Carolina Mountain Club

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November 23, 2007

Hunting Season

Nov. 19 to Dec. 8 (Deer Season)
Dec. 10 to Jan. 1 (Bear and Boar)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hiking News | CMC Calendar

Please Read This!

ATC to Offer Free Memberships to CMC Members

As an A.T. maintaining club, CMC is a member of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC). Many CMC members also are individual members of ATC. To introduce itself, ATC will give free one-year memberships to CMC members who are not already ATC members. However, CMC will need to provide the names and addresses of its members who are not already members of ATC. We will not be sending phone numbers or e-mail addresses to ATC, and ATC will not share this information with anyone else. ATC will give us the names of their members who live in Western North Carolina but who are not CMC members. We will send these people information about CMC and an invitation to join our Club.

CMC promises its members that it will not share their personal information with third parties. Since as a Club we are members of ATC, and this offer will benefit both CMC members and the Club as a whole, the Council felt we should make an exception. However, if you have an objection to having your name and address shared with ATC, please let Lenny Bernstein know by e-mail (lsberns@worldnet.att.net) or letter (488 Kimberly Ave., Asheville, NC 28804) by Jan. 15, 2008. No phone calls please. We will remove the name of any member who objects from the list we send ATC. Lenny Bernstein.

If you're not a member of CMC, think about joining the club. CMC is becoming the biggest bargain around. You'll get a gift card from Diamond Brand Outdoors and, if you join before January 15, 2008, you'll get a free Appalachian Trail Conservancy membership. How can you miss?

What's Happening in the Next Two Weeks

GPS Discussion Group - Reply by December 1.

There are quite a few of us who now use GPSr's (GPS receivers) on hikes. I would like to propose starting an informal discussion group which could either meet in person or on the CMC discussion board. Any issue involving GPS units could be raised and perhaps clarified or answered.

If you might be interested in participating in such a group, please email me at dwetmore@citcom.net. I would like to hear from you by December 1. In your email, indicate whether you would like to use the Web board, meetings, or both.

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Hiking Western North Carolina's Heritage

Stone Mountain State Park

Stone Mountain State Park, north of Statesville, North Carolina, is known for its spectacular rock, a granite pluton that rises 700 feet out of the valley. The rock is pock-marked with weathering pits as if a giant left footprint impressions on the rock. Though impressive, the mountain is not as well known as Stone Mountain in Georgia. Most people just climb to the top of Stone Mt. and back down. If you continue past the top and do a 6.4 mile loop, you’ll leave the tourists and catch three waterfalls. The elaborate staircase paralleling Stone Mt. Falls, the main falls, is as impressive as the waterfall itself.

Beyond the rock, Stone Mountain State Park is loaded, with artifacts of its moonshine past. Wilkes County is the moonshine capital of the world,” proclaims the Visitor Center brochures. “It used to be hush-hush,” Bob, a local hiker, explained, “but now they’re proud of it. Just a couple of hundred feet off the trail, you can come down to a field of stills – large steel drums - whose tops have been blown off by dynamite. The way the metal peels off and curls in beautiful swirls make me want to display it in my garden as a sculpture. The pipes, which fed the gas to cook the mash, are still visible. Rubber tubes and jerrycans lie on the ground, helter-skelter. Around several stills, you’ll see a pile of old coke bottles – the 12 ounce dark green glass - that is now considered an antique item. All these Coke bottles prove the old saying, “Whisky was for selling, not for drinking.” The workers drank Coke. Danny.

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Other Important News

John and Irene Bryant – CMC ‘s Participation in the Rescue

This is a brief report on CMC's participation in the search for John and Irene Bryant on Thursday, November 8. We know so much more of this tragic story now but I've written a description of our one day participation in the search to find them.

On November 7, Dick Johnson, a CMC trail crew member called Gerry McNabb and asked him to contact as many CMC hikers as possible to volunteer for the search the following day. Gerry contacted about 80 people and I contacted about forty more were in Georgia at Hike Inn for a three day outing. So, there were only three volunteers from our club. Bobbi Powers, Dick Johnson and me. We had two other ex-CMC trail maintainers with us - Jim Farley and Tom Joyce and we also had a man named Fred Roane who serves on the board of Blue Ridge Outdoors. We all signed up under the CMC header and worked with three young men who were park fire fighters. There were about 10 people from High Country Hikers and a few citizens who had heard the call for volunteers on the news and showed up. They formed other teams and worked different areas.

The search was led by the Brevard Search and Rescue Team. Local trainers provided search dogs trained to locate live humans as well as other dogs trained to find cadavers. We arrived at 8 AM, but we didn't begin the search until 10:30 as they had to send out the dogs first and then get all of us organized. We worked on a grid system, forming broad lines across an area and then keeping fifteen to twenty feet on either side of us. We were out there for just about four hours. Essentially, we were bushwacking (We sure could have used Tom Bindrim.) and it was tough going from start to finish. We were called back at about 2:45 P.M. Three hikers in the other group were lost and the light and temperature were changing for the worst. The Red Cross was at the Cradle of Forestry meeting building where they served us sandwiches/soup/coffee at the end of the day. On that day, nothing was found by any team. The men who led our team explained that there was a chance that foul play was involved and the possibility that the story would eventually get national coverage.

Although disappointed in not finding any sign of the Bryants, Bobbie and I found volunteering to search to be a very worthwhile thing to do. It was a first-time experience for both of us and we were impressed with how it all works, as well as with the kindness and dedication of the park/ forestry employees working the search. We were thanked many times by the men managing the search teams. We were both glad to represent the Carolina Mountain Club that day. Jean Gard

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