Extending the IAT

imported
#1

This was in the local Nasua NH news paper recently.

Continental drift takes Appalachian Trail to Europe and Africa

Filed under Geology by david brooks at 12:52 pm
As anybody who’s not a young-Earther knows, the US and Africa were joined eons ago, before the continents drifted apart. This has led to a clever inspiration by some of the folks involved in the Appalachian Trail: they want to extend it from Labrador, Canada (where the International Appalachian Trail ends after heading north from Mt. Katahdin in Maine, the end of the original AT) to Europe and North Africa:
As it’s now shaping up, the International Appalachian Trial will brush the east coast of Greenland before picking up in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It will resume on the mainland in Norway and proceed south through France, Portugal, nip western Spain and end in Morocco. Trails already exist along much of the conceptual route, planners point out, so participating countries in many cases can mark certain trail segments with the IAT sign to make it part of the network. Where the trail meets the seas or overland gaps, hikers will have to make their own ferry or train arrangements.

Brawny1

#2

Great concept, but why end it in Morocco? After all, the Earth’s moon is believed to have formed from an ancient celestial impact with Earth such that both orbs share a common geologic past. It would be utterly foolish to think you’re all done hiking when you reach the Rock of Gibraltar one fine moonlit night and stare skyward.

blisterfree

#3 
  The Euro AT (ALPS TRAIL) begins either in Eastern Europe or on the Cote D'Azur in Nice or Menton.  I started in Bratislava just because it sounded better as Bratislava bis/a Nice, rather than the tiny Austrian town where the 02A across Oosterreich (Austria) begins.... starting in mid-June in the middle of flood season; I took the 02A to the Alpenpass x-Switzerland, & the GR-5 mostly to the coast; finished in October after getting a huge dump of snow in the Col de Tourmalet?  (highest road point in europe.... restaurant was 'ferme' of course) & descending to equally hot Nice, where I was lucky to be able to laze on the beach, as it may disappear under tides some time in late October.  Another time, I tried the alt route to Menton that goes past the Vallee des Merveilles or pictographs & cave carvings where i heard about 9/11.

An alt route x-switzerland turns East at Chamonix along the ‘hiker’s haute route’ to Zermatt where you have to cross over the (lower) massif to the North to rejoin the Alpenpass to Sargans & the Liechtenstein balcony trail over to Feldkirch where the 02A starts & finishes (02A only has 1 or 2 glaciers to cross & the crevasses are tiny whereas the 02 is a ‘hochweg’ or high wanderweg that’s nothin but snow & glaciers… towns every 2-3 days for resupply, but if you join the British Alpenverein, huts are super cheap & you can’t camp as easily in austria as you can in Switz/France where it is often free to camp at the summer-full huts & buy dinner & beer/wine & breakfast & even lunch!!! You could make a super long trail by combining the Haute Route Pyrennees (I recommend going your own way, sometimes on the Spanish side with the GR-11 & sometimes on the high route & sometimes on the French side GR-10; I would start at Spanish side Irun lighthouse rather than blase Hendaye ‘plage’ (beach) & finish on the French side border beach town… then you could take the riviera balcony trail & join the Alps trail already in progress at some mtn town like sospel or Etienne de Tinee. (my pack was stolen at sospel, don’t leave it unattended). i am thinking also of the British Land’s End to John O’groats trail that combines the SW coastal or other paths; then the Cambrian Way (wales trail) or the Offal Dyke up to join the Pennine way from Edale up to Kirk Yetholm scotland to join some scottish paths up to JOG… guide to LE-JOG is vague description of other guidebooked paths.

gingerbreadman