Appalachian 200/100

The Appalachian 200 and 100 start together at 7:00 on a Wednesday morning at Jones Gap State Park in upstate South Carolina and follow the Foothills, Palmetto and Bartram trails. The 200 crosses into North Carolina and Georgia and back before finishing at Franklin, North Carolina, with 40,000 feet of climbing and 110 hours to do it in. The 100 is the first hundred miles of the same course, step for step, and finishes at the Bad Creek access below Whitewater Falls, back in South Carolina, with 21,500 feet of climbing and 39 hours.

March 2027 is the first running of both. The organiser says the race was meant to happen seven years earlier and was stopped by covid, then Hurricane Helene, then the Table Rock fire. It calls the last forty miles of the 200 the deep end of the pool, with no good place to quit, and requires a water filter among the mandatory gear.

Entry is straight sign-up on UltraSignup behind a qualifying gate: a 50K finish inside the previous 450 days, timed events excluded. Both distances sold out for 2027.

Both races start at Jones Gap State Park, 303 Jones Gap Road, near Marietta, South Carolina, and both are point to point. The 200 finishes at Outdoor 76 on Main Street in Franklin, North Carolina, having crossed South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia; the 100 finishes at the Lower Whitewater Falls trailhead at the Bad Creek access near Salem, South Carolina, so despite the way the weekend is billed the 100 does not reach North Carolina's finish line at all. The organiser gives 40,000 feet of climbing for the 200 and 21,500 feet of gain against 20,500 of loss for the 100, and puts ten to fourteen aid stations on the 200 and six or seven on the 100, with water drops and filtering points between them. Its aid-station charts are published but every intermediate cut-off on them still reads TBD; the only clocks filled in are the 7:00 a.m. start and the 100's finish at 10 p.m. on the Thursday.

Entry is first-come sign-up on UltraSignup behind two gates rather than a lottery. Every runner must have finished an official 50K within 450 days of race day, timed events excluded, and may enter before meeting it but must show proof before the start; and every runner must do eight hours of trail work or race volunteering within 370 days, or pay $50 to one of the three trail associations instead. The 2027 window opened on July 20, 2026 at $680 for the 200 and $300 for the 100, and both distances sold out. UltraSignup lists no waitlist, which for this organiser means there is none.