Mother Nature takes another whack at trails in Great Smoky Mountains National …

10:09 a.m. June 15, 2013
Mother Nature takes another whack at trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

 

Damage to Gabes Mountain Trail caused by storm. Image from Great Smoky Mountains National Park Service.

GATLINBURG, TN — Great Smoky Mountains National Park managers report that several trails in Cosby and Big Creek are closed due to extensive damage from the wind and rain during a late afternoon storm on Thursday, June 13. Other trails in the area may be closed as the park is continuing to assess the damage.

Gabes Mountain Trail and Snake Den Ridge Trail in Cosby, and Baxter Creek Trail and Big Creek in Big Creek have been closed due to scores of downed trees. The trails are impassable by foot or horse.

In addition to trail closures, the Park has also closed “B” Loop of Cosby Campground due to damage. There is no estimate for reopening the trails or the campground at this time.

“We are in the process of assessing the condition of all of the trails within the storm affected area,” said acting Chief Ranger Steve Kloster. “Hikers and equestrians may want to confirm trail openings by contacting the Park’s Backcountry Office or by visiting our website before planning routes through this section of the Park.”

The storm which hit hardest on the Northeastern most section of the park was the tail end of a storm system which hit the Midwest through much of Thursday. Air monitoring stations at Clingmans Dome and Look Rock recorded over sixty mile per hour winds during the time of the storm.

Published June 15, 2013

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Sequester Smacks Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway

By Stephanie Carroll Carson, Public News Service – NC
Published: Mar. 18, 2013

ASHEVILLE – Federal budget cuts mean you may have to revise those summer vacation plans.

The sequester is leading to some closures and cutbacks on services offered at places like the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains. That’s because the National Park Service is among the agencies that got hit with automatic spending cuts that began to take effect this month.

According to Don Barger, Southeast regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, the effect will be felt sharply, since there was little to no wiggle room before.

“When paying for staff and fixed costs take up about 90 percent of your budget, and you get a cut of 9 percent in your spending authority for the next six months, you don’t have a lot of choices,” Barger declared.

Overall, the National Park system is said to support 250,000 jobs in the country, with an annual economic impact of $30 billion.

In addition to the effect on those who want to get out and enjoy time in the great outdoors, Barger said, the forced cutbacks for the National Park Service will actually end up costing more in the long run. He stated that the NPS budget to run the entire system is one-fourteenth of one percent of the federal budget and is an economic generator.

“These mindless across-the-board cuts will cripple one of the few consistent generators of economic activity for many regional and local economies,” Barger warned.

Since each park across the country is different with different offerings, Barger said, the ways the sequester will affect them will vary. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the sequester means three campgrounds, two picnic areas, and one horse camp will be closed. Along the Blue Ridge Parkway, the most visited unit of America’s National Park System, more than 20 seasonal ranger positions have been cut.

Furthermore, he said, “They have 14 visitor contact centers up and down the 469 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, that runs from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, all the way down to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, and so as a result, half of those visitor centers are going to have to be closed during this tourism season.”

On Thursday, a group of U.S. representatives urged Speaker John Boehner to bring a bill to repeal the sequester to the House floor for a vote.

More information is at NPS.gov.

Attendance down at Great Smoky Mountains National Park

GATLINBURG, Tn. (WYMT/WVLT) – Officials with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park says visitation for January through April of this year was down from last year.

Officials with the National Park Service say 1,620,340 visitors which is 359,202 less than what was seen during the same period in 2012.

The park service believes a landslide that washed out Newfound Gap Road was the leading factor for visitation being down this year.

The Gatlinburg, TN entrance saw a high number of visitors in the facility during the Spring Break period in early April. The visitor center recorded over 6000 visitors in one day which is a 20 year record.

Smokies visits approaching to miscarry with highway fixed

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The National Park Service expects visits to a Great Smoky Mountains National Park to rebound, now that U.S. 441 has been easy on a North Carolina side.

April visits were down 14.6 percent, compared with Apr 2012. Park officials pronounced that was off scarcely 109,000 people from a year before and 11.9 percent next a five-year normal for April.

On Apr 15, a highway – also famous as Newfound Gap Road – was non-stop after roughly 90 days of closure due to a landslide.

With a highway again open between Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Cherokee, N.C., park officials expect a lapse to ancestral visitation numbers during a residue of a year.

Attendance down at Great Smoky Mountains National Park – WKYT.com

GATLINBURG, Tn. (WYMT/WVLT) – Officials with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park says visitation for January through April of this year was down from last year.

Officials with the National Park Service say 1,620,340 visitors which is 359,202 less than what was seen during the same period in 2012.

The park service believes a landslide that washed out Newfound Gap Road was the leading factor for visitation being down this year.

The Gatlinburg, TN entrance saw a high number of visitors in the facility during the Spring Break period in early April. The visitor center recorded over 6000 visitors in one day which is a 20 year record.

Sample Mountains-to-Sea Trail With May 4th Hike And Talk At Great Smoky …

Danny Bernstein celebrates completion of her hike along the entire North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail on the Outer Banks. Photo via National Park Service.

