CMC Weekly News
12/31/03
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ATC Morgan Sommerville requests time to speak about Strategic Plan!
I am writing for your help and advise as ATC moves forward with its strategic planning. Through January, February and March, ATC will be preparing the template for each regional office. That is, we will be formulating the potential future focus, location, and staffing of each ATC regional office, and the make-up and function of the Regional Management Committee. The purpose is to make the ATC more effective in helping A.T. clubs and A.T. volunteers with their Trail maintenance, management and protection efforts, to improve the capabilities of ATC to accomplish ATC's mission, and to tailor the priorities of each regional office to their local region.
I would like to meet with members of each of the A.T. clubs that I work with to discuss these critical ATC plans and get your counsel on the best way to shape ATC's southern office to meet all of our needs. If possible, I would like to have these meetings by the end of February, so that a consensus draft can be discussed at the Southern Regional Management Committee meeting, March 19 and 20, 2004.
The internet link, above, will give you background on ATC's strategic planning. My hope is that your club representatives to these meetings will have read through the information in advance.
I hope to be available January 7 to 16, and February 2 to 27. Please let me know when would be a convenient time for me to meet with your club. I hope to hear from you by January 6.
Thank you for your help! Morgan
Morgan Sommerville Appalachian Trail Conference Regional Representative for Ga., N.C. and Tenn. msommerville@atconf.org
828/254-3708 828/254-3754 FAX 160A Zillicoa St. P.O. Box 2750 Asheville, NC 28802
04 TRAIL & RECREATION FUNDING HIGHLIGHTS; TAKE ACTION NOW FOR 2005
Congress recently completed the FY 2004 Interior appropriations bill which funds parks, trails, forests, and other public lands. Some trail and recreation programs, including Forest Service Recreation Management, Forest Service Trails Capital Improvement and Maintenance, and Bureau of Land Management Recreation Management, received modest increases, while other conservation programs suffered deep cuts.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a critical source of land acquisition funding for parks and trails received $272 million ($177 million for federal LWCF and $95 million for stateside LWCF), a disappointing $142 million decrease from last year. The Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery program, an important source of recreation funding for economically distressed urban communities, was zeroed out. Although National Park Service (NPS) annual operations increased by $55 million, the total is insufficient for most parks to cover mandatory cost-of-living increases for staff and will hinder the Park Service's ability to protect natural and cultural resources and provide adequate visitor services. The NPS's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program received flat funding, severely limiting its ability to help communities across the nation protect their natural and recreational resources. Most national scenic trails received small increases for operations.
The Florida National Scenic Trail received $3 million for land acquisition through the Forest Service, the Ice Age Trail received $2 million through NPS, and the other national scenic trails received either no land acquisition funding or well below what they need.
President Bush is currently drafting his budget for the upcoming year (fiscal year 2005). Go to http://www.americanhiking.org/policy/write.html to write a letter, urging him to make trail and recreation funding a priority!
Federal funding for trails and recreation on our public lands is one of American Hiking Society's top policy priorities every year. We will keep pushing Congress and the federal agencies to increase funding for these programs to ensure that trails and trail lands are protected and available for future generations of hikers and all Americans.
Finding Cold Mountain" By Becky Johnson, Smoky Mountain News
Danny Bernstein strapped down her gators, hitched up the hip belt on her backpack, looped her trekking poles over her wrists and consulted her altimeter watch.
“I’ve got 3,200 feet. Ready guys?” she asked, turning toward the snow-covered logging road disappearing into the woods. The road followed the grade of an icy creek plummeting down from Cold Mountain some 3,000 feet above.
“Hang on, we’re getting wired up here,” Dave called back. Danny gazed around the woods as her two hiking companions — Dave Wetmore and Don Walton — fiddled with their GPS units. Both men had sewn pockets into the top of their hats to accommodate their GPS antennas.
“OK, let’s calibrate,” Dave said. The two men with wires protruding from their hats turned to face each other then cranked the dial on their GPS units. They locked into a satellite signal that would then track their footsteps throughout the day. The threesome took off up the trail at a brisk pace.
