10 Reasons Why I Hated the Smokies
My name is Amanda but on the Appalachian Trail, I go by Moss. How did I get the trail name Moss? We’ll get into that later.
For now, I must explain why you are just now hearing from me when I’m over four hundred miles into my thru hike.
Well, back in September 2021, I applied and was accepted to be a Trek blogger. A month before my hike began, I emailed Zach and told him I no longer was interested in writing for the Trek; I just wanted to hike. Zach was more than understanding and wished me happy trails.
All of this changed once I got out of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Why?
A) I felt as though by the time I exited the Smokies I was a more confident hiker with a routine and better idea of how to time-manage hiking, town visits, and writing. I thought that if I could update my Facebook then I could blog for the Trek. This had nothing to do with the Smokies in particular, but more so with having over 200 miles of thru hiking under my belt.
B) I hated the Smokies so bad that I wanted to tell everyone in the world. Or at least everyone in the Trek world.
So I emailed Zach and asked if I could return to the Trek and he and Kendra welcomed me back with open arms.
So let’s get started. It seems as though thru hikers either really love or really hate the Smokies. I choose the latter. Why I hate the Smokies (in no particular order):
1. You have to pay to hike
I know the Smokies are in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the key words being national park and they are not known for having tons of funding. But charging each thru hiker $20.00 to hike through the park seems a little steep. Especially when the park is no longer prepared for the amount of hikers that come through. Many thru hikers, even the beginners, by the time they reach the Smokies are more experienced with Leave No Trace Principles than day hikers. In my experience, it isn’t thru hikers who vandalize and destroy the trail; it’s the visitors who are only at the high-trafficked locations for only a few hours. Why charge the thru hikers?
I understand permits serve more purposes than just monetary gain for the GSMNP, such as having emergency contact information and accountability in the event a hiker is injured or missing. It does seem as though the GSMNP would have the ability to maintain process for obtaining a permit for these reasons, and eliminate the fee for thru hikers.
My entire point for this reason is that I had to pay to have no tent space, little water sources, and no shelter spaces, on top of the crappy weather conditions.
2. There were very little water sources actually on trail
Off of the top of my head, I can only remember one water source in the Smokies that was actually on trail and it was towards the beginning (NOBO). I understand that water sources are predominantly not man-made but this was just another reason for my dislike of the AT through this section. Majority of the water sources were located at shelters and when I say at shelters I mean another quarter mile passed the shelters into the middle of an abyss and always downhill.
3. Shelters are far off trail
This is not true for ALL the shelters in the Smokies, but a few of them and it was always the ones where I needed to go. The shelter placement in the Smokies is odd, although pretty frequent, some are in odd locations in relation to mileage.
For example, one day I remember from where I started the first shelter was three miles away and the second was about another eight. I chose the second, as most do. Because of this, majority of the thru hikers would end up at the same shelters every night. Meaning the shelters would fill up, there would be little places to tent because pre-COVID, tenting was discouraged. One Ridgerunner we ran into in the Smokies even admitted that the Smokies were not made for stealth camping or tenting, which is why the shelters were built large. And they are. They’re very nice too. Double deckers that I witnessed fit sixteen hikers in and some with a fireplace inside of it. Don’t mind the “Choose not to build a fire” sign.
4. No campsites on trail
See reasonings above. But I wished while hiking through the Smokies that there were designated campsites along the Trail like in other areas of the AT mainly because of the crowded shelter locations along the way.
Not only are campsites not on trail, there are very few tent sites at the shelters too. One night, my tramily and I set up tents on an embankment so steep we needed our trekking poles to get out of it. We had no choice either. By the time we got to camp, two dozen others were already there and that doesn’t include the hikers utilizing the shelter. It was also the coldest night we experienced during our time in the Smokies.
After Newfound Gap reopened, it became a race every day to the next shelter. We all knew shelter spaces and tent spaces were limited so it became a first-come first-served with the last hikers to arrive getting the bottom of the barrel options. This made our daily hikes not as fun and feel more like a competition.
