Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Appalachian Trail through-hiker Josh McClellan of Gainesville, Fla., pauses on a bench near Trent's Grocery in Bland County. He said the news of the shooting of two fishermen wouldn't force him to change his plans.

Jack Noll of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy talks about how forestry officials responded to the shooting of two men. More than 20 miles of the trail had been closed as officers searched for clues.

This time of year is popular with through-hikers along the Appalachian Trail. Officials said they reopened the trail as quickly as they could after two men were shot Tuesday.

PEARISBURG -- The Appalachian Trail reopened in Giles County on Thursday, two days after a pair of fishermen were shot and wounded in a crime that hauntingly resembled two gruesome killings committed near the same spot in 1981.

Officials removed the yellow crime scene tape that had cordoned off a 28-mile stretch of the trail while investigators searched for clues and other potential victims Wednesday, and hikers again began trekking through.

Perhaps, though, they had more to talk about than in any year since 1981, when Giles County native Randall Lee Smith Jr. killed two trail hikers at Wapiti Shelter, just a few miles up the road from where two fishermen had set up camp when police say Smith shot them Tuesday night.

"Man, I'm out here having the time of my life," said Nathan Adcock, a 31-year-old nurse from Asheville, N.C. "And then somebody's out there shooting."

Adcock -- trail name "Superchunk" -- and other friends he met along the trail spent the night Tuesday at Jenny's Knob shelter not far from the campsite where Smith is suspected of shooting Sean Farmer, 33, of Tazewell and Scott Johnston, 37, of Bluefield.

The pair were at their camp on Lions Den Road when a man Giles County investigators believe was Smith walked up and struck up a conversation. He hung around for about three hours, staying to have a dinner of fresh trout and baked beans with the men.

After they ate, the man reportedly jumped up and pulled out a gun. Farmer was shot in the face and chest. Johnston was shot in the neck and back.

The men fled out of the forest in Farmer's Jeep Cherokee and sought help a couple of miles away at the home of Sheila and Melissa Miller, two sisters who live on Dismal Creek Road.

Farmer has been released from the hospital, friends said. A spokesman for Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital said Johnston was still in serious condition Thursday.

Smith was captured about 9:40 p.m. after crashing Johnston's pickup truck on Sugar Run Road near Eggleston, police said. He also was taken to Roanoke Memorial, where investigators said he was in stable condition and being guarded by a deputy.

Giles County Lt. Ron Hamlin said Smith will be charged with two counts of attempted capital murder, grand larceny and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

By Thursday afternoon, the Lions Den campsite had been dismantled by investigators. The tents and lawn chairs Farmer and Johnston had set up were gone. The clothes that had been draped across a line strung between two trees a day earlier had been taken down.

But investigators were still trying to find clues in the case, including a campsite where Smith may have stayed in the two months since he went missing from his home near Pearisburg.

On Wednesday, officials with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service split up into three groups, with each group assigned to search stretches of the closed-off trail that was thought to be 25 miles long, said T.J. Mullins, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service.

"One group wound up with 10" miles, Mullins said. Its members had Thursday off "and I owe them a steak dinner," he said.

The trail sees a lot of through-hikers this time of year, he said, and officials wanted to get the trail searched so it could be reopened.

Thursday, he said, the search had shifted to a four-mile radius surrounding the trail, and there was talk of bringing in a helicopter to view the forest from the air.

"Yesterday we didn't want folks walking up on something" like a piece of evidence or a potential victim, Mullins said.

Nothing was found, though, and officials have no reason to believe there were any other victims, he said.

"We're keeping it in mind, but we're not actively looking," he said.

The search has taken investigators as far as 45 miles from the campsite, he said.

"The big effort is coming to a close right now," Mullins said, "but we've got a lot of small pieces of information to follow up on, and that's going to take months."

In 1982, Smith pleaded guilty to the brutal stabbing of Susan Ramsay and the shooting of Robert Mountford Jr., two AT hikers from Maine.

He is said to have befriended the pair and spent part of the day with them before returning to the shelter, where he killed them and buried their bodies in shallow graves.

Investigators said he befriended Farmer and Johnston, too, before repeatedly shooting them.

Smith spent 15 years in prison for the killings, then returned home to his mother's house just outside Pearisburg where neighbors said he led a mostly reclusive life until Tuesday evening.

Josh McClellan, who goes by Beartrap, a through-hiker from Gainesville, Fla., camped near Trent's Store not far from the shooting site Wednesday and was the only hiker left there Thursday afternoon.

He said he was waiting for his girlfriend, who was driving up from Florida to spend some time with him before he moved on.

"Scared? No. As long as they got the guy," McClellan said. The shootings "aren't going to change the daily routine" of the hike, he said.

He described that routine the past 48 sometimes-chilly spring days as "wet socks, frozen shoes, good times."

Besides, the 29-year-old said, "you're never alone on the trail."

Many hikers headed out early, but Adcock planned to stay at the Holiday Motor Lodge in Pearisburg until today to wait out forecasts of bad weather.

Some hikers will likely be jumpy for the next month as they pass through the area, said Jack Noll of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

He called awareness of the surroundings "the biggest weapon you have out there."

tonia.moxley@roanoke.com | 381-1676

shawna.morrison@roanoke.com | 381-1665