To celebrate its 90th anniversary, the Carolina Mountain Club Challenge committee has added two new hiking challenges this year to its lineup. • The Appalachian Trial Challenge is to hike 93 miles of the A.T. from Davenport Gap to Spivey Gap — which marks the section maintained by volunteer trail crews with the Carolina Mountain Club.
• The Mountains to Sea Trail Challenge is to hike all 130 miles of the MST maintained by club volunteers. The section travels Waterrock Knob to the summit Mount Mitchell, largely following the Blue Ridge Parkway corridor.
Mileage may be accumulated in an unlimited number of hikes, in other words tackled in sections with a series of day hikes. Unlike other hiking challenges, all the miles have to be logged in 2013 — sections hiked previous years don’t count. (In other challenges, the where the hiker can log the trails over time until they finally reach the goal over a matter of years.)
Those who complete the challenge will receive a 2013 A.T. or MST anniversary patch and certificate. Other hiking challenges already on the books include: all the peaks over 6,000 feet in the Southern Appalachians, all 400 miles of trail in the Pisgah National Forest, all 900 miles of trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, all the lookout towers in Western NC and a waterfalls challenge to hike 100 waterfalls.
The folks in the mountains of Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee share more than a common boundary, they share a deep appreciation for the wild, sometimes rugged, but always beautiful landscape they call home. 
