Morgan Sommerville is the Director of Visitor Use Management for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and was a regional director of the Conservancy from 1983-2021. He completed most of a thru-hike of the trail in 1977. https://appalachiantrail.org/
Gear is one topic that every hiker has in common with every other hiker, but the gear you see on the Appalachian Trail today is radically different from what hikers carried in the past.