Hiking the Smokies in the FKT (Fastest Known Time)

Chasing the Smokies Moon:

An audacious 948-mile, hike – fueled by love, loss, laughter, and lunacy

by Nancy East, Headlamp Publishing, 2021, 231 pages

AUDACIOUS IS RIGHT!

Personally, I have no interest, none, in hiking as fast as I possibly can to achieve the FKT or Fastest Known Time for anything – not that I could do it anyway. But Nancy East, who hails from North Carolina, and her hiking partner, Chris Ford, sure beat this drum. I’m flabbergasted, maybe even gob smacked by what East did as she approached 50 even if it’s not my cup of tea.

The Smoky Mountains, which straddle the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, are included in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Within the park, there are hundreds of miles of trails, many of them leading to peaks, several of which are over 2,000 metres high. For reasons that are unfathomable to me (but make perfect sense to many others), East and Ford set out  to hike every trail in the park in under 30 days. If they accomplished their goal, they would break the existing record for a male/female team on the Tour de Smokies. This required that they not only hike all the trails in the park, but hike many of them twice as myriad routes, especially to mountaintops, are in-and-out trails. In total, they had to cover 948 miles, which is over 1500 kilometres.

By comparison, the 900-kilometre-long, relatively flat Bruce Trail took me 42 days. East and Ford believed they could hike more than one-and-a-half times that distance along mountainous, rugged terrain, in less than a month.

You will have to read the book to see how they made out, but whether or not they set a new record, the duo raised $30,000 USD for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s search and rescue efforts. East’s desire to support this important service stemmed from her involvement in recovering the body of a 53-year-old woman who became separated from her daughter within the park in 2018.

It’s a compelling read, written by a woman with exceptional drive and fitness. While, as I mentioned above, I am not drawn to this sort of goal, I devoured this book of willpower, good intentions and meticulous planning.

For more information, visit East’s website at Nancy East. You can buy Chasing the Smokies Moon online.