The teams’ mission: to scour the rarely traversed backside of Cold Mountain for signs of old wagon roads from the 1800s. The route is one of many missing pieces in Danny’s quest to trace all the old footpaths, wagon roads and place names cited in the book Cold Mountain — from the many miles traveled by Inman, a Confederate deserter, as he stealthily worked his way back home to Cold Mountain, to the paths taken by the residents of the area around Cold Mountain when they went to town for supplies.
The current mission was to find the route used by Ada and her father when traveling from Charleston to Cold Mountain. The last leg of the journey — from Brevard to Cold Mountain — was lacking.
Mining local knowledge
In preparation for the trip, the team consulted a local hunter with several generations of family history rooted in the Cold Mountain area. Dave, a lead explorer with the Carolina Mountain Club, is used to such consultations with old-timers. Gleaning information that is both comprehensible and useful to an outsider is tricky. The locals know the mountains’ creeks and branches, its old stumps and boulders, its gaps and coves like the backs of their hands. Navigating the terrain is clear and simple to them, but conveying it to others is a different story.
Dave has learned never to whip out a map. Their relationship with the land is not measured in terms of topo lines. Often they will puzzle at the map, perhaps grow suspicious of this flat piece of paper intended to represent the landscape, and then withdraw. Instead, Dave lets them talk, describing the lay of the land and the forks to watch for. If it goes well, Dave will then present them with a clipboard and ask them to draw a map of their own.
“I’ve found the bigger the piece of paper you give them, the more information you get,” Dave said.
The local who helped Danny, Dave and Don was familiar with maps, however, and they gleaned a good bit about what to look for. A network of old logging roads from the 1930s crisscrosses the backside of Cold Mountain. The right combination takes you all the way to the top — nearly. That’s where it gets patchy.
The last few hundred yards before reaching Deep Gap, all clear signs of a road grade disappear. The gap is the only pass over the mountain, and unless the team could decipher clues of an old wagon road going through the gap, the mission would be foiled.
All went well the first two miles as the group followed an old road along the creek grade. The road dead-ended at a creek crossing, pleasing Danny who was eager to start the uphill climb. All the relatively gentle walking seemed to be contrary to the final goal of reaching the pass over Cold Mountain.
The group quickly fell onto a road bed that seemed to be a popular route for hunters. The road looped past a plot of large Frazier fir Christmas trees that had been set out years ago but never harvested. The road continued to loop and switchback up the mountain, requiring an occasional consultation with the map and GPS to choose the right fork.
“This is going to be easier than we thought,” Danny said.
“Not only are we not lost, we know where we are,” Dave said.
The first real trouble the group hit was about three miles in, when the road underfoot seemed to dead end at the site of an old logging encampment. Artifacts from the time, including rusted tin cans with old fashion rivets along the seams, littered the ground in heaps.
There were two possibilities: the road continued on from the encampment and simply needed finding, or the team had missed a junction and needed to backtrack. The group members split up and began searching the perimeter of the encampment for signs of a roadbed. Dave was the first to detect promising signs. The others came to check out his claim.
“You can feel where a trail has been. You can literally feel it under your feet as you walk along,” Dave said. “Here, try it.”
Dave directed the team to tromp off into the woods for a few steps. “OK, now, walk along right here. See the difference?” The earth underfoot was firm along the old trail bed. In the woods, it was spongy and uneven.
Dave and Dan took off up the route, but Danny hesitated.
“This is too steep to be a wagon road folks. Let’s remember our purpose,” Danny hollered after them.
“We’re in exploration mode now,” Dave answered, charging up the slope.
The faint trail soon petered out, however, and Dave and Don split off in two directions to see if it resumed somewhere close by.
“Where are you Don?” Dave hollered. “You got anything?”
“Nope. This way is nothing,” Don said, abandoning his lead and tracking through the woods in the direction of Dave’s voice.
But Dave’s explorations hadn’t panned out either, so they accepted defeat and tromped back to the old logging camp where Danny was waiting. The only choice left now was to backtrack, keeping an eye out for a junction that had been overlooked. A short distance back down the trail from the old encampment, the team found just that.
“Before we congratulate ourselves, let’s drop back into pessimistic mode. I’ve gotten lost more from over-confidence,” Dave said. So Dave set up his “trail test.” The three gathered around his topo map with their heads nearly bumping.
