I am planning to hike from Clingmans Dome to Greensboro next summer, aboust 488 miles on trail. How long should I expect this section hike to take?

I have been doing a lot of research and it seems that it will likely take around 24-27 days to complete.

I am going to be 30 years old doing this hike, I am in very good shape. I plan to continue doing shakedown trips and getting my pack a light as possible. I am working on my endurance so I can aim for 20-25 miles per day after a few solid days on trail. Not planning to move fast and get injured, just hike from dawn til dusk every day. I realize summer is not ideal for this trail as it is hot, but I am a teacher and have this time off.

I already joined friends of the mst, downloaded the app, and started planning most of the trip. Any other advice will be appreciated really.

Before starting my thruhike of the MST I came to this subreddit and looked for posts like the one I’m about to submit and didn’t really find anything, so I’m hoping this helps a prospective thruhiker in the future.

Yesterday (8 Nov 22) I completed a thruhike of the MST. I followed the route as precisely as possible with only a few necessary detours. I started on 4 Sep 22, so the hike took me 66 days, only one of which was a zero day. I primarily used the MST iPhone app for navigation, but I did purchase the written guides and kept pdf copies of them on my phone. I did not use them often, but they were useful in clarifying some confusing signage.

Gear: The only gear that was specific to this trail was a safety orange bandanna and hat. Several sections of trail go through active hunting areas, and if you’re hiking in the fall it is hunting season. I did see many hunters while I was hiking, and they often had alcohol in their possession. I camp with a tent, but I know others have used tarps and hammocks to do this trail.

Resupply: This is one of the logistics I was most concerned about, but my concern was not necessary. My longest food carry (I average 17-18 miles/day) was 6 days, and that only happened once. My average food carry was 4 days, and several times after transitioning to the Piedmont portion of the trail I could carry 1-2 days of food knowing I was going to pass a Dollar General or Food Lion soon. I’m also a big fan of supporting local businesses, so I ate at quite a few small restaurants and delis as I hiked.

Camping: This is the greatest logistical challenge on this trail, in my opinion. There are very few established camping sites on this trail, and many long sections where camping is not legal. If you are not comfortable stealth camping this trail is going to be very expensive and hard to plan. I’m not going to confess any potential crimes here, but you will pass places along the route where, as one commenter on the app puts it, the stealth energy is strong. The MST site also has a list of trail supporters that you can use to plan, and they are organized by trail segment. I had mixed luck with this list. One town I contacted 4 trail supporters from the list and got no response, and in another town I was contacted by someone who knew I was coming and basically told that I was staying with him. Another supporter, who lives on the trail, spotted a couple of hikers that had not contacted him and took great care of them. All of the trail supporters that I stayed with were amazing people who were familiar with the trail in their area and were excited to help.

Road Walks: If you don’t realize that a good portion of this trail is road walking, you need to do more research before going in. I’m talking hundreds of miles. A lot of it is broken up with dirt roads (which I don’t count as road walking) or local trails, but some of the road walks are very long, on roads with narrow or heavily slanted shoulders, and on busy highways. I’ve done the Florida Trail, so road walks were not new to me, but this trail was marginally more challenging in that respect. Road walks are great for making good time, but it is harder on feet and joints and it is more difficult to find places to sleep that you don’t have to pay for, and sometimes there aren’t even places that you can pay for. I have a great appreciation for the network of churches in Segment 17 that allow hikers to camp on their properties. There are also a few fire stations that allow it.

Weather: Weather in NC is a bit chaotic, and can be even more so in the spring or fall. I got rained on for days at a time, and then had sunny weather for weeks. I had a tropical storm come through just as I was finishing the mountain portion of the trail, then another one threatening as I was finishing yesterday (that one may still happen, but I’m not out there). I came prepared for cold weather, and it did not freeze a single time. The temperature rarely went below 50 degrees or above 80, but after I finished the mountains the temperatures started to drop there rapidly. I wore a tshirt for the sections of the trail where I was under a tree canopy, then switched to a sun hoodie for the last 700 miles of the trail. I’d recommend preparing for colder weather than what I experienced and adapting while you’re here.

