and legend has it he offered himself up as food to save everyone else from starving.

Well, fortunately, a rescue team showed up just in time, so Savage got to live on and have a tunnel and a mountain named after him.

♪♪ About a mile on from the tunnel, you come across this, the famous Mason and Dixon Line, marking the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

And I'm walking on the line right now.

Between 1763 and 1767, British astronomer Charles Mason and a surveyor named Jeremiah Dixon were hired to resolve a long-standing property dispute.

The sometimes violent conflict was between the family of William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania, and the descendants of Charles Calvert, who served as proprietor of Maryland.

Mason and Dixon spent years traveling this area on foot and horseback, taking precise, time-consuming measurements before finally determining the official boundary.

They couldn't know then how important it would become almost a century later as a part of the boundary between slave states and free states, especially to African Americans fleeing bondage in the years before the United States' bloody Civil War.

Today, the landmark and Mason and Dixon's work are celebrated here with these engraved granite blocks.

It's all downhill from here, figuratively and literally.

Half a day's hike and you get to the penultimate milestone.

I've just arrived in this gem of a mountain town, Frostburg, once a famous stagecoach stop and station for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Now, that train no longer runs, but there's actually a more unusual means of rail transport to try here -- this machine.

Welcome to Tracks and Yaks.

These are known as rail bikes, and you can ride them 15 miles to Cumberland, Maryland, the end of the GAP Trail.

Here we go.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ And so we arrive at our terminus -- beautiful Cumberland, Maryland, nestled between the Appalachian Plateau and another river vital in American history -- the Potomac.

Cumberland has long been a transport hub and a gateway for westward expansion into the great American interior.

For starters, it was the beginning of the Braddock Road, the trail that moved soldiers and officers, including George Washington, to battle the French at Fort Duquesne in today's Pittsburgh.

Now come and take a look at this.

This is the GAP's mile marker zero medallion, the end of the line, 150 miles from our starting point in Pittsburgh a few days back.

And if you've made it this far, there's a treat you shouldn't miss.

Come and check this out.

It's the morning after I finished my hike, and I feel like celebrating.

And what better postscript to a trail that's all about industry and history and transition than a train ride?

[ Steam whistle blowing ] The Western Maryland Scenic Railroad runs passengers from Cumberland back up the trail to Frostburg and home again.

No hiking, no cycling, no effort required.

Just good old-fashioned fun.

[ Steam whistle blowing ] In harnessing the history, beauty, and stories of this extraordinary corridor, the GAP is bringing people here from far and wide, along with their financial resources, and in doing so it's helping to bring the region back.

Instead of taking, visitors are adding, and they are writing a new chapter of America's story as they do it.

So come write your own part of it here if you can.

♪♪ Up next, the most famous long-distance hiking trail in North America, possibly the world.

Join me for an iconic trip some 2,190 miles on the Appalachian Trail.

It's a beauty.

The Appalachian Trail, or the AT, is considered by many to be the most social hiking trail in the U.S.

You can find plenty of silence and solitude on the AT if you want it, but it also offers countless opportunities to get to know your fellow hikers along the way.

It was proposed in 1921, completed in 1937, and designated a National Scenic Trail along with the Pacific Crest Trail in 1968.

Hiking the AT is an epic undertaking.

The route stretches some 2,190 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, north along the ridges and contours of the Appalachian Mountains, through 14 states to the rock- and pine-strewn slopes slopes of Mount Katahdin, Maine, in the far northeast of the U.S.

It's up there with Mount Everest for name recognition.

Around 3,000 thru-hikers attempt to hike it each year -- way more than any other trail of its length.

And an estimated 3 million people hike at least some part of it, called section hiking, every year.

Today, I'm here hiking what is known as the roller coaster in Virginia, looking for the Bear's Den and the Castle.

Now, if that sounds like I'm in some kind of Disney-style theme park, nothing could be further from the truth.

Look around -- dense forests, rock-strewn trails, cliffs, and inclines.

This is an undulating landscape.

Today's hike will take me through what many hikers consider the most unique, historic, and scenically varied section of the trail.

It's a 25-mile stretch from the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Virginia to the historic town of Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, and then onwards into Maryland.

Of course, to get to this point, a thru-hiker would have started on a mountaintop about a thousand miles away.

The southern terminus of the trail, Springer Mountain, Georgia, is marked by a simple metal plaque -- little fanfare for the drama of the northbound journey ahead.

From Georgia, crossing the Nantahala River, the trail hits successive mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.

[ Soft music plays ] In Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, you come to understand another name for the trail -- ♪♪ the Long Green Tunnel... ♪♪ ...for you can walk for miles in dense forest, green, leafy canopy all around.