“If we’re here, which is where we think we are, then momentarily we should be coming up on the quote ‘government signs,’” Dave said, citing instructions gleaned from the old-timer. “We want to stay on that tongue of land. If this thing veers off to the left in a bit, we’ll be OK. If it doesn’t, we’ll be in trouble.”
Danny and Don concurred. “We need to get a bunch of westing in,” Dan said.
They started up the new track and like clockwork the group crossed from private land into forest service land, noting the yellow “government signs” tacked to trees deliniating the forest service boundary.
“I’ve got 4,900 feet. We only have another 700 feet or so before we get to Deep Gap,” Bernstein said. But she wasn’t holding her breath.
Danny had already been on three wild goose chases in search of the old wagon roads leading to Cold Mountain. Given the track record, she wasn’t expecting something as clear cut as the team had found so far today.
“This certainly is the best thing I’ve seen so far,” Danny said.
The road to the past
Today, there are two paved routes between Brevard and Cold Mountain — N.C. 215 and U.S. 276. But neither road existed in the 1800s. Both were built along the paths of old railroad tracks that were laid during the logging heyday of the early 1900s and later improved by the Civilian Conservation Corp.
Charles Frazier, the author of Cold Mountain, is Spartan in his mention of the journey from Brevard to Cold Mountain. According to the book, the wagon road was poor. It “crossed and recrossed” a tributary of the French Broad many times. And it went over a mountain pass called Wagon Road Gap. Wagon Road Gap is located where the current U.S. 276 crosses the Blue Ridge Parkway, but is the only landmark cited along the 30-mile trip they made from Brevard to Cold Mountain.
Through interviews with locals and the process of elimination after several days wandering around in the woods, Danny flushed out the route from Brevard to Wagon Road Gap. But how they got down the mountain on the other side and into Cold Mountain was still unknown. From Wagon Road Gap, their destination lay on the opposite side of Cold Mountain — either forcing them up and over yet another mountain or sending them down into the river valley where they could loop around the base of the mountain.
“The question is — did they go up and over or around? At first I just discounted anybody suggesting they would go up the mountain and then down,” Bernstein said. But after a bushwhacking trip or two and a few convincing talks with locals, Bernstein was willing to try the up and over. Thus, the current exploration on the backside of Cold Mountain.
The team didn’t hit another snag until the top of the mountain was in sight. Just like the local advised, the road grade quit cold turkey just short of the mountain pass. Although Deep Gap was in plain view, the snag was a major impediment. The crew stood looking up a steep 45-degree slope at the gap.
“Could you go up that in a wagon?” Bernstein asked.
“With a lot of cursing,” Dave replied. “It’s a totally different mode of transportation than anything you’ve ever experienced. You can do a lot more than you think you can.”
But as the team trudged up the slope, soil and leaves and rocks shifted underfoot requiring them to lean in toward the slope and grab small saplings for support.
A horse-drawn wagon could not have done that, they decided, and they began to scour the gap and the slope for signs of an old road grade.
“Now I‘m using my imagination a lot right now, but look,” Don said, making an “L” with each hand as if looking through a pretend camera. Don slowly started down his lead, using the “feel method” to divine whether his footsteps were following the remnant of an old wagon road.
Dave took off down another route, and Danny down another. This went on for some time, the tracking up and down of various paths, sizing up whether there was enough potential to call the others over for a look.
Whether they discovered the long lost wagon road over Cold Mountain will remain a secret until Danny’s book comes out — hopefully next winter if she can find a publisher. The book will include not only specific areas traveled by the characters — such as Shining Rock, Little East Fork and Sorrels Creek — but will include place names merely mention in conversation between characters, like Cataloochee and Mount Sterling. For the non-hikers, the book will include tours of all the old towns — basically a mountain tour guide couched in the context of Cold Mountain.
Danny is not worried about a flood of hikers and backpackers infiltrating the area with the publicity from “Cold Mountain.” In fact, she welcomes it. She has no qualms about reeling in outdoor tourists through her book, nor directing them to some of the area’s environmental treasures. Bernstein thinks the Western North Carolina mountains are “under-hiked.”
“I firmly believe if we don’t have enough people hiking in the outdoors, then it will look like a playground for an elite few,” Bernstein said.
