Tag Archives: Smokies

Up in the air with Friends of the Smokies

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Hiking,
Pam and me - Smokies 100 completers
Pam and me – We Smokies 100

It’s hot down here in Asheville.

So it was not difficult to get a large group of Friends of the Smokies (FOTS) hikers to come on a Charlies Bunion to Kephart Prong Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park yesterday.

Sarah Weeks, the development director of FOTS from Tennessee, joined us on the hike. Marielle DeJong, the new associate, was on her first FOTS hike. Even Brent McDaniel, the marketing director, showed up at the trailhead, on his way to check out donation boxes.

FOTS provides some very nice amenities.

On this hike, Anna Zanetti, Director of the NC office of FOTS, organized a bus that shuttled us up to Newfound Gap, the start of the hike. The first four miles to Charlies Bunion were crowded by trail standards. Hikers were going up to the Bunion, some were coming down and some weren’t going to go too far.  But we were all outside, so that’s OK.

Kephart Prong Shelter
Kephart Prong Shelter

The bulk of our group had a leisurely lunch before we felt the first drops of rain. We carefully walked on a narrow, rocky trail around to meet the Appalachian Trail again. We had lost almost all the other hikers.

Then the skies opened up-rain, thunder and even some lightning. By then we were on the Dry Sluice Trail.

Yes, that’s the name of the trail, even though the trail was a riverbed and not dry at all. Well, when it rains, you do what hikers do, get wet. And I did. Though I quickly put on my packcover, almost everything got soaked.

Another right on Grassy Branch Trail. By then the rain had stopped and the sun came out again. Grassy Branch Trail was an old logging road. One spot even has Norway Spruce, left over from when logging companies had the run of the Smokies. For more details of this hike, look at my hiking guide, Hiking North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Purple-fringed orchids
Purple-fringed orchids

The trail had blooming rhododendrons, mountain laurel and flame azaleas. This was the day to be out there. And some sharp eyes spotted purple-fringed orchids.

We finally all converged at Kephart Prong Shelter.

Some hikers had waited for quite a while, others just arrived and we left. I usually wait about five minutes for everyone to catch their breath. But this was an unusual circumstance. I’m so glad that everyone had waited – Thank you.

We had been spread out and all the patient FOTS staff members had walked in the back for most of the hike. Now I was the sweep down Kephart Prong Trail and the last one off the trail.

On this hike, I finished my Smokies 100 miles for 2016. Yippee! Looking forward to the celebration with Superintendent Cassius Cash at the end of the year.

Why am I clicking for upgrades in a National Park?

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, National Parks,
Clingmans Dome

Why am I clicking to help repair the tower on Clingmans Dome?

Why are we asked to click to compete for money to repair the tower on Clingmans Dome? Why isn’t expected maintenance a routine expense?

Here’s the official request from an (edited) press release put out by Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is participating in Partners in Preservation (PIP), a community-based partnership of American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to raise awareness of the importance of preserving historic places. In honor of the National Park Service’s Centennial, the 2016 National Parks campaign will award $2 million in grants to historic sites in need of preservation within national parks units, as decided by popular vote.

As one of 20 historic places selected, Great Smoky Mountains National Park hopes to be one of the winners of the campaign to help Clingmans Dome Tower. Straddling the North Carolina and Tennessee state line at 6,643 feet, the Clingmans Dome Tower is a prominent landmark and destination as the highest point in the park.

Poster campaign at OVC
Poster campaign at OVC

Twenty national park units are competing with each other to repair or replace key structures and features. To take two examples of other worthy places I’ve visited recently and wrote about:

Everglades National Park boasts the Flamingo Visitor Center, a distinctive example of Park Service modern architecture and the Mission 66 building program that transformed America’s national parks in the 1950s and 1960s. They also need $250,000 to repair the visitor center.

In Atlanta, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, part of Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, needs $227,000 grant to preserve the exterior of the church.

Ironically, many of these requests for money, including Clingmans Dome, are from Mission 66 projects. Between 1956 and 1966, our federal government spent more than one billion dollars on infrastructure and other improvements in the parks.

I’m not writing a press release, but an opinion piece. So beyond asking you to click and click, I ask:

* Why aren’t we spending the equivalent money on Mission 2016, instead of asking the public to click and vote? [There is no Mission 2016]

* Why are we depending on private companies to fix infrastructure in our national parks? As Sally Jewell, the Interior Secretary, says about park partners like Friends of the Smokies and the Great Smoky Mountains Association, “friends groups used to provide the margin of excellence. Now they’re providing the margin of survival for parks.”

When was the last time you heard any of the presidential candidates give their opinions about the importance of public lands? I feel I’m pretty informed but I have never heard or read anything about their views on public land. If you dig deep on the web, you might see a statement on the environment but that’s so much more general and meaningless.

So instead of demanding that our Federal Government fund the parks properly, we’re clicking and pitting one outstanding park against the other. But I guess I’m going to click as well.

Go to VoteYourPark.org and click, click, click every day.

Diversity on Rainbow Falls Trail

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Hiking,
Family at Bridal Veil Falls
Family at Rainbow Falls

I keep saying that parks aren’t crowded, certainly not the trails.

A couple of days ago, I walked up to Rainbow Falls, one of the most popular waterfalls in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

It was beautiful May day. The parking lot was crowded when I arrived about 9:45 am.

Black snake on tree
Black snake on tree

But where were the hikers?

What were all these people doing, if they weren’t on the trail? Yes, they could have chosen to walk to Grotto Falls, but still…

It took me 90 minutes to get to the falls, hardly a speed record, but I’m no speeder, just a plodder who talks to everyone. I  even stopped to look up to see a black snake on a tree. I think it was a black snake?

Rainbow Falls Trail is rocky and could be considered steep. Many folks were obviously not going to get to their destination. They were slow and stopped every ten steps.

With all the concerns about diversity in the national parks, I must mention that I saw a good cross-section of the US population. Hikers of every age and ethnic group were represented.

A group of Mennonite teenager girls with two middle-age female chaperones came down from the falls. They were wearing the traditional long, plain dresses, with good sneakers and high socks. I talked to them at length but didn’t take any photos. You can be sure that they reached the falls.

Two families with small children gave me great hope. Look at the picture of the family above. Their two-year old was carried by the dad in a sturdy, structured backpack. The mother carried the three-month old in a front pack and had a daypack with their equipment on her back. They were prepared.

Bridal Veil Falls
Rainbow Falls

But I saw a lot of diversity I could have done without. These hikers were going up as I came down the trail, so I don’t know if they made it to the top.

Lots of millenials with nothing – no water, pack, snacks, nothing but a phone in their hands.

I learned that a  group of young teens had been told by their leaders to leave their water bottles behind. “They were just going to forget them and litter”. What!@#$@

Several women wearing flip-flops on their manicured feet.

A couple with a large dog on a leash. When I pointed out that dogs aren’t allowed on the trail, they claimed that they didn’t see the sign and ignored me.

Rainbow Falls itself was thin and narrow. Not much rain this last couple of weeks, so a lot of the rock was dry.

But reaching the destination was great–and not crowded at all.