6 Feral People Camps I Found on Appalachian Patrol (One Was Still Warm)

6 Feral People Camps I Found on Appalachian Patrol (One Was Still Warm) In thirty years of backcountry patrol, I've come across six camps that nobody claimed — no permit on file, no trail access, no sign of anyone who was supposed to be there. A rock shelter with cold ash arranged by habit. Daffodils blooming beside a roofless foundation on a ridge that used to be someone's yard. A garden of planted ramps behind a locked gate on a slope you'd only know about if you'd spent real time in that drainage. A name carved into a wall I'd walked past forty times, cut fresh. And one fire, on a bench well off any trail, where the coals were still banked when I got there — and where something happened at that ring I've never been able to explain to my own satisfaction. This video covers what I found, what I could piece together, and the one thing I still can't account for no matter how many times I go back over it. Watch More: The Appalachian Ghost Town Rangers Won't Patrol After Dark https://youtu.be/riBe6nGnCqs A coal town in Mingo County that swallowed thousands of people and left almost nothing behind — and the unwritten rule every ranger on that stretch follows without being told. I Am An Appalachian Park Ranger. Here Is Why I Would Never Camp On The Appalachian Trail After Dark https://youtu.be/WST_-jlvB68 Thirty years on the trail and there are places I will not sleep — this is what I have seen after the light goes on the AT. 8 Rules To Survive The Appalachian Trail After Dark (30 Years As A Park Ranger — I Broke Only One) https://youtu.be/paLhBgQGa04 The rules most hikers never hear until it is too late, from a ranger who has worked the trail long enough to know which one almost cost him.