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AT Conference in Harrisonburg

Was wondering if anyone else on the list had been to
Harrisonburg...

The conference this past week had close to 1300 people in
attendance.  Bruce Babbitt had been scheduled to give the keynote
address at the opening meeting on Saturday night, but had to cancel
out for some reason the day before, and so someone fairly high up
in the NPS was sent in his stead, Destry Jenkins (I'm not sure if -
I have his name correct.)  He and David Startzell were basically
exhorting people to get involved in trying to keep funds from being
cut off to the National Parks in general and the A.T. in
particular.  (The App. Nat. Scenic Trail is on the list of park
service sites that are considered to be dispensable.  I'm not sure
who has drawn up the list.)


Andy Hiltz of PATC was on his way to check out the trail he
maintains last Sunday.  He wasn't able to get to it because of road
closures because of the floods.  He decided to try to arrange a
work party of folks from the conference to try to help some of the
flood victims.  He approached the Red Cross and FEMA, trying to
make some arrangements, but had no luck.  A grassroots approach was
far more successful.  He stopped in at a samll store at a point
near where one of the roads was closed to ask who might need some
help.  He arranged for the people at the store to have people who
needed help to sign a list - and that he would return the next day
with as many volunteers as he could muster. He posted some notices
about the work trip on Monday evening and the next morning more
than 20 people from the conference went out to various sites in the
vicinity of the Rapidan River and Rt. 230 to shovel mud, etc.  I
found out about it just about half an hour before the group was
scheduled to go out on Tuesday morning - and decided to not go on
the hike I was scheduled to go on, but to go help out instead. 
About 30 some people went out again on Wednesday.  Andy's planning
to make a webpage about it, so you'll soon be able to see it for
yourself.  I'll post the URL to the list when he gets the page up. 
At that time, if anyone doesn't have web access, and wants to get
the text of whatever he puts up, drop me a line, and I'll mail it
to you.

A certain number of hikes and activities (such as tubing) had to be
cancelled because of the flooding. 

The ATC had a great $1 sale on Wednesday morning.  They decided to
get rid of a lot of stuff that they'd been carting back and forth
to these meetings for some time - without selling a whole of the
items.  So - certain books, shirts, videos and other things were
marked down to a $1 - and they were all gone in no time!! 

Lots of interesting workshops - and evening entertainment.  There
always seemed to be at least three things going on that I wanted to
go to at the same time.... It was fun to see Cindy Ross's slides of
her family's Colorado Trail hike - but - hiking for 3 or 4 weeks
with a one year old????????? Tending to the needs of a child of
that age on the trail just seems to be something I can't imagine
anyone being able to put up with no matter how much they were
driven with the desire to go hiking.... Raven was there with his
guitar and slides.  I finally got to see his slide show of his '85
hike on the last evening.

Was disappointed not to be able to find any net access there at
JMU. I thought one would be able to use computers in the library to
get get some access, but, unlike most places I've visited, one had
to have a Vax account there at the school to even be able to get to
Gopher.  At a college a few miles down the road however where I
stopped on the way to a hike, I found access to the Web and was
able to telnet from there to my account.

It was fun meeting some of the folks that I had previously been in touch 
with via email.

I put up some notices around the campus about this mailing list - but I 
didn't think to do it 'til rather late in the conference.  Sorry I didn't 
think to do it earlier...

--Kathy Bilton
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