5. Sometimes a privy, sometimes a poop field
I very much realize I signed up to go live in the woods for six months and with that comes the need to answer nature when it calls and more often than not I need to pick up whenever I’m in the wilderness. With that being said, in the Smokies, you may have a privy, you may have a poop field. That’s because, if the word on the street (trail) is true, Tennessee has poop fields and North Carolina has privies. Staying at a shelter in NC became a luxury during the Smokies. It beat the heck out of walking into a “toilet area” filled with toilet paper signifying that some hiker before you relieved themself there. Is it mud? Feces? Animal or human? The poop field is a game in itself.
6. Weather
Some hikers enjoyed the Smokies because of the challenge and part of that challenge was the completely unpredictable weather. I like to compare it to the Hunger Games where someone sits at a control panel and at random changes the weather. Though challenging, and rewarding upon completion, I still add this to my list of why I hate the Smokies.
7. Bottleneck of people during road closures
I’m never going to fault authorities for closing roads for safety reasons, the problem however with closing Newfound Gap for example, is once it opened we had over a dozen additional hikers on top of us the remainder of the section because they all got back on as soon as it opened. This led to overcrowded shelters which I’ve already discussed.
8. No dogs
One of my favorite parts of hiking is seeing doggies. And they’re not allowed in the Smokies.
9. No cell service
Again, I know I signed up to live in the woods for six months and part of that agreement is understanding there’s not always cell service. But it seems as though every time I’m near a infamous brown national park sign there’s no cell phone service. I must admit, at times, I enjoy not having cell service. I get much more reading and writing done. But sometimes it’s nice to be able to call a shuttle in a national park.
10. Other trails and lack of blazes
Some days in the Smokies I wondered if I had gotten lost on one of the many other trails because of poorly-marked sections. When coming up to signs designating which trail was what, some signs were so old they were hard to read and most had inaccurate mileage on it. I tend to be on the “the more blazes the better” train when it comes to finding my way around. There were so many additional trails in the Smokies that intersected with the AT that this was a daily occurrence.
With all that being said, I must admit that my time in the Smokies I was very fortunate because I had great weather. It could have been much worse. This tells me that if I hated the Smokies with great weather, I would definitely hate it with worse weather. And my dislike for the Smokies is more so in comparisons to other sections of the trail thus far.
I believe that hiking the section from Erwin, TN to up and over Roan Mountain would be a great alternative to hiking the Smokies if one still wanted great views, challenging weather, and spruce trees with mini pine cones. This section was beautiful and I would definitely re-do it in a section hike but I can’t say that I would re-do the Smokies.
Putting the second half of my Smokies permit in the lockbox is definitely a memorable moment for me. I don’t see myself returning.
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Comments 16
What do I think? I think the author should stay home or go on a trip with sherpas to spoon feed her. Stick to Instagram travel. This reads like someone who doesn’t know how to plan their trip like a grown up and expects the modern conveniences everywhere they go. If $20 to the national parks is too much for you, maybe stay home and watch backpacking shows instead of whining like this. We didn’t come here to read edgelord commentary.
Hi Jester, thank you for your comment. This blog wasn’t written to be “edgelord commentary”. It is merely my opinion after hiking all the way through the Smokies, and in comparison to other parts of the trail. When speaking with other hikers, they seem to either really love the Smokies, or really despise them, like me. After all, I think hikers are entitled to their favorite and least favorite sections. Thanks again for reading!
Thank you for sharing, good and bad. To me it’s informative to someone that wants to hike the AT one day, but have no clue what to expect, etc.
Thanks again
I would gently point out that most of these problems seem due to overcrowding, which will likely only be relieved thru personal choices, like choosing less crowded trails. A lot of the choice to hike AT seems to be about bragging rights, rather than specific sights or experiences that can only be had on the AT. May I suggest the CDT? Overuse not only creates these annoyances, it’s not good for the trail as an ecological entity.
No dogs allowed?! I wouldn’t like it either.
LOL Have fun in Rocksylvania!
Author, a thru-hiker, had to pay a whole $20 to hike through the Smokies? No dogs, shelters are inconvenient, water is inconvenient… How terrible! As a section hiker, I had to pay a $10 fee for every shelter or campsite I stayed at in the Smokies and I’m not allowed the flexibility that a thru-hiker does to stop at any shelter if I want to. I know thru-hikers sometimes get the undeserved stereotype of acting privileged, but this really does read as having been written by a privileged thru-hiker who gets upset if everything isn’t to their liking.
