Trial by Trail: Backpacking in Smoky Mountains

Nine million visitors come to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park each year, but few, unfortunately, have time to enjoy fully the challenges and pleasures, the opportunities for reflection and inner growth, that the park’s wild and beautiful backcountry offers. Trial by Trail chronicles the odyssey of one man who, over time, discovered the deeper riches to be found within the park’s boundaries.

In fourteen lively personal essays, Johnny Molloy describes the adventures by which he came of age as a backpacker. Born a ＂flatlander＂ in Memphis, he first visited the Smokies while attending the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in the 1980s. Initially, he treated the park as a personal playground - a place to cut loose, break rules, and act irresponsibly. After many hiking excursions, however, he gained a more profound appreciation of the mountains, becoming an avid park volunteer intent on the protection and improvement of the area. He grew, as he puts it, both as an outdoor adventurer and as a human being.

Interwoven throughout these pieces is a wealth of Smoky Mountains lore and history along with dozens of tips for novice backpackers. Molloy’s stories encompass backpacking during all four seasons as well as accounts of solo hiking, off-trail hiking, and whitewater canoeing.

Johnny Molloy is a freelance writer and the author of more than thirty outdoor guidebooks, including, most recently, A Falcon Guide to Mammoth Cave and Beach and Coastal Camping in Florida. His first book, Trial by Trail: Backpacking in the Smoky Mountains, was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1996.