The North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail is a thousand-mile route for hikers across North Carolina, and you can get a short sample with a two-hour hike followed by a talk about the trail on Saturday, May 4 at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more qualified hike leader and speaker, because Danny Bernstein has walked the entire length of the trail, and shared her experiences in a new book.

The guided 2-hour hike along the Mingus Creek Trail begins at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 4 at the Mingus Mill parking area, which is located on US 441 (Newfound Gap Road) about 2 miles north of Cherokee, North Carolina, and 0.5 miles north of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.

Saturday’s hike will cover 4.4 miles round-trip, and according to a park spokesperson is “rated easy to moderate, but does have some steep uphill sections and an elevation gain of 800 feet. The trail follows the route of an old wagon road and passes through areas that were farmed in the days before the creation of the park. The hike also includes a visit to the Mingus Creek Cemetery.”

Hiking participants should wear sturdy hiking shoes or boots and bring drinking water. Because weather in the Smoky Mountains can be unpredictable, a rain jacket is also highly recommended.

Talk About Mountains-to-Sea Trail Follows the Hike

Whether or not you take the hike, you can learn more about the North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST) during a talk at 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon on the porch of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.

Bernstein will discuss the highlights and challenges of hiking the MST, as well as share pictures, maps, and stories that will captivate the audience. Her talk will include some of the unexpected and unusual sights she encountered during her journey along the entire 1,000 miles of the trail.

The MST includes plenty of literal highlights, including Clingmans Dome in the Smokies (the highest point in the park), Mount Mitchell (the highest peak east of the Mississippi) and Jockey’s Ridge State Park (the highest sand dune on the East Coast). The physical footpath is a work in progress; about half the total length is completed, with those sections linked by back roads that make a hike along the entire route quite feasible.

According to the veteran hiker, “The route takes in Fraser fir trees and pelicans, old grist and textile mills, working cotton and tobacco farms, Revolutionary War sites and two British cemeteries complete with Union Jacks. The trail is half on footpaths and half on back roads, offering experiences not only in nature but also in small towns, at historic monuments, in family cemeteries and in local shops.”

This Hiker and Author Knows Her Subject

Bernstein has been a committed hiker for over 40 years, and in addition to the MST, she’s completed the Appalachian Trail, all the trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and “The South Beyond 6000,” an organized program for encouraging hikers to climb the forty 6,000-foot peaks in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Recognizing that “trails don’t maintain themselves, so people have to do it,” she also volunteers to help on the maintenance of sections of the MST and the Appalachian Trail.

If you can’t catch her talk on Saturday, you can read about her experiences along the MST in her latest book, The Mountains-to-Sea Trail Across North Carolina: Walking a Thousand Miles through Wildness, Culture and History. Her book is available in plenty of locations, but a purchase from the Great Smoky Mountains Association will help benefit the park through the work and donations by this non-profit partner.

If you need additional details about the hike or talk on May 4, you can phone the Oconaluftee Visitor Center at (828) 497-1904.

Smokies hosting Junior Ranger Day with activities

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is removing prepared to applaud National Junior Ranger Day with special activities during all 3 caller centers.

Children can acquire a giveaway Junior Ranger patch by completing 3 of a specifically designed activities. They embody ranger guided walks, ancestral fondle making, a speak with a wildland firefighter, a blacksmith emporium proof and hold tables with animal skins and skulls.

Activities take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday during Sugarlands Visitor Center nearby Gatlinburg, Cades Cove Visitor Center nearby Townsend and Oconaluftee Visitor Center nearby Cherokee, N.C.

Sugarlands will also horde a National Park Career Day for center and high propagandize students who will get a behind-the-scenes demeanour into a careers of a National Park Service.

US 441 reopened 3 months after Smokies landslide

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) —
The vital track over a Smoky Mountains is open to traffic, 3 months after a landslide took out a territory of it.

The National Park Service pronounced Monday that U.S. 441 was reopened during 10 a.m., permitting transport between Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Cherokee, N.C. The opening came a month forward of schedule.

On Jan. 13, a 200-foot-long territory of a two-lane highway slid a length of a football margin down a slope on a North Carolina side of a park.

“We commend a mercantile significance of a highway to a adjacent communities and are beholden that a partners during Federal Highways Administration were means to respond well to a need and work with a contractors to make a required repairs in reduction than 90 days,” pronounced Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

Phillips Jordan, Inc., was awarded a agreement value scarcely $4 million. It had incentives of $8,000 per day for early completion.

The final pattern includes pipes to concede for a drainage of subsurface H2O upsurge along with side drainage heading to a culvert during a finish of a slope.

Also on Monday, a park expelled visitation sum and they are down sharply.

The series of people entrance into a 500,000-acre park on a Tennessee-North Carolina limit in Mar was 465,594 — down 23.8 percent from a same month in 2012.

For 2013 to date, visits are off 47.4 percent from a park’s five-year visitation normal for a lowest first-quarter figure in over 5 years. The Jan by Mar sum was 983,664 visitors which, is 250,334 reduction than in 2012,

Park officials pronounced a diminution was expected due to a closure of U.S. 441 between Newfound Gap and Smokemont. They design visits to increase, now that a highway is again open and open has arrived.