Our "Captain Morgan" is a Cover Boy
C.
Morgan Sommerville, since January 1983 the only regional representative for
Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee that the Appalachian Trail Conference has
had, has been named "Outdoor Person of the Year" by
Blue Ridge Outdoors
magazine. Seen here atop Max Patch (named "Best Place to Sleep under the
Stars"), Sommerville, also known as Buck, says: "Nothing I do is possible
without our volunteers and agency partners." True, but, as the magazine
concludes, "All of us who have ever used the white blaze to find our way owe
Morgan Sommerville a debt of gratitude." BRO is distributed free at major
outfitters and other stores from Virginia south. Other relevant "bests" in the
December issue were the A.T. from Max Patch across the Roan Highlands as "best
hiking trail" and Mountain Mama's hostel near Davenport Gap as one of two "best
post-trail hangouts."
December 8, 2003. See Full Article
Anyone Interested in attending!
Please click on the link for info on the 2004 SORUCK to be held in SC. I am inviting a representative of the Carolina Mountain Club to attend, not as anyones guest, but as a participant. You could set up a booth/table, or just be available for Q&A. Please consider joining us for this important meet-and-greet weekend...http://www.hike-usa.com/soruck2004.htm Pittsburgh (Richard Mann - ATC member 1168
Mountains to Sea Trail Construction moves on!!
Piet Bodenhorst just brought me up to date on the new trail construction between Balsam Gap (Waynesville) and Heintooga Road. He reports that his crews have worked three times on :
Section #1 having completed .75 of a mile of trail through the woods with a .25 mile to go to complete Section 1 at the Entry Ramp to the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP).
Section #2 will be entirely on the BRP 1.3 miles to Old Orchard Overlook. Piet is working with Larry Hulquist, BRP Landscape Architect, who is completing a standard trail signage program to be used on the BRP and on the MST trails.
Section #3 will be on trail for about 100 yards then on Hood Road, a dirt road, for a total of 2 miles.
Section #4 will be trail built through the woods 1.5 miles to Cascades Overlook.
All of the above sections have been approved to build by the BRP and the NC Park System and will be completed by the end of 2004. There are a total of 14 sections to get to Heintooga Road, the Cherokee Reservation Border.
This is a great step forward in our new quest to finish the MST to Heintooga road. As you remember we just completed the relocation at Firescald Ridge on the AT and a few years ago the CMC completed the now legendary section over Potato Knob by Black Balsam. This officially focuses the CMC trail building resources to this area for the near future. Piet informs me he welcomes anyone who is interested in working on this project. He needs and welcomes all help he can get. This is your chance to help a little or a lot on a project that will likely be another legendary creation by the Carolina Mountain Club. Don Walton.
Southern Regional Management Committee
Dear Southern Club Presidents--This is just a quick reminder for your calendars and your club newsletters. The Southern Regional Management Committee will meet at Spruce Pine, NC, March 19-21, 2004. We'll be sending more detailed information in mid January after we've had a planning meeting, but I wanted to send you a reminder now. We're hoping for especially good attendance this year because we'd like to get some good feedback from the clubs and agency partners about ATC's strategic initiatives. This input will help to shape how ATC will be structured in the future, especially the regional offices. We're looking for suggestions on how ATC can best support club efforts and how you want to participate in ATC governance. Happy holidays!! Marianne Skeen Southern Region Vice Chair
Annual Hike the Hill
Dear Trails Advocate: American Hiking Society (AHS) invites you to participate in our annual Hike the Hill: Trails Advocacy Week, scheduled for February 29 - March 3, 2004. This is an opportunity for you to talk directly to the policy-makers here in Washington, DC about your trails and projects. AHS offers guidance and lobby training for both newcomers and experienced advocates. Our advocacy efforts for 2004 will focus on full funding for trails and recreation management within the National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management and other trail-related legislation and policies such as federal transportation law reauthorization. Advocacy Week officially begins on Sunday, February 29, with discussion and training on trail policy issues and advocacy skills through Monday morning. Participants begin their lobby visits on Monday with the rest of the week almost entirely devoted to your congressional meetings. We will hold a debriefing session one evening to discuss your lobby visits and next steps for trail advocacy. We are also planning an event for Congress Members on Capitol Hill. American Hiking Society's Board of Directors invites all Advocacy Week participants to a reception and silent auction on Saturday evening, February 28 to welcome you. Advocacy Week 2004 will take place at the Wyndham City Center Hotel, located at 1143 New Hampshire Avenue, near the Foggy Bottom metro station. Room rates are $129 for single/double occupancy. Call 1-800-526-7495 by Feb 6, 2004 to reserve your room. Refer to American Hiking Society to receive the group rate. Register online at http://www.americanhiking.org/policy/advo_week.html or download and return the registration form to me at the address listed below. The final agenda and supporting materials will follow.
