CHEAHA MOUNTAIN STATE PARK - The rumble of the front-end loader died away, the 10,000-pound limestone and granite boulder finally in its place.
The fog had cleared, and from the rocky overlook, the land fell away to the wooded valley that stretched out west 2,000 feet below. The shadowy humps of mountains to the north and to the south touched the low clouds.
And snaking into the woods was the Pinhoti Trail, marked with blue blazes, heading toward the ridges beyond, a continuous footpath that is now connected to the Appalachian Trail and can take a hiker up the spine of the mountains from Alabama 2,504 miles to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
om Cosby, a hiker and the marketing director of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, watched the boulder placed in its spot, marking the Pinhoti Trail's highest point in Alabama. It was a crowning moment of more than two decades of work, and the fulfillment of a vision first articulated in 1925, a feat that will be celebrated next Sunday with the official opening of the Pinhoti Trail's connection to the Appalachian Trail.
"This puts Alabama on the map as a mountain hiking destination," Cosby said.
The Pinhoti also stretches south and will eventually be completed to Flagg Mountain in Coosa County, the southernmost mountain of the Appalachian mountain system. Backers hope eventually to make the case for getting the Alabama extension recognized as the official southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, which would require an act of Congress.
334 miles to AT:
From Cheaha, Alabama's highest mountain, it's 334 miles up through the remote regions of the Talladega National Forest and through the Chattahoochee National Forest in northwest Georgia to the beginning of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain.
Currently, the trail takes about six months to hike. Adding the Pinhoti connection would extend that hike by about a month.
I do not think they will be able to get the act of congress passed. But, hey, what do I know.
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