Terrain: The trail is basically broken up into three main terrain types. They are the mountains, the piedmont, and the coast. The trail starts on the Appalachian Trail in the Smokies and from there follows the Blue Ridge Parkway (I think less than 10 miles is on the actual Parkway, and a lot of that is right at the beginning) for a couple hundred miles. This part of the trail is challenging with a lot of ups and downs and unpredictable weather. The piedmont is flatter, but still a lot of rolling hills. It follows a couple or rivers and lake shores so there can be a lot of mosquitoes. Most of the hunting areas are in this section and can potentially be closed for hunting season. Once you start getting closer to the coast the trail flattens out even more. The beaches are beautiful, but weather can make them challenging. Between Topsail Island and the Outer Banks there is about 75 miles of trail that is on the actual beach. Walking long distances in sand is physically demanding, and you have to be aware of tides as high tide makes a couple of sections of the beach impassable.

This post got longer than I expected, but I hope someone can find it helpful. My Instagram handle is dadbod.dodds, and if anyone wants help planning a hike or has questions about the trail you can message me there. My profile is public and I love helping people get out and experience backpacking. I’ve done several other less common trails and I’m happy to help with those as well.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/active-shooting-reported-trail-raleigh-north-carolina-police/story?id=91345863

Coming up on my first segment hike. I’ve got my backcountry campsite reservations set for GSMNP. Are any additional reservations needed to park cars at Clingmans Dome and/or the visitor center near Mingus Mill?

I'm doing segments 9 and 10 over the next ten days. Got a late start from Bryan Park this morning, but I'm on a skateboard for this section so I'm still making ok time. I should make it to Guilford's NE Park in time for lunch.

Thank you to everyone that supports this trail system! This is going to be an awesome experience.

I've been working on the 40 hike challenge with a friend, and I thought we were on a time crunch in that you had to finish by March 2023. But I was looking at the site yesterday and didn't see that restriction anymore. Did they remove it? Can we take longer?

What kind of daily mileage can a novice kayaker (otherwise fit) expect to get heading east from Smithfield?

I'm planning to start segment hiking the MST soon. Seeing past posts about this, I'm already aware that there are difficulties with camping on early segments which spend the majority of the trail on the BRP land. I'm working on a plan for Segment 1 to determine where I can expect to camp safely. My goal is do do segment one over 4 days with the first two nights in GSMNP and the third night between GSMNP and Waterrock knob. For that last night, are there any places I can expect to be able to camp with a crew of less than 5? Hopefully around halfway on the BRP stretch of this segment.

I am planning on hiking from Woodlawn work center (segment 4) to the folk art center with my 12 year old. Are there issues with finding a camp site in that section? The app cautions about sparse camping, and the guide does not list much so I am a bit concerned. We will probably do under 10 miles a day so need to be able to camp where we stop for the most part. I’m not picky about the site itself just a flat spot big enough for two tents. Any advice is welcome. Thanks

My mom and I will be hiking segment 1 in August and segment 2 in Sept (W->E). What specific supplies or advice can others share? Thanks!!

Has anyone mailed a resupply to Mt Mitchell or Craggy gardens?

Hi Someone somewhere posted a map and called it the Dixie 500 or something like that. It featured the Foothills Trail, the AT, William Bartram Trail, and the MST. Does anyone recall seeing that post? It could have been facebook or here or somewhere else. TYIA.

https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1563/isb-blri-rfi.htm

Hi I recently learned about caltopo. Does anyone know of a good way to import the MST map overlay on the Caltopo page? I get lost with the map import section. It would be nice to have a sharable MST map there since you can do a lot with the overlays and print to the scale you would like.

Hi any news on campsite 57? I've heard about them closing due to bear activity. Hope no one was hurt.

Huge thank you to Josh “PBS” Smith for his work in getting the IOS version of his MST guide out for all our use.

I downloaded it today (while on trail) after remembering it went live the other day. Tested it on a small section by Wells Knob. Works great and I look forward to both trip planning and navigation help from here on out.

Hi they made the online section files harder to obtain. Does anyone have the PDF of the sections they downloaded that they could share with me?