BROWNS SUMMIT -- Wearing a blue Versace tie and his trademark Teva sandals, Scot Ward stood before dozens of leaders of North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail on Saturday to be honored as the first person to hike the cross-state trail twice in one season.
Ward lived up to his trail name, "Taba," short for "There and Back Again."
In just five months, he walked from the Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks, then back to theSmokies - nearly 2,000 miles in all. He stepped out from Clingman's Dome on May 18, 2009, made his coastalU-turn at Jockey's Ridge on Aug. 7, and reached the mountaintop again Oct. 18.
"This wasn't just about me hiking the trail," said Ward, a self-described adventurer who has hiked more than 6,000 miles and biked more than 40,000 miles across the United States since 1988. "I wanted to help future hikers avoid some of the stresses I experienced along the MST."
So Ward went straight to work after his latest hike, fine-tuning and publishing a hiker's guidebook, which he started after his first MST through-hike in 2008.
The Mountains-to-Sea Trail is a nascent pathway that remains decades from completion, especially in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain. It was along these lonesome back roads, unorthodox areas for walking with a backpack, that Ward ran into the most problems.
"There's plenty of hiking out there, but not much camping," said Ward, sitting in the back of a van he drove from Lexington, Ky., to Haw River State Park north of Greensboro, to receive his award.
Next to his feet were two boxes of his guidebooks, each with 100 pages of hard-earned insights on water sources, possible shelters and milestones along the trail. On the last page of the book, Ward lists 27 churches and residences where hikers can hang their hats when no other camping is available.
Kate Dixon, executive director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, says her eventual goal is to have official camping options about every 10 miles along the trail.
"I realize camping is a challenge now, and I think Scot has done something very important by providing a temporary solution."
Raring to start his own thru-hike in September, Doug Burns of Mooresville bought one of Ward's guidebooks for $20 at Saturday's conference. Burns listened intently as Ward answered one of his biggest concerns about the MST: water moccasins in theCroatan National Forest.
"I saw a pretty big one," Ward said. "All you have to do is keep a close eye out ahead, about two feet on either side of the trail. It's really no big deal. You'll do fine."
