Wes Wesson, an 81-year-old resident of Suches, Ga., has run an Appalachian Trail shuttle service for 28 years.
He never has hiked any of the AT but has put close to 340,000 miles on his red 1999 Jeep that had about 67,000 miles when he bought it. Almost all of those miles have come on forest service roads as he took backpackers to their starting points.
Wesson recalled a time when two heavyset women, equipped with all new gear, started out at Amicalola Falls State Park with plans to backpack the AT to Maine. The 2,190-mile trail actually starts at Springer Mountain, 8.8 miles from the park.
"It took them three days to get to Springer, and the rescue squad took them out at Springer," Wesson said. "They wrote a letter to the forestry department complaining because there were no tables and places to sit and no water spigots around."
The shuttle driver also remembered a backpacker with a unique, time-consuming style.
"He had two suitcases, and he would walk back and forth," Wesson related. "The idea was to carry the two at one time, but he couldn't use his hiking sticks or anything like that, so he was completely unbalanced. So he would carry one and go back and get another one."
Yet another hiker "was going to hike the whole trail with his wheelbarrow, and he broke an axle coming down Blood Mountain, and he stayed at Neel Gap for about a week waiting for an axle to be shipped to him."
Wesson does not know what ultimately happened to the suitcase and wheelbarrow hikers.