Appalachian Trail

A northbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail begins at Springer Mountain in Georgia between mid-March and mid-April — the resupply window is the planning anchor, not the calendar date. The trail's 2,197 miles cross 14 states, 8 National Forests, and 6 NPS units, but the rig-relevant truth is that maybe 30 of those 2,000+ road crossings accept anything larger than a passenger car. The federal trail itself is administered by the National Park Service under the National Trails System Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-543), but day-to-day stewardship is delegated to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry WV plus 31 affiliated trail clubs that maintain segments under volunteer cooperative agreements.

Section-hikers stage at Amicalola Falls State Park (Georgia southern terminus, 30-ft rig cap with electric loops, the 8.8-mile approach trail to Springer leaves from the visitor center), Standing Indian Campground in North Carolina's Nantahala National Forest (35-ft cap, dry, the trail crosses Deep Gap nearby), Shenandoah National Park's Big Meadows Campground (45-ft cap, dry only, the trail parallels Skyline Drive for 101 miles through the park with 27 trail-Skyline crossings between Front Royal and Rockfish Gap), and the Saco Ranger District lots near North Conway in New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest — all of which take rigs up to 40 ft and put the hiker within a half-day's walk of multiple AT mileposts.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy publishes a town-by-town RV-friendly logistics database (appalachiantrail.org's trail community map) that solves the food-resupply problem for partner-with-a-driver section hikes, where the rig leapfrogs 30-mile segments and meets the hiker at the next gap — Damascus VA, Hot Springs NC, Erwin TN, Hanover NH, Monson ME, and Andover ME all formally designated themselves as ATC Trail Communities, meaning local businesses publish RV-overnight policies and the chamber of commerce keeps a shuttle-driver list.

The trail's 100-Mile Wilderness in Maine, the final stretch before Mt Katahdin, is the only segment with no road crossings — Abol Bridge Campground at the wilderness's northern boundary (22-ft rig cap inside Baxter SP's published rules, larger rigs stay at the privately-operated Abol Pines just outside the park) is the rig basecamp for the Katahdin summit attempt. Northbound thru-hikers reach Katahdin between September and mid-October; the park closes the summit by October 22 each year regardless of weather, which makes the August snowmelt-to-September weather window the actual race against winter.

Flip-flopping — starting in the middle (typically Harpers Ferry WV at the ATC headquarters) and walking one direction first, then returning to the middle and walking the other direction — has grown from a fringe strategy to roughly 25 percent of thru-hike attempts since the ATC began actively promoting it in 2014 as a crowd-distribution tactic. The flip-flop avoids the Springer Mountain bubble (4,000+ northbound starters concentrated in late March) and Mt Katahdin's October deadline. Section-hikers who tackle the trail over multiple years often complete it as a series of week-long trips, with the rig serving as mobile basecamp for each segment — the most common rhythm being 5-7 segments over 3-4 years, breaking the trail at natural state lines (the Georgia-North Carolina border at Bly Gap, the New Hampshire-Maine border at Carlo Col Shelter, etc) where road access creates clean rig-shuttle logistics. The trail's elevation profile front-loads the hardest mountains in the southern Appalachians (Blood Mountain, Roan Highlands, Mt Rogers) and the White Mountains of New Hampshire (the Presidential Range traverse with Mt Washington's notorious weather), with the central Pennsylvania and New York-Connecticut sections forming the easier middle that most flip-floppers walk first.