Appalachian Trail ridge runner

[blu666z]

A few weeks ago, my grandfather passed away in Knoxville, TN. Since moving out West, I go back home very infrequently. While I was back for the funeral, I had some time to go hiking with a long-time friend who still lives in Knoxville. Started at Clingmans Dome and went to Silers Bald shelter. Maybe an hour into our hike, we ran into a volunteer ridge runner who was being trailed by a couple guys. We stopped, chatted him up, and found out that his 'shadows' were a journalist and photographer for a local paper. Got home from work yesterday and my Mom and sent me a copy of the article that made the paper last week. I know it's not PDX related, but I hope you guys enjoy it none the less.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/3 ... ntry-beat/ <---Photos and Video

Backcountry beat has 65-year-old ridge runner patrolling 72 miles

Good knees and love of the outdoors keep Jim Mowbray patrolling 72-mile stretch of Appalachian Trail

GATLINBURG - Two weeks ago Jim Mowbray left Russell Field at 7:15 a.m. and began hiking north along the Appalachian Trail toward Silers Bald.

It was Mowbray's fourth day patrolling the AT in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His frame backpack weighed 46 pounds, but his knees felt good, and with a resting heart rate of only 52 beats per minute, Mowbray considered himself to be in pretty good shape for a 65-year-old.

At 4 p.m., after hiking 15 miles, Mowbray reached the Silers Bald trail shelter, elevation 5,607 feet. He patrolled the area for trash, then emptied his backpack of the abandoned camping gear he had collected earlier that day - two can openers from Russell Field, a coffee pot from Spence Field and a coffee mug from Derrick Knob.

"Can you believe this stuff?" Mowbray said. "It's crazy what you find."

For the last four years, Mowbray has been the volunteer ridge runner along all 72 miles of the AT through the Smokies.

This summer, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy awarded him its 2007 Partnership Award as Volunteer of the Year.

Mowbray never imagined he'd spend his retirement hiking 1,200 miles per year in the park. After retiring from the U.S. Navy in 1985, he took up scenic photography, which introduced him to the Smokies, and re-kindled his interest in the outdoors.

In 2005 he quit photography and began volunteering as a ridge runner.

Except for a few weeks in the winter, he hikes the AT year-round, maintaining a schedule of 10 days off, and 10 days on. When not hiking 12 to 20 miles a day in the park, he's at home in Shady Valley, Tenn., resting and doing his laundry.
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Jim Mowbray - Ridge runner on the Appalachian Trail

Lt. Cmdr. Jim Mowbray stands in front of a Grumman A6A Intruder on USS Ranger in the Gulf of Tonkin, circa 1974. Mowbray was a weapons officer during the Vietnam War, and made 487 carrier landings in his Navy career.

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Mowbray serves as the eyes and ears of the park in the backcountry. He helps hikers who are in need, reports on trail conditions, and spreads the gospel of "leave-no-trace" camping all the way from Fontana Dam to Davenport Gap.

Two weeks ago, Mowbray's top priority was nuisance bears. Shortly after reaching the AT shelter at Silers Bald on the afternoon of Aug. 15, he was on his radio with park headquarters, updating them on a harrowing black bear encounter he'd had at Russell Field the night before.

It was 5 p.m., and Mowbray was in the Russell Field trail shelter taking notes when a black bear appeared out of nowhere. Only after Mowbray yelled and threw rocks did the bear reluctantly leave the campsite.

Half an hour later, Mowbray could hear the same bear feeding in a blackberry thicket several hundred yards away. As the bear drew closer, Mowbray could see she was trailed by two cubs.

Mowbray saw the adult bear scratch around in the dirt for buried trash and food scraps. For awhile, he lost sight of the bears. Then, off to the side, he saw the adult female charging from 25 feet away.

"It was lightning fast," Mowbray said. "I'd never been bluff-charged before. Without thinking, I yelled in the deepest bass voice I could muster. Fortunately, she backed off."

Park managers closed the Russell Field Shelter that day based on Mowbray's report, as well as previous reports of nuisance bear activity at the shelter.

Meanwhile, about 23 miles up the trail toward Newfound Gap, a black bear had spent that same night tearing a hole in the metal roof at the Mount Collins trail shelter, terrorizing 10 backpackers inside, and forcing the park service to close that shelter, too.

