Any IAT news?

[Guthook]

Good morning, everybody!

After a quick search here that resulted in nothing newer than two years old, I have to ask: Has anybody hiked sections of the IAT recently? I just saw this article yesterday, and the pictures BLEW MY MIND! It's about a work trip on a loop trail near the Newfoundland section of the IAT, and those mountains.... oh man!

The main IAT website has precious little information for prospective hikers (or maybe that's just "less than I want"), so I always assumed it was still pretty far from complete. But at last summer's ATC Biennial Conference in Castleton I talked with a few of the IAT folks and they said it was a great backpacking trip. Most notably, they said they'd recently completed a side trail near Baxter Park that creates an opportunity for a 90-mile loop hike! Anybody know about this? If I can find info on it, I think that would be a heck of a trip for next fall.

So many trails to hike....

 

[rup]

Also trying to collect info on the Gaspe parks 4000 footers - trails, etc.

 

[peakbagger]

I have not yet found an active forum on the IAT. Whiteblaze does have a forum (listed under other trails) but it is not active.

One thing to be careful about is if the new loop is a concept rather than an actual trail. There were some misunderstandings early on with the IAT where the trails maps showed the proposed route over land where easements were not obtained. The net result were upset landowners and upset hikers. The bad feelings were mostly stoked up from some questionable federal government action on land purchases for the Moosehorn NWR which cranked up a simmering property right uprising rural Maine.

 

[Guthook]

Good point, Peakbagger. I never spend much time at Whiteblaze these days... discussions there tend to devolve much faster than here

I guess the thing to do would be email/call the folks at the IATC a few times. When I spoke to them at the ATC Biennial I mentioned that I'd heard the trail is a good deal of road walking and so on, and they said that's a misconception. Well, we'll see sometime. Even if there is road walking, I'm sure there's some mighty beautiful country up there. The lack of a single guidebook or map is a bit troubling to me, but then again I realize not all trails are as well established at the AT or LT.

 

[spider solo]

That's a nice link to the Newfoundland section.

Though I grow somewhat cautious of answering, I've been a member of the Maine Chapter of the SIA-IAT since it's inception or shortly thereafter.
I get my regular updates from them or if I want from
www.internationalat.org.

One thing different than the AT is that the founder of the trail, Dick Anderson, is still alive and active. So though he might send a hand written thanks for membership I haven't found the need to ask him directly for specific info for the trail, but I suppose you could give it a try.

I actually don't keep up with what is happening with the trail in Maine, as it is the Quebec section that is of most interest to me.

So I don't know if there is lack of information or just a case of expecting there to be more info with forums etc. I tend to think that there just isn't enough people hiking it to get an active forum going.

For Quebec, or the Gaspe in particular, it seems that it's not a case of lack of information, but more of a case that it's not the information that they want to hear.
I think that some are expecting it to be more "Americanized" with a big to do about 4,000 footers and all that...to a point of disregard for anything else.

I have a couple of booklets kicking about that I liked a few years ago...
"A thru-hikers companion Guide to the International Appalachian Trail" (2001) probably needs a bunch of updating...

also I liked the Bilingual Hiking Glossary (2000) published by the IAT which I found helpful.

I also liked Nimblewill Nomad's "Ten Million Steps" (2000) back then he had a lot of road walkng, I think he has hiked it 4 times or so, though not always all the way from Florida.

 

[Stan]

I've met Dick Anderson a few times at the annual Maine Appalacian Trail Club winter social in Freeport (usually the last Saturday evening in February). There is often up to date information and good maps etc. for Gaspe there.

The latest I have (2003) showed that part of the IAT was complete but that there are some incomplete sections ... both complete and incomplete sections show some road walks though the road walks in the "completed" areas seem to be old gravel woods roads, some perhaps logging roads either active or recovering.

As for peaks, the most significant peaks appear to be Carlton (820m) in New Brunswick and Mount Blanc (1065m), Mont Nicol-Albert, Mt. Logan and Mt. Jacques Cartie (1268m) in the Gaspe.

I've never met anyone associated with the project that wasn't most excited and enthusiastic about it. I suppose it is that passion and the relative trail breaking aspect of it that is perhaps compelling.