Carolina Mountain Club
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September 10, 2010
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| Upcoming Hikes | Hike Reports |Maintenance Schedule |
| What's Happening in the Next Two Weeks | Help Wanted |
| Other Important News | Photo Contest |
| Challenges | Forgotten Summits |
| Conservation | Save our AshTrees |
| Heard on the Ground | Maintenance Reports |
| Heard on the Trail | Calory Counter |
| The Small Print | Deadlines, change of addresses and other details |
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From Your Editor Communicating CMC puts great importance on communications. We have Let's Go, which we print and mail out, the eNews, which you're reading right now. Facebook page allows friends to post pictures or brag about the hike they went on. It's also the vehicle for hike changes and road closures. The website is being redesigned right now but in the meantime, improvements are being made to the current website. Look at the home page to see late breaking news. Each mode of communications is important and serves a different purpose. Check them all out. Danny What's Happening in the Next Two Weeks Help Wanted - Half-Day Hike Scheduler needed. The responsibilities for the schedulers are: * Receive emails from leaders and fill in the schedule template with the hike information. * Make suggestions for hikes to leaders that want help. * Submit the finished schedule for proofreading and printing in Lets Go. Smokies Closures Great Smoky Mountains National Park announces that Clingmans Dome Road will be closed for construction work from Monday, September 13 until Saturday morning, Since the Park has been blessed with stimulus money, they are building and repairing like mad. Other trails are affected. Check all the closings. Danny
Active Aging Day Saturday, September 25, 9 am-4 pm Come to Reuter Center at the University of North Carolina at Asheville for a sampler of health-related activities and talks. Free and open to the public…bring a friend! There will be vendors, healthy food choices and demonstrations from area experts such as Laurey from Laurey’s Catering, Linda MacFarlane doing square foot gardening, Tai Chi with Crayton Bedford (and me talking about hiking in the Blue Ridge) and much more. This is a great chance to try out yoga, pilates, zumba and other activities that may be new to you. Attendees can park in any spot on campus on Saturdays at the Reuter Center or on other lots on campus. Check it out. Danny Save the Date for the CMC Annual Dinner The CMC annual meeting and dinner will take place on Saturday October 30. It will be at the Chariot in Hendersonville. More information to follow. Meantime, save the date! Share the Experience Photo Contest The National Park Foundation and Olympus are sponsoring a dream photo contest. The prizes are impressive. Enter your best three photos that you've taken on Federal land. The photographs must be taken in one of the Federal Recreation Agency Lands between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. Around the Southern Appalachians, that includes National Parks, like the Smokies or the Blue Ridge Parkway or National Forests like Pisgah or Nantahala National Forests. Check out all the details. Mountains-to-Sea Trail to Open a New Section
Join Friends of the MST in celebrating the grand opening of 25 new miles on Oct. 2. The trail dedication will be held in E.B. Jeffress Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway, MP 272. Everyone is invited but you must register. See here for all details.
Bernard Elias Recognized by Appalachian Trail Conservancy A.T.C. recognizes the contributions of members that have passed away including Bernard Elias. The Forgotten Summits By Jesse Boyd August 27, 2010 published by Blue Ridge Outdoors Why does the South Beyond 6,000 Challenge exclude dozens of qualified peaks? South Beyond 6,000 (SB6K) is a unique peakbagging quest that, upon completion, offers a certificate of recognition and a nice little patch. Sponsored by the Carolina Mountain Club (CMC), the challenge involves climbing 40 peaks in the Southern Appalachians that exceed 6,000 feet in elevation. All are found in North Carolina or Tennessee, and nearly one-third have no established summit trail. As of October 2008, the CMC recognizes only 167 official “completers” of the Southern Sixers. This is a good thing, as it’s still possible to do what relatively few have done. An official Southern Sixer must exceed 6,000 feet while boasting a 200-foot rise from an adjacent gap or a 3/4-mile distance from a neighboring Sixer, according to the CMC. However, this isn’t uniformly applied. Potato Knob, Patton Knob, Spruce Ridge, and West Point, an obvious rise west of Mount LeConte, are excluded, despite meeting the requirements. The simplest definition of a peak is an obvious closed contour along a high ridgeline. Applying this yields 103 Southern Sixers (104 if you count Benchmark 6110, oddly placed near Mount Hardy), a far more formidable challenge for the peakbagging aficionado. Intriguingly, many of the 63 peaks excluded from SB6K were considered worthy of measurement by Arnold Guyot during his pioneering surveys in the mid-1800s, and at least 8 of these boast official U.S. Geological Survey names commemorating persons of historical significance with regard to early exploration and establishment of public lands in the area. Some of the excluded peaks are easily summited, but at least half require serious bushwhacking. Thus, it’s