"Usually what I do is not super-interesting, but sometimes I'm the park's best source of information in a backcountry situation," Mowbray said. "I have enough life experience; I can evaluate things unbiasedly."

Mowbray's duties include checking people's reservations and permits at shelters along the AT. He had expected at least six people at Silers Bald that night, but no one showed up except a reporter and photographer from the News Sentinel.

There was plenty of room. As darkness fell, Mowbray turned on his headlamp and began filling out reports. There was a report on trail conditions, one for illegal campsites and one for wildlife encounters.

Another report asked Mowbray to rate the condition of the springs at various trail shelters. He reported that, except for Mollies Ridge and Spence Field, most of the springs were in good shape this summer, discharging about three quarts of water per minute.

"I crank out a lot of paper work," he said.

The next day we got up at 6:30 a.m. Less than an hour later, we were hiking north along the AT, toward the next shelter at Double Springs.

Mowbray said he sometimes hikes as much as 20 to 25 miles in a day, but can't do that kind of distance two days in a row. Sometimes when he sees novice hikers struggling up a hill, he offers to carry their pack.

Mowbray is employed by the Appalachian Trail Conference, with funding from Friends of the Smokies and additional help from the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club.

He said he considers the 6-mile stretch of the AT between Spence Field and Derrick Knob to be the toughest stretch in the Smokies.

And his favorite section of the AT in the park? That would be the exposed ridge and panoramic views from Icewater Spring to Tricorner Knob.

In March, April and May there are three additional ridge runners in the Smokies who serve the throngs of thru-hikers who pass through in their attempt to complete all 2,175 miles of the AT. At the height of the through-hiker season, when 30 to 40 hikers a day are entering the park headed north from Fontana Dam, Mowbray gets only four days off after working 10 days at a time.

"When I first started as a ridge runner, I knew I'd have to deal with a lot of people breaking the rules, and I was afraid that would be a turn-off," he said. "But those folks are a minority, maybe 5 percent or so."

Mowbray carries in his pack a first-aid kit, as well as two hand saws for removing blowdowns along the trail.

About one mile south of the Double Springs shelter we met Tim Runfola, from Fort Bragg, N.C., who had been at the Mount Collins shelter two nights before during the bear attack.

Mowbray took notes as Runfola described how the bear had tried to peel the roof metal back like a tin can, persisting even when the occupants of the shelter jabbed it with their hiking sticks.

"I've hiked every bit of this trail from here to Massachusetts, and I've never seen a bear go crazy like that," Runfola said. "I think I've had my fill of bears."

At the Double Springs trail shelter, Mowbray inspected the area for trash, filled his water bottle at the spring, and made sure the compost privy was in good condition.

"One of my responsibilities as a ridge runner is getting down and dirty with human waste," he said. "It makes some people turn green, but it has never bothered me."

Farther up the trail, he stopped to chat with a young couple who were day-hiking from the Clingmans Dome parking lot. Both wore running shoes, cotton T-shirts and shorts. Mowbray asked them where they were headed, and when they said they were not sure, he suggested they hike as far as the Double Springs shelter and turn around.

"That'll give you a good four-and-a-half-mile hike, with some pretty views," he said.

We reached Clingmans Dome at noon. Mowbray's truck was in the parking lot, and before we said goodbye, he outlined his itinerary for the next five days.

From Clingmans Dome, he would drive down to park headquarters to pick up a little bag of corn and cloth gunny sack. A peahen had been hanging around the AT shelter at Icewater Springs, and park officials had asked Mowbray to catch it. Apparently, the bird had been to Mount LeConte and back.

Over the next four days Mowbray would work his way up and back along the AT between Newfound Gap and Cosby Knob, hiking all day, and sleeping at trail shelters each night. On day 10, his final day, he planned to pull an all-out blitzkrieg - checking the Mount Collins, Double Springs, and Silers Bald trail shelters all in one day.

"I've never been much of an athlete, but I started walking when I got my first paper route at age 13, and I've never stopped. I'm blessed with good knees."

[Charley]

That's awesome! Thanks for putting this up.
Charley

[Grannyhiker]

Fascinating article! Another AT ridge runner is "Kentucky Graybeard," who this year has hiked the PCT. He finished Aug. 24. [url]ttp://www.kygreybeard.blogspot.com/[/url]