The Chattahoochee River at Peachtree Corners, Ga.

This isn’t a Central Virginia item, but I came across it on one of my favorite websites — The Outdoor News Hub — and figured there’d be plenty of area hikers who’d find it interesting.According to Jeff Martin of the Associated Press, the Trust for Public Land has been working for years to acquire the land needed to allow hikers at the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail in northern Georgia to continue hiking all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The AT ends near the Chattahoochee River‘s headwaters in the mountains of north Georgia, and the idea is for this new trail to follow the river south to the Florida border where it will pick up the Apalachicola River to the Gulf.The trust has already acquired and set aside 17,000 acres of land that touch 76 river miles from the Chattahoochee’s headwaters to Columbus. One Trust for Public Land employee said he thought the trail could be completed in the next decade.

The Chattahoochee is in dark blue.

It’s already amazing that the AT extends 2,184 miles from Maine to Georgia. Adding another 500 or so miles would make the trail that much cooler, and make completing the hike even more impressive.