♪♪ By the time you nudge into Virginia at the 450-mile mark, your body has attuned to the rhythm, and 25 miles a day are possible.

At Mount Rogers state park in the Grayson Highlands, wild ponies visit your campsite, and the fields of rhododendrons light up the green meadows with explosions of pink.

♪♪ Now, you could hike southbound.

The trail's motto since 1923 has been "Maine to Georgia."

But we're going south to north, in deference to the direction taken by the vast majority of thru-hikers, who walk with spring to reach certain points on the trail during optimal weather conditions.

And there is actually a third way to do it, as it happens.

It's called the flip-flop.

The AT has become so popular in recent years that more and more hikers start their journey at Harpers Ferry, the midway point, do the northern or southern sections, then return to Harpers Ferry later to complete the other half.

Indeed, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy encourages this to prevent congestion.

Congestion on a nature hike -- it's hard to believe, I know.

Then again, attracting city dwellers to nature and fresh mountain air was the exact vision of the AT's founder.

♪♪ The AT was conceived more than a century ago by Benton MacKaye, a Harvard-educated forester and co-founder of the Wilderness Society.

To him, the Appalachian Mountains were a last bulwark against the urbanization of the eastern US.

The story goes that he stood on a mountaintop in New Hampshire, looked at the ribbon of majestic green crests rolling south, and decided a trail was needed to connect the highest crests in the north with the tallest in the south.

MacKaye's vision was a trail that would allow city people to enjoy leisure and study nature -- mountains as antidote to contemporary life.

♪♪ Every dreamer needs a doer, though.

And the AT found one in Myron Avery, a native of Maine, World War I veteran, and a Harvard graduate like MacKaye.

He muscled the 2,000-mile route through the halls of Congress and layers of bureaucracy and strong-armed clubs and volunteers to clear and build it.

In the end, the AT didn't connect the mountains that MacKaye was thinking of, but it's glorious nonetheless.

Avery became the first man to walk the entire trail, though not all in one go.

It took him 16 years.

Nowadays on the trail, you quickly become used to the company of fellow hikers.

And far more than any other National Scenic Trail, you're close to civilization, towns, suburbs, and even big cities.

How are you doing?

Yet of the 3,000 or so thru-hikers who attempt the AT each year, only about 25% finish.

And while you're often close to civilization, there are the usual dangers -- copperhead snakes, black bears, extremes in temperature, and really rugged sections where it's easy to fall and injure yourself.

♪♪ Everyone who spends time on the AT talks about the wonderful sense of community.

As much as people come here to escape the grind of the city, they also come to seek connection with kindred spirits.

And since its birth, the AT has attracted an incredible cast of characters.

One of my favorites is the story of Emma Gatewood, better known as Grandma Gatewood.

She became the first woman, at age 67, to complete a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

That was in 1955.

By 1964, she'd walked the trail twice more and became the first person to hike the AT end-to-end three times.

And, then, there's the legendary Bill Irwin.

In the 1990s, with the help of his guide dog, a German shepherd named Orient, Irwin became the first blind person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

In all, Irwin and Orient walked for 8 1/2 months.

In the course of his hike, Irwin fell as many as 40 times a day.

And when he was asked how he persevered in the face of such difficulties, he replied, "God led the dog, and the dog led me."

Those are just two of the thousands of amazing humans who have walked this trail.

You never know who you're gonna meet out there, but odds are they'll have a trail name with an interesting backstory, like the fellow I ran into on a side trail into town.

Davie: Hey.

Paquin: Hey, how's it going?

Davie: Good, man.

How are you?

Paquin: Good.

How are you?

Davie: Good.

I'm Mick.

Paquin: Mick, I'm Popeye.

Davie: That's your trail name, I assume.

Paquin: It's my trail name, yes.

Davie: So you're a thru-hiker?

Paquin: Yeah.

Davie: You're going all the way, northbound.

Paquin: All the way to Maine.

Davie: Oh, wow.

And how long have you been on the trail for?

Paquin: My third-month anniversary will be on June 10th.

Davie: Three months.

Wow.

Paquin: Yeah.

Davie: And how are you feeling physically?

Mentally?

Paquin: Well, I got a little issue with my toe and my foot, but the mental game is the toughest.

Davie: Is it?

Why is that?

Paquin: It's just, it's so easy to want to get off the trail at some point in time.

And when you're in states like Virginia, which is the longest state on trail, it's just the constant repetition, you know, rocks, hills, rocks, hills.

Pick up your tent, put it away, feed yourself.

Davie: Well, how do you keep going when you -- when you reach those hard moments where you just want to give up?

What keeps you moving forward?

Paquin: Well, for example, yesterday there was ladies doing trail magic with their daughters And then miles up the road.