Tennessee’s House Of Representatives Opposes Backcountry Fee At Great …

In its biggest political coup to date, a group fighting the backcountry fees charged at Great Smoky Mountains National Park has gotten the backing of the Tennessee State House of Representatives.

In a proclamation adopted April 9, the House expressed its “opposition to the imposition of any backcountry camping fees in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that are not directly associated with the use of amenities or a commercial purpose and strongly urge an immediate appeal of any such imposed fee.”

Previously, the Knox County (Tennessee) Commission, as well the commissions in Bradley and Blount counties in Tennessee and Swain County in North Carolina, condemned the fee and called for its repeal.

The backcountry fee of $4 per night per person, with a $20 per person cap per trip, took effect February 13. It is intended by park officials to help streamline and improve the backcountry permitting process and heighten the presence of rangers in the backcountry.

Pinched by an inadequate budget and unable to charge an entrance fee for any of the roughly 9 million yearly visitors, park officials say they see no way of improving visitor services and protecting backcountry resources without charging users who spend the night in the woods.

The park can’t charge an entrance fee because the state of Tennessee, when it agreed to transfer land to the federal government for the park, essentially forbade it.

“By condemning and calling for a repeal of this hugely unpopular and specious tax on backcountry users, the State of Tennessee has proven its intent to provide a voice for citizens that was ignored by the National Park Service as evidenced in the public comments that tallied 18-1 in opposition to the fee,” said a statement from Southern Forest Watch, a non-profit group organized to lobby for the fee’s repeal.

Newfound Gap Road reopens between Gatlinburg and Cherokee

3:25 p.m. Apr 15, 2013
Newfound Gap Road reopens between Gatlinburg and Cherokee
By Jeaneane Payne, Publisher

Officials announce a reopening of Newfound Gap Rd. (Left to right: Eastern Ban of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks, Park Supt. Dale Ditmanson, NC Congressman Mark Meadows. Far right: FHWA Construction Operations Engineer Emmett Melton). Image by Jeaneane Payne

Highway 441 between Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC was reopened this morning during 9:48 a.m. accurately 30 days forward of a scheduled execution date of May 15, 2013. Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson, NC Congressman Mark Meadows, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks, and Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) Construction Operations Engineer Emmett Melton jointly announced a opening of a road.

Newfound Gap Rd (Hwy 441) reopened today

 

Landslide on Jan 16, 2013

 
 
 

Park staff scheming to open a road.
 

Park staff removes a Road Closed signed.
Above images by Jeaneane Payne

The highway was sealed between Newfound Gap and Gatlinburg, TN and between Smokemont, NC and Cherokee, NC following a vital landslide on Jan 16, 2013. The landslide was caused essentially by complicated rainfall over a duration of dual days.

Restoration of Hwy 441 was a mild bid between a National Park Service, FHWA, Phillips Jordan, Inc. (PJ), APAC Harrison Division, and all subcontractors. The primary correct agreement was awarded to PJ who submitted a bid of $3,989,890.00 who gave a projected execution date of May 15, 2013. The Eastern Band of a Cherokee Indian (EBCI) and a National Park Service jointly offering a financial inducement of $18,000 per day for any day of execution before to May 15 adult to a limit of $504,000.

“We commend a mercantile significance of a highway to a adjacent communities and are beholden that a partners during Federal Highways Administration and were means to respond well to a need and work with a contractors to make a required repairs in reduction than 90 days,” pronounced Superintendent Ditmanson.

Officials, contractors, Indian Chief, FHWA. Image by Jeaneane Payne

Phase we of a reformation plan was finished on Feb 21, 2013 by APAC Harrison Division who grown an entrance highway to a slip area. They also private waste and stabilized a slope above a work area. On Feb 22, 2013 PJ mobilized apparatus to start Phase 2 of a reformation that enclosed rebuilding a alley and stuffing a area cleared divided during a landslide with dejected stone.

The final pattern includes over 200 feet of pipes to concede for a drainage of subsurface H2O upsurge along with 150 feet of side drainage heading to a culvert during a finish of a slope. This drainage complement and pervious dejected mill element will serve strengthen a highway and park resources from destiny repairs due to both crawl and subsurface H2O flow. The fill area was naturally sloped and planted with seed. In addition, erosion measures were put into place along a 900 feet waste margin next a landslide that was also seeded.

Emmett Melton settled “It took 2,500 lorry loads of mud to fill a opening combined by a landslide.” Construction crews worked around a time (24/7) to finish a plan as fast as possible. “We had materials stockpiled during a site in box of severe weather. Crews usually missed 2 days of work simply since they couldn’t get to a site.”

“The mercantile impact on Cherokee, NC and Gatlinburg, TN has not nonetheless been determined,” pronounced Ditmanson.

“We mislaid dual weeks of open break,” settled Chief Hicks. “As distant as a costs concerned in repair a road, a Tennessee side should have helped us with costs though did not.”

The initial chairman to expostulate a car opposite a reopened highway was Jeaneane Payne of Knoxville, TN.

Published Apr 15, 2013

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