To the residents of Fearing and Salem Townships of Washington County, Ohio, thank you for being so welcoming to the on-road Buckeye Trail hikers on 3/25 - 26/ 2017. The Buckeye Trail is a 1,440 mile circle within the four corners of Ohio. Our part of the trail is known as the 58 mile "Whipple Section" of the Buckeye/ North Country Trail. It's routed from the Scenic River Trailhead on C9 in Independence Township of Washington County to just south of the AEP Recreation Land in Morgan County.
What you may have saw was the "Circuit Hike" program which allows hikers to hike one weekend a month to piece the trail together to eventually earn the covenant "Circuit Hike Patch." As I understand, the program is on it's "second lease" and it takes about 5 years for the program to fully cycle. They get in to an area and park, then shuttle to another parking site so that they can put as much distance one way and make the most progress down trail.
Buckeye Trail hikers are usually what we refer to as "day," or "multi-day hikers." meaning that they come in to cover not much more than a segment and then leave to go home. But thru hikers are rare. The BT usually has one annually (that I know of), but some years there might be none, while the most exceptional year that I know of was 5.
If all goes well, we should be having a thru hiker on the Whipple Section in the next week. It's extremely rare to have these almost back to back.
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