Hiker set to finish all Smokies trails in record time

Maybe it’s the beard.

“I really enjoy having my beard full of ice,” Benny Braden, 44, said Tuesday evening on coming out of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park after another long hike. “It was that way today – just getting covered head to toe in ice.”

Braden, from Harriman, has been in the park a lot since Jan. 1. He’s on his way to setting a record Saturday for hiking all of the park’s trails – more than 770 miles – in the shortest amount of time.

If all goes well, he should walk into the Sugarlands Visitor Center grounds having finished in two months and 19 days. This will beat the mark of four months and 12 days set by Sharon Spezia.

Braden got the idea for the beard and the hike last year while he was section-hiking a part of the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Damascus, Va.

“I would go out once a month and hike a few days, then I would come home. I was on a short hike in the Smokies and stayed on Mount LeConte. Believe it or not, it was when the (Chimney Tops 2) fire was going on. We were on a cliff top and watched the fire below us. I got the idea, ‘Why not hike all of the trails in the Smokies?’"

Braden said he took up the moniker "Plug-It In," after the electronic service center he owns, for his trek and started hiking at 3 a.m. Dec. 31. It was 9 degrees at LeConte Lodge where he started.

At first he had no plans to break any records.

“I gave myself one year to finish. I had no idea how many miles there were or how tough the trails were going to be. The first month I hiked four days and worked three each week. It turned out it was going faster than I thought, and I wondered what the record was.”

He contacted the 900 Miler Club, a group that, according to its website, has 510 members who have hiked all of the trails in the Smokies. Braden explained that the Smokies used to have 900 miles of trails, but a few trails have been decommissioned over the years and the total mileage has dropped to about 800. The club’s name was not changed, he said, partially to acknowledge that hiking all of the trails requires hikers to retrace some trails and therefore the feat actually covers well over 900 miles.

When he learned of Spezia’s record, he decided it was well within reach.

“In February, I stared hiking all week. I have taken very few zeros (when he hiked no miles in a day) since then.”

He actually encountered Spezia on the trail, but didn’t realize it at the time. The hiking legend has earned more than a half dozen “maps”, the 900 Miler Club’s term for a completing all of the trails, and established the record in 2015.

“That was a month ago,” he said. “We were on Little Greenbrier Trail. I had stopped and was getting a drink. She came hiking up the hill and we said the usual greetings then went on. I thought she looked familiar but couldn’t place her. I had seen her picture before but didn’t make the connection. At the end of the hike I was talking to some people who told me who she was. I felt like hiking back up, because I would have liked to have talked with her.”

Favorite hike

“Noland Divide Trail is my absolute favorite,” Braden said of the 22.9 mile route that starts at Clingmans Dome and ends at the Deep Creek campground near Bryson City, N.C. “It is so diverse. At the bottom is a lot of hardwood forest. Midway, I was looking at jagged rock stripped down a ridgeline with 360 degree views, then it ends in a very thick hemlock forest.”

His list of worst trails includes Cold Spring Gap, Jenkins Ridge and Eagle Creek. Cold Spring and Eagle Creek both involved fording streams, while Jenkins Ridge is a straight-up climb with part of the trail washed away.

Fording streams in the cold is a painstaking endeavor. Braden said he would strip down on his lower half, struggle through the freezing water, then dry off and put on his dry clothes. Eagle Creek had 15 stream crossing. He got so tired of the strip-down procedure that on one he left off his sandals and went barefoot, severely bruising his foot with 10 to 15 miles still to go on the hike.

Such foot injuries have been a common theme along the way. He is nursing an Achilles heel injury, but Braden said he’s happy that his knees have done well the whole way.

Braden has seen plenty of grouse; their sudden rush of flapping wings when startled “always scares you to death.” The list also includes 30-50 wild hogs, some of which he said can be “rather aggressive,” turkey, elk, deer and one bear.

“He was coming toward me on the trail and didn’t know I was there," Braden said. "I yelled and he tore off through the woods trying to get away. That was the typical response. They don’t want to be near a human.”

Braden hasn’t cooked on the trail, not wanting to carrying the gear. So, he mainly eats power bars, bagels and other trail food.

He travels light. Braden’s gear, most of it manufactured by ZPacks, weighs only about 8-10 pounds.

Challenging pace

He has set a challenging pace for the next few days with an 18.8-mile hike planned for Saturday. He said he has averaged about 20 miles a day. He estimates his average speed at about 2.75 to 3 mph, noting that people normally hike at about 1 mph.

“I’m really looking forward to Saturday,” he said. “A lot of my close friends are going to go on that hike with me. It’s fitting that hike will be back at LeConte where the first hike was.”

A casual ceremony is planned for about 3 p.m. at Sugarlands Visitor Center. Fellow hikers have been asked to bring their hiking sticks to form an arch for Braden to pass under at the finish.

The crowd will also include his wife, Ashley, who he calls “his biggest supporter.”

“She is excited about me coming home, but I think she is even more excited about me finishing this up.”

The couple has four children at home.

“The other day when I was on top of Noland Divide, I was very sad that this was going to end,” he said. “There is so much beauty here — trees, huge trees that many people have never seen. They must be 200 years old. I wonder at what they’ve seen. And, the history. I’ll come upon walls or cabins and put my hands on them, wondering about the hard work people did to build them.

“Other days, when it’s cold like today and rains all day, I think I’ll be glad to go back to work.”

He said he plans to hike every weekend for as long as he can, and keep the beard growing.

“I don’t think I’ll ever shave.”