You are on to something.
Many places have shelters and water a lot further from the trail and given millions use the trail every year and less than four thousand attempt s Thru-Hike, for 1% of the users some are pretty demanding.
I’m looking forward to her comments on the Whites.
:).
10 Reasons Why I Hated This Post
1. Complaining about 20 bucks being “steep” after spending thousands of dollars on a thru hike.
2. Complaining about water not conveniently flowing directly into your water bottles and filtering itself.
3. Complaining about shelters being far off trail and immediately stating it’s not true for all of them.
4. Complaining about lack of campsites as though tents require official sites to be set up.
5. Complaining about lack of privies, a commodity, when you’re in the woods for days at a time. Then also acknowledging you made this choice while still complaining.
6. Complaining about the weather – the freaking weather – as though you otherwise have control and get perfect conditions outside the Smokies.
7. Complaining about the mild inconvenience of roads closed for safety reasons. Also the terrible, use of, commas.
8. Complaining about not seeing dogs, which as we know is the wildlife everyone comes to the Smokies to spot.
9. Complaining about not having cell service as though the rest of the trail is nothing but 4 bars and 5g.
10. Complaining about the trail connecting with other trails and not being about to read them as though apps and Google maps don’t exist to show you exactly which one is the AT.
It is merely my opinion after reading all the way through the post.
The Smokies are about a LOT more than through hikers. The other trails serve the millions of taxpayers who support the national parks. The $20 fee probably does not cover the cost of snow rescue of the early unprepared hikers. Be grateful that you have rangers looking out for you
I hope you’ll soften your stance on a lot of these issues, because most of them are going to happen to you often as you head north. The Smokies are unique in their permitting policies and dogs are allowed most places along the trail. But everything else you listed is just AT hiker life. Access to water, shelters being far off-trail, bottlenecks, weather, unmarked trail junctions, etc are just part of the deal.
If you hated the Smokies for those reasons during great weather, then maybe thru-hiking isn’t for you… Because you have loads more of trail ahead where the shelters won’t be right on trail or you’ll have to walk 10 miles in between water sources just to find that it’s another half mile blue blaze to the slowly dripping spring that takes 10 min to fill one liter. & not having cell service is the whole point of going into the woods for most people. Shuttles are a convienence, that’s for sure. But Thru-hikers have been doing this trail looooong before the shuttles ever existed. They’re a luxury. Most of the things you listed are parts of the entire thru-hiking experience. There’s nothing wrong with realizing that you hate thru-hiking, it’s definitely not for everyone. Also, $20 is not a high price to experience a national park. Most parks cost that or more to enter. & as far as weather, just wait until you hit the whites & southern Maine. If you thought the Smokies could have unpredictable & sketchy weather, then you don’t even know what you’re in for up north. Reading this article, it seems as though maybe you were just unprepared for what thru-hiking actually entails.
From my perspective, “no cell service’ is a feature, not a bug. Keep the phone turned off and enjoy the woods! Also the comment about TN vs NC privies makes no sense at all. The entire trail within the Smokies is managed by the same agency. There are no state laws that would supersede NPS authority to make decisions about privy construction. It makes no sense that the park service would decide to build privies only on one side of the state line. Sounds like an “urban legend” (although that does not seem like the right term in this context!)
I am also a little baffled by the comment about shelters being far from the trail. I have hiked the entire Smokies section and I recall most of the shelters being very close to the trail. You will find that many shelters are 1/4 to 1/2 mile off the main route throughout the entire AT – it’s a matter of topography.
The author may not like most hiking beyond a narrow AT-centric bubble. And a small part of the AT at that.
The AT in NH, for example, may not be to the author’s liking either).
Good luck up the trail.
So…. a femme writer comes to give their opinion… and a bunch of bros show up in the comments to attack? Funny how that works
So…. a femme writer comes to give their opinion… and a bunch of bros show up in the comments to attack?
Funny how that works