Earl Shaffer Shelter To Be Moved

Original Shelter Peter's Mountain shelter, originally uploaded by cheflovesbeer.

The Appalachian Trail Society Museum is going to move this shelter in order to preserve it for the future.

Hikers from all over Pennsylvania will gather this Saturday for a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of Earl Shaffer's pioneering Appalachian Trail thru-hike and to help preserve the Earl Shaffer Shelter.

Shaffer was a York County native, a 1935 graduate of William Penn Senior High School and World War II U.S. Army veteran. He achieved international notoriety in 1948, when he made the first solo thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, which then stretched 2,050 miles from Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.

Shaffer died on May 5, 2002, at age 83.

The Earl Shaffer Shelter is a three-sided primitive shelter that is the last remaining one built by Shaffer that is intact and still being used by overnight hikers.

It is being preserved by the Appalachian Trail Museum Society and will be the featured artifact in its collection. The ceremony is being held in conjunction with the club maintaining the shelter, the Susquehanna Appalachian Trail Club. Also sponsoring the event is the Earl Shaffer Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving his writings, poems and songs.

The ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. at the shelter site along the Appalachian Trail, three miles north of the crossing of Route 225.

There is a nice shelter next to the one being removed. The water is a long way down off the ridge though.