AHS Hiker’s Store
Just in time for the holidays, the online AHS Hiker’s Store (formerly the Hiker’s Emporium) is coming back! Starting next week, the Hiker’s Store will be reopened and better than ever. AHS members can now hike in pride, sporting trail-tested and fashionable “wears” all displaying the famous AHS boot logo. The store contains high-quality brand items such as Layer’s® Cool-Max shirts, Life is Good® pigment-dyed tees, organic cotton tote bags, and Nalgene® water bottles. All items are viewable by logging onto www.AmericanHiking.org/hikers_store , and ordering is simple, secure, and seamless. The site also includes a form for those who wish to mail or fax an order. The store is your one-stop shop for all AHS membership discount promotions, links to outdoor retailers, Trail Finder subscriptions, trail tools, and National Trails Day merchandise. Be on the lookout for member-only specials. Remember, AHS gear makes great holiday gifts too!
Give the Gift of AHS Membership
Did you know that it’s possible to give an AHS membership as a gift? The gift of membership in AHS is the one size fits all, perfect gift that keeps on giving for everyone on your holiday shopping list. You can purchase gift memberships online at www.AmericanHiking.org/join/ctg/giftmem.html or you can call Phillip Dodge, Membership Coordinator at (301) 565-6704 ext. 207.
Annual FMST Meeting
Anyone that is interested in going along with me to this meeting, you are very welcome to attend. Please contact me if interested. Don Walton
Dear FMST Task Forces: I hope that each of you are enjoying the Holiday season thus far. As you know we have time on our agenda for Task Force reports at our Annual meeting on January 31, 2004. We will have all of the AV needs if you want to come with a power point presentation. We also welcome displays of photos and maps of the MST work you have done over the years as well. We will also add "door prizes" this year at the meeting. They range from outdoor products to gift cards. If you would like to submit some items to the list let me know, we would be glad to accept them. Please take a moment to account for all of your volunteer hours spent on the MST this year, its time to close some grants and file reports with NC State Parks. You can mail your hours to Allen de Hart at 3585 US-401-South, Louisburg, NC 27549. Hope you have a good holiday. Jeff Brew
What you need for a day hike
Bringing the proper equipment will add greatly to your enjoyment, your safety, and the enjoyment and safety of the group. This stuff is essential if you are going out in the woods for more than a couple of hours. Make sure that you are comfortable with your equipment and you know where it all fits in. Do not carry anything in your hands; do not tie a jacket around your waist. Everything should fit in your daypack. Carry your wallet and keys in your daypack, at all times. In your daypack: Two quarts of water in plastic water bottles (not soda bottles) Lunch and snacks Rain jacket (no matter what the forecast) Long sleeve shirt (no matter what the forecast) Sunglasses Wool or fleece hat and gloves Insect repellent Sunscreen Tissues Personal first aid kit Small flashlight Plastic bag for trash If it is not the height of a warm summer, add: Warm fleece hiking sweater or jacket Rain pants How to dress: Shorts and a short-sleeve T-shirt as the bottom layer. Hiking boots that are well broken-in and that go over the ankles Good hiking socks (not sports socks). Sunhat with a wide brim Bandanna which you need to keep handy Dress in layers: Your first layer should be a short-sleeve t-shirt (synthetic, not cotton) even if it seems cool in the morning. You will warm up. Your second layer should be a long-sleeve shirt (also synthetic). If you need extra layers, you will have your warm hiking sweater and rain jacket. Shorts give you more mobility and keep you cooler; pants give you more protection from insects and brush. Questions, comments, additions to the list? Send to danny@hikertohiker.org
