From Floods to Fire: Climate Change Hurts Trail Communities and Hikers Need To Step Up

There has been extreme weather on both coasts this season. Whether or not you believe in global warming — you can’t deny it. There were record-setting wildfires on the west coast and a record-setting hurricane that just hit the east coast. For the first time in history, the southernmost 800 miles of the Appalachian Trail are not welcoming hikers.

Hot Springs, North Carolina. Photo credit: Illuminated Crow

Bigger Than a Thru-Hike

This is bigger than our thru-hikes. To me, as I hiked the PCT this year, the most concerning part of the fires was not the sections of trail I couldn’t do — but the extensive damage they’d done to the environment and the communities. It’s only getting worse.

In 2023 when I hiked the AT, it was one of the wettest years on record. In 2024, as I’ve finished the PCT, the wildfires in Oregon were some of the worst the state has ever seen. First it was a year of rain. Then it was a year of fire. In fact, just last year, the Sierras were socked in with snow and impassable. This year, fire closures dominated the trail and smoke filled the sky in sections. It’s not natural for years to differ so much in extremes.

Smoke from the Park Fire in Northern California, just outside Chester.

And now the southern 800 miles of the AT are practically underwater and shut down. This is beyond abnormal. The AT does not have large-scale closures. It’s one of its main draws over the PCT, in my opinion. The fact that both are having major closures this year is unsettling, to say the least.

These severe weather patterns are a violent warning sign of climate change. According to Euro News, “Hurricane Helene is the eighth category four or five hurricane to make landfall in the US in the last eight years. That’s as many of these intense hurricanes as hit the US in the past 57 years.” These climate changes are coming quickly and devastatingly.

It Wouldn’t Be the AT Without the Towns

If you’d have told me as I walked across the bridge in Erwin, Tennessee that it would be swept away next year by a massive flood, I would’ve laughed in your face. But it happened. None of us expected this.

Damascus, before it was underwater.

Erwin, Tennessee, where I hugged my first trail family goodbye, is underwater. Hot Springs, where I found my favorite bandana in Bluff Mountain Outfitters, is underwater. Damascus, where I spent the most time on my thru-hike — camping with all my closest friends at Trail Days and taking a double zero at the Broken Fiddle Hostel — is underwater. Asheville, where dozens of my trail friends live, is underwater.

There’s people hurting in the trail towns we know and love. The trail, the towns and the people that have all given us so much have been decimated. I don’t think I could’ve completed my Appalachian Trail thru-hike without the kindness I experienced in those towns in the first 800 miles. It brings tears to my eyes to think of the trail and the people I love so dearly so violently torn apart by this disaster. 

The view of Erwin, Tennessee, just last year.

Now, we have the opportunity to help those who helped us when we needed it. When the trail was hard, these towns kept me going. Now times are hard for these towns — and we need to keep them going. Here’s how:

What Can I Do To Help?

Do:

  • Donate to one of the organizations listed here
  • Donate blood
  • Stay up to date on the coverage of Helene’s aftermath 

Don’t:

  • Travel to the affected areas to help
  • Donate supplies (unless specifically requested)

Specific Places to Donate By Town

Asheville, NC

Hot Springs, NC

Damascus, VA

Erwin, Tennessee

  • Neighbor to Neighbor East Tennessee Disaster Relief

Small Changes Make Big Environmental Impacts

I’ve walked through miles of burn scars in Oregon and cried at the ash on my trail runners that was once forest. I’ve waded through ankle deep mud across Vermont. I’ve felt ash rain on my shoulders and seen the sky blackened with smoke in Northern California. I’ve watched the way a river swallows the trail in Maine. I’ve reached Katahdin in a hurricane — when it’s almost 200 miles from the coast. I reached Canada in a dusting of flurries when I had just skipped a fire closure. I’ve almost lost hope for our earth. For our home.

Damascus, VA, underwater. Credit: Tyler Eugene

But I refuse to give up. I insist in almost all my blogs that there has to be small things we can all do to help her. Writing is a way that I try to raise awareness. I will continue to advocate for the earth in my blogs because of how much the earth gives me. It is not the end of the world if we don’t make it so. 

As thru-hikers, weekend warriors and day-hikers — it’s even more our responsibility. We can use our love of nature to educate those who might not understand. We can use the minimalism we developed as thru-hikers to get by with a little less in the regular world. Boycott the leading companies contributing most to carbon emissions. Pick up trash when you see it on the trail. Consume less new goods — try to thrift clothes, furniture, appliances. Volunteer for trail maintenance. Eat vegetarian. Turn off the lights when you leave the house. Take shorter showers. Help those affected by disaster. Spread the word. Donate. 

Time To Provide for the Trail

The trail always provides for us when we need it — but I think it’s time for the hikers to provide for it through donations, environmental advocacy and education. If we love these trails to devote half a year to walking 2,000 or more miles on them — we love them enough to preserve them for future generations. It does not have to end with us.

Main Street in Damascus, flooded. Courtesy of state Sen. Todd Pillion.

The end of our thru hikes is not only the beginning of lifelong bonds to our trail friends, but the trail itself. It’s a commitment. It’s said on our little plastic hang tags, the physical signifier of our thru-hike — that we’d leave the trail better than we found it. What if we all committed to giving back to the trail and its towns over the course of our lives? What if there was a future where our kids could still thru-hike a trail in its entirety — without a biblical flood or violent wildfires? What if it’s not too late?

The state of the earth seems terrifying at this point. But so did the start of each of my thru-hikes. 2,000 miles seems impossible. But I started both with a single step. And another. And another.

It was hard — the hardest things I’ve ever done — but it was the most beautiful too. It was beautiful because I didn’t know if either could truly be done. And then I did it.

We all need to start taking small steps to help our long trails. To help our friends in affected communities. To help our home. Things will get better. But only if we start taking steps forward now.

Then maybe someday, we’ll be hugging our kids when they return from their hikes, and we’ll be old and wrinkled saying, “I hiked that when all I had was an app on FarOut and the hills were steeper and the air was clogged with smoke and I waded through knee deep mud and I had more blisters than I had toes and —”

And they’ll say, “But, Dad/Mom, on my hike there weren’t any fires. There weren’t any floods. I had some blisters but… the trail’s really wonderful, isn’t it?”

And we can say, “Yes, it still is.”

And what a beautiful future that would be. 

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Comments 1

  • thetentman : Oct 6th

    Great and inciteful post.

    Thx.

    Cheers.

    Reply

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