Davie: What did that -- What does that mean?

Paquin: They -- Trail magic can be a variety of different things.

It's -- there's no one set rule.

But they had like sodas, Gatorade, chips, snacks, because you're always eating junk food out here to keep the calories up, you know?

But, yeah, trail magic can be anything -- Give a ride into town.

I had a guy who was getting into his car once.

He said, "You want a Snickers?

I'm going home."

I said, "Sure," and you just chat and meet people.

I think that's the best part about it is meeting people and the views when you get the views.

But meeting people is definitely number one.

Davie: Well, thank you again.

Paquin: Alright.

Davie: It's been such a pleasure.

Paquin: Nice talking to you.

Davie: Nice talking to you.

Good luck with it all.

Watch out for the -- Paquin: Happy hiking.

Davie: Thank you.

Watch out for the rattlesnakes.

Paquin: Will do.

Davie: Alright.

♪♪ For most of the Appalachian Trail, you're hiking among the trees with few landmarks in the distance to guide your way.

Only occasionally does your view turn into a vista.

But here is one place where it does.

This is Bear's Den Overlook.

It faces west to the wild heartland of America, and is one of the most stunning views along the southern half of the trail.

Hikers who've made it this far are thrilled to get a bird's-eye glimpse of the Shenandoah River far below.

But even greater excitement is for what lies just ahead.

♪♪ ♪♪ This is Bear's Den Lodge.

Back in the 1930s, when the AT was only just being built, it was mostly wealthy people, the leisure class, who would retreat up here to the mountains to cool off in summer.

This house behind me was built in 1935 for Huron and Francesca Lawson, a wealthy couple from Washington, D.C.

He was a doctor.

She was an opera singer.

They would charge a nickel to people who wanted to see the view from the rocks down below.

When the house was abandoned in the 1970s, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy bought it.

And now it's one of the most popular overnight stops for thru-hikers.

[Mid-tempo guitar music plays] Perhaps that's partly because it's within a day's hike of Harpers Ferry, where I'm headed myself.

For the past nine years, Glenn Brining has been taking care of both the Den and its guests.

And like most folks I've met on the AT, there's a story.

How much of the trail have you hiked?

Breining: Nothing.

Davie: Nothing?

Breining: Nothing.

[ Breining laughs ] Davie: Why not?

I'm too busy.

I've no desire.

Davie: No desire to do it at all?

Breining: No.

Davie: Really?

Literally, you haven't done any of it.

Breining: I go out and work on the trail.

That's about it.

I cut trees down.

Davie: Somebody told me you were in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Breining: I was.

Yeah, I was 82nd Airborne.

I was 82nd Airborne for two years.

And then Charlie, fourth and ninth Arctic Airborne for two years.

Davie: Wait, those guys are tough.

I mean, 82nd Airborne soldier would -- Breining: Because in my experience, the 82nd Airborne -- I don't put a pack on for the rest of my life, man.

I'm not putting that thing on my back again.

And I'm not sleeping on the ground.

I like a bed.

I like a couch.

I like a kitchen.

And I commend -- I commend them.

I respect them for doing that.

But it's not for me.

[Mid-tempo folk music plays] Davie: So, Glenn, some people call this area Harpers Ferry, this region, the spiritual halfway point of the Appalachian Trail.

What -- What does that mean?

What do they mean by that?

Breining: It pretty much means that you're 2,190 some-odd miles the whole trail.

We're about the 1,000 point, so this pretty much is the halfway point.

You know, like I always tell hikers, it's all downhill from here now, brother!

[ Both laugh ] Davie: How many thru-hikers do you get through here every year?

Breining: Do about 6,000 people total a year.

Of that, there's Boy Scouts, there's section hikers.

We also are on the Trans-Virginia Trail.

There's a 550-mile bike ride that this is their first stop at camp here.

They come in, you get a bunk, a shower, pizza, ice cream, soda, laundry, and a pancake breakfast in the morning.

Davie: For how much?

Breining: For $35.

Davie: For $35?

Breining: We try to make sure we don't get cheap crap.

You get the real quality pizza.

You get a Ben and Jerry's or a Talenti or a Haagen-Dazs, and you get a soda.

Wow, that sounds like a pretty good deal.

Breining: It's a great deal.

Davie: I bet -- I mean, how much do the hikers appreciate?

Breining: They love it, man.

They love it.

Like, when they come here, we'll do 30, 40 people a night.

Davie: They want the community.

Breining: Yeah.

The thing is, if you don't want the community, you go southbound.

Southbound is like 600 to 1,000 hikers the most.

They're all by themselves.

They're all, like, solitary figures that are quiet and just, you know... Davie: So there's two different kinds of AT hikers.

Breining: Different personalities, totally different personalities.

