[at-l] Genuineness........

[bullard@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Bullard)]

FWIW The ATC seems to be sorry they ever questioned Earl's veracity which
was the start of the whole 'thru-hiker' business and has abandoned any
pretence of verifying hiker's claims.  The acceptance of the claimed boy
scout hike should be sufficient evidence that they don't see themselves as
being in that business.  In fairness to the ATC their mandate is the
maintenance and protection of the trail the 'keeper of 2000 miler
records'.  They just got into it as a sideline.

I suggested to WF when I was on ATML that if he wasn't happy with ATC's lax
attitude toward what he considered a proper thru, that he should start his
own award.  A few years later he attempted to do that calling it the "Avery
Award", a somewhat ironic appellation since Avery was clearly not a
thru-hiker and, to my knowledge, never promoted thru-hiking.  In light of
my last post perhaps WF (or anyone else with the time to devote to checking
up every claim and sufficient fascination by such distinctions to set
themselves up as an "authority") should call it the "Espy Award".

At 07:52 PM 1/5/2003 -0500, Jim Lynch wrote:
>Nothing says some group, committee, etc. couldn't award patches by
>whatever criteria they feel is appropriate, such as your scenarios 1-4,
>or, shoot, even 5.  The ATC would not (I suspect) want to dilute their
>responsibility, which is the AT and only the AT.
>
>
>"Bob C." wrote:
>
>  I think ATC should revise it's criteria to allow scenarios one through
>four to
> > qualify for a 2000-miler patch.
> >
> > Weary
> >
>--
>James P. ('Jim') Lynch
>jplynch@crosslink.net