Description
Breaking Trail in the Central Appalachians
In November 22, 1927, six men (Avery, Ricker, Schmeckebier, Schairer, Corson and Anderson) gather to form a new club. Their job - to build the Appalachian Trail from Pine Grove Furnace in Pennsylvania to Rockfish Gap in Virginia.
But as PATC member and author Dave Bates points out, that is not all they did. PATC scouted, designed, selected and in some cases built, the entire Appalachian Trail all the way from Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey to Springer Mountain in Georgia, plus the trail through Maine. And because of Myron Avery's dominant personality, president of PATC and chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference at the same time, PATC became ATC, and ATC became PATC. This is the early history of the club that build the Trail.
Bates has recaptured the enthusiasm, the energy, the passion of those early trail builders. Liberally illustrated with old photos, it takes you back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the AT was just a series of paint blazes in the wilderness.