So those going from the north to the south are solitary.

Breining: Solitary, just want to be like, you know.

I just like the way you say solitary.

[ Laughs ] Davie: And those coming from the south to the north are part of the bubble.

Breining: The want the party and the hangout, the community, Woodstock, and all that, yeah.

Davie: Right.

Right, right.

Breining: Yeah.

Davie: Do you think you're ever gonna get off your backside and actually do some walking on this trail?

Breining: Hell, no.

[ Both laugh ] That's my claim to fame.

[ Both laugh ] [Up-tempo folk music plays] Davie: A short walk from Glenn and Bear's Den Lodge, and you're on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, looking east.

[ Water babbling] And like Glenn says, it's all downhill from here to the Shenandoah River.

The trail meanders through Harpers Ferry for two miles, and it's an important two miles.

It's a glimpse into world historic events and people.

This is Jefferson's Rock.

Thomas Jefferson stood here on October 25, 1783, and wrote that this was perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.

Check out the view down this way -- the crashing waters of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers converging below us.

♪♪ ♪♪ Harpers Ferry is most famous, though, for events that came to a head in this building known known as John Brown's Fort.

[ Tense chattering ] In the first half of the 19th century, tension was rising between America's north and south over the issue of slavery, so much so that many feared the nation was ready to explode.

Harpers Ferry was then part of Virginia, a slave state, and it was a booming rail town, river town, and weapons armory.

And this building, erected in 1848, was the Armory's fire engine and guardhouse.

[ Poignant music plays ] It was in 1859 that the abolitionist John Brown tried to seize the weapons of the armory and start a revolution to free slaves.

Brown's last stand was to be locked in this very building, the old firehouse.

[ Gunshots ring out ] He was ultimately captured, tried, and hanged for treason against the State of Virginia.

But while the raid failed, its cause would succeed.

Just 16 months later, the American Civil War began, eventually leading to the abolition of slavery.

Now the trail goes through the campus of Storer College, founded after the war as a school for freed African Americans.

It remained open through the period of school segregation here until 1955, providing an education to over 7,000 students.

As we leave beautiful Harpers Ferry, we begin the northern half of the trail with a step over the Potomac River and into Maryland.

From Maryland, the AT crosses the Mason-Dixon Line, once the dividing line between slave states and free, and passes into Pennsylvania.

What lies ahead is another thousand miles of extraordinary drama.

[ Poignant music continues ] From the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border, you hike the oldest section of the trail... [ Soft down-tempo music plays ] ...from the Delaware Water Gap to Bear Mountain-Harriman State Park in New York, which opened in 1923.

[ Waves rumbling ] As you surge further north through New York State, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, it's astonishing to consider that this thin green line, this narrow thread of wilderness, passes as close as 30 miles to New York City and some of the most populous urban areas of the Western Hemisphere.

♪♪ Central to your experience will be the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

Tough terrain, but with several days of spectacular views above the tree line.

Pay tribute there to the visionary Benton MacKaye because it said the White Mountains inspired his idea for the trail.

And finally, we come to the mighty Mount Katahdin in Maine.

[Soft mid-tempo music plays] the end or start of the trail.

Katahdin is only accessible for a few months of the year.

For those who time it right, it's worth the wait.

Male hiker: I'm about 100 yards from the summit.

Female hiker: So close we can taste it.

[ Male hiker laughs ] Female hiker: Almost to the top.

Almost to the top.

[ Wind gusting ] Male hiker: Yeah!

Whoa!

[ Wind howling ] Man: [Chuckles] Whoo!

Man #2: Yeah.

♪♪ Davie: Whether you take six months to walk the AT end to end in one go, or hike it section by section over 10 years, or hit the trail for just a few hours once in your lifetime, the AT offers an accessible opportunity to commune with nature in the way that its founders proposed -- to walk away from the hubbub of daily life in order to look outwards and inward and see the world and yourself from a perspective that many of us have almost forgotten, or maybe never known.

♪♪ Well, I haven't made it to the end of the AT this time.

My hike is finishing here, just outside of Harpers Ferry, but I feel lucky to have experienced even a little bit of this incredible trail.

For now, I'm going to cool my heels in the river and just float for the next few miles.

♪♪ After all, trails don't have to be all hard work.

There are many ways to enjoy them and their surroundings.

[Mid-tempo piano music plays] And in the past decade, that's just what Americans have been doing in growing numbers on the Appalachian Trail and the other extraordinary trails we've followed in this series.

They're rediscovering their connection to the natural world and the joy and wonder to be found in exploring it.

These trails were created with the intent that they'd be available for future generations, thanks to dedicated custodians and scores of volunteers.

It's a vision that has come to fruition.

♪♪