'Everybody in town comes out': Appalachian TrailFest back in Hot Springs after COVID

HOT SPRINGS - A popular annual Hot Springs festival will return for the first time post-COVID later this month.

Appalachian TrailFest, a multiday festival in which all proceeds go to benefit a trip for the residents of Madison County Group Home, the town's lone medical residence for adults with complex needs, will take place in Hot Springs April 21-23.

Ike Lassiter is the TrailFest planning committee coordinator.

Lassiter said there is added anticipation for this year's festival following a three-year absence due to COVID.

"I'm doing a more complete documentation this year than what's been done before," Lassiter said. "It's a very complicated thing to be a relatively small operation. I bought a box you can put at the end of the trail near the Laughing Heart Hostel, and it's a one-page schedule containing basically everything you'd need to know for the weekend, and I'll have that at the end of the trail for hikers to pick up. We're also using as much social media as we can.

"We've got a lot of people who have said, 'I'll help.' so there's a lot more involvement among people in the community."

Kate Hubbard is organizing the vendors and has been volunteering with the festival committee since 2007. This year she will emcee the April 22 festivities.

"I'm up on stage from about 10 a.m. on and off until 5 p.m.," Hubbard said. "Then, at 5 p.m. the music is over, and everybody makes their way to the Red Bridge in Hot Springs, and we have this crazy duck race. So, we sell these plastic floaty weighted ducks. The duck race actually has raised us a tremendous amount of money.

"We have historically reserved $1,500 to get started for the next year, but everything goes to the Group Home - the duck race, the silent auction, everything. We will have 300 people along the creek and on the bridge. Everybody in town comes out."

According to Hubbard, the silent auction is mostly for community members.

"We get donations from many of our wonderful local artists, businesses, people in Marshall, all over," Hubbard said. "It could be a dinner, a night out at the Hot Springs Resort & Spa, a meal at Stackhouse, whatever."

Additionally, the festival also features a raffle, which is more oriented to the hikers.

"We're raffling off a tent, or a hammock, or wool socks," Hubbard said. "They're very specific hiker kind of things. The event is for hikers, but we also incorporate the community."

Participating organizations include Friends of Madison County Animals, Rural Organizing and Resilience, the Madison County Health Department and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, as well as the U.S. Forest Service and Carolina Mountain Club, among others, Hubbard said.

Lassiter said the festival functions as a "warmup" event for many of the thru-hikers passing through town on their way to another annual festival, Appalachian Trail Days, a larger, more well-known festival in Damascus, Virginia.

Hot Springs resident Elmer Hall has worked on the TrailFest committee since the festival's inception in the 1980s.

According to Hall, the festival started as a way to celebrate spring, and also as a way to provide an opportunity for people to get out and be involved in outdoor activities, such as hiking.

But the festival's foundation was also meant to celebrate Hot Springs' connection to The Appalachian Trail, Hall said.

"It also was (started) to recognize that we are the only town in North Carolina to have the Appalachian Trail running through Main Street. We are North Carolina's trail town, the only one," Hall said. "It's the first one that the northbound hikers come to - the first trail town. They look forward to being here - to resupply, to take a shower, to get their clothes clean and to take a little break, usually a day or two before getting back on the trail and heading north again.

"In the fall, there's another group of southbounders who will be starting in June in Maine, and they get here around September or October. There aren't so many of them, but there are thousands of northbounders that get on to attempt the thru hike."

According to Hall, roughly 4,000 people attempted to do a thru-hike in 2022.

Those hikers help give Hot Springs its identity. Hall estimated that in the spring months, as many as 65-70 hikers may be in Hot Springs on a given day.

"The festival has become Hot Springs' opening of the spring," Hall said. "We are a trail town. That's our main industry. We're an outdoor recreation town. We have people doing short day hikes, coming down the river in rafts, going to the hot springs, taking short hikes - maybe just an hour or two - all year long, except December, January and February.

"We have a special relationship to the Appalachian Trail."

To kick off the festivities on April 21, local author Sarah Jones Decker, whose debut book, The Appalachian Trail: Backcountry Shelters, Lean-Tos, and Huts," a compendium more than 250 shelters on the Appalachian Trail, will give a free presentation at Chestnut Hall.

A number of local bands, including 75 Singlewide, will play April 22.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Appalachian TrailFest returns to Hot Springs for first time post-COVID