Travel & Leisure

     Not long after this, we meet Brian “Hop-Along” O’Connor, age 33. In 2000, he tells us, he covered the entire trail—Georgia to Maine. O’Connor is resting with his three-year-old Australian shepherd, Allie. Though uninterested in repeating his earlier feat, O’Connor says he spent a Tuesday retracing one stretch of the route that he hiked nearly a decade ago. Hiking the entire AT “was something I always wanted to do,” says the television producer from Baltimore. “And southwest Virginia is great; in my mind, it’s about the prettiest spot in Virginia.”

     After almost two hours of slow rock hopping along Wilburn Ridge, we reach a place called Rhododendron Gap, a crossroads where a handful of trails intersect. We head south through the Lewis Fork Wilderness Area and, after a mile, reach the Thomas Knob Shelter. Topped with a tin roof, the Thomas Knob Shelter takes its name from trail volunteers David and Nerine Thomas. Just before noon, we stop here and look for the essentials—the privy and a spring where we can obtain some water. Outback says that he will spend a night here, listening to birds, looking at the stars and dreaming about Damascus, the last stop on his journey. “It’s interesting psychologically, when you’re getting toward the end,” he says. “And I’m quite happy having done the 550.”

     South of Thomas Knob Shelter, the AT spans about 30 miles to the Tennessee border and the town of Damascus, a village known as “The Friendliest Town on the Trail.” I share with the group a tale of my previous outings on the AT—going beyond Thomas Knob and following the trail past a side-trail to Mount Rogers, the tallest point in Virginia, with an elevation of 5,729 feet. On those occasions, I would also ease into Elk Garden, a field that was once home to wild elk. From there, the AT rises across mile-high Whitetop Mountain, with its natural bald of white grass. The trail passes Buzzard’s Rock, a natural rocky lookout, and dips into the Holston Valley, zigzagging over the Virginia Creeper Trail, with Colorado-style scenes of forests and fishermen wading in trout streams.

     Finally, the AT winds down to the sidewalks of Damascus, which has about 1,000 full-time residents and is best known for its famous Trail Days Festival—a lively and sometimes rowdy event attracting as many as 20,000 visitors each May. The weeklong party climaxes with “The Hiker’s Parade,” an event attracting mostly college-age guys and girls who sing and shout while hikers in the parade toss water balloons, all for fun.