still possible to experience these high summits much like Guyot did 150 years ago. The official South Beyond 6000 peaks allow for some of this, if one can ignore the obvious manways and taped routes left behind by those pursuing SB6K speed records with obscene amounts of logistical support (kudos to the CMC for discouraging the survey tape). Dave Wetmore, SB6K committee member for the CMC, says that the original intent of the Challenge was not to include all of the peaks that met the criteria, but only 40 of them. It was modeled on the 40 Over Four Challenge in New England. [Actually, the White Mountains 4,000 footers. There are 48 of them. - Editor.] Don’t get me wrong: The official list is a worthy goal, the CMC website does provide plenty of good information, and I certainly had my share of thrills pursuing South Beyond 6,000—beginning with a 4,000 foot slog up Mount Mitchell. Later, I shattered my cell phone in an unassailable windfall atop Mount Guyot. Crawling on all fours allowed me to find the true summit of Reinhart Knob. Lost, I had an emotional meltdown somewhere on the cliffs below Winter Star. And to stand in the balsam prison atop Mount Gibbs was nearly impossible. There was the pastoral charm of Grassy Ridge Bald; the night sky atop Sam Knob; an answer to prayer for water on the long traverse to Cold Mountain; the bushwhacking nightmares that were Luftee Knob and Big Cataloochee; and that endless night trying to sleep on the slopes of Tricorner Knob, enduring a horrendous downpour and the cold that later turned everything to pristine rime. SB6K can be epic. However, I’d rather claim all 103 legitimate South Beyond 6,000 summits and the added adventure that comes with it. Bound by the CMC criteria, one is robbed of the incredible vistas atop Browning Knob and Shining Rock’s West Quartz, the taste of what Mitchell used to be on its Unnamed South I peak, the rhododendrons on Big Roan Ridge, the view from Clingman’s Peak that explains how Elisha Mitchell could have misidentified the highest summit in 1844, the untrod abundance on Commissary Ridge and Richland Balsam’s Southeast Spur, and the gratification of adding peak names like Big Butt, Horse Rock, and The Jumpoff to one’s climbing resume. Moreover, every time I view Potato Knob’s southwest face from I-40 or the distinctive silhouette of Lickstone Ridge from afar, I am reminded that 103 summits are better than 40. And those 103 Southern Sixers are also great training for this region’s real peakbagging challenge: the 195 Southern Fivers, some of which lie as far as you can get from a road or a trail in the Southeast. Emerald Ash Borers in the Smokies by Janet Martin Did you spot any purple box kites in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this summer? The six-spotted, green tiger beetle is frequently found on hiking trails. In contrast, the smaller EAB fits within the surface of a penny and its elongated shape is similar to a firefly. EAB larvae were identified as the cause of the devastation of "tens of millions' of ash trees in Michigan alone. Since 2002, EAB infestations have crept southward into Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. The primary source of the steady encroachment of the EAB is believed to be through the illicit transport of firewood across state lines despite a quarantine against transport of ash wood. Smokies personnel aim to identify any infested areas and burn the ash wood before larvae are laid under the bark. The traps did not yield any EABs within the park; however, infestations were identified in two Tennessee and two North Carolina counties during August 2010. The vegetation crew in the Park needs an accurate survey of ash trees to trap EABs and treat the trees. The park has put out a call for volunteers to produce an enhanced GIS database of ash tree locations. With an enhanced survey, a great number of traps can be hung early in 2011 for early detection to preserve the ash population in the park and enhance our hiking experiences. Want to get involved? Volunteers are being invited to join park biologists and educators during field days on September 11, September 25 and October 2 (9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on each of those days). Volunteers will learn how to identify ash and other common trees found within the Smoky Mountains, read a topographic map, and use a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. To volunteer, contact Ranger Susan Simpson at 865-436-1200, ext. 762, to RSVP and for the meeting location. Maintenance Reports created by Jim Ariail
A License to Eat? When you start out on a dayhike or a backpack, how do you know how much food to bring? Do you know the number of calories needed to get you up the mountain - and just as important - get you down? Hiking Dude, a website, has a calorie calculator. Plug in your total weight (including you gear), the mileage and altitude you'll be doing and it returns the number of calories you need. Danny The eNews comes out on Fridays. So ... The next issue will come out on Friday, September 24. Wednesday hike reports for the hike just before the eNews comes out will be published in the next eNews. Hiker leaders, please send all your eNews hike reports and photos to Dave Wetmore at dwetmore@citcom.net So send me your news and maintenance reports by Tuesday evening at 9 P.M. before the newsletter comes out, that is, by Tuesday evening September 21 to Danny Bernstein at danny@hikertohiker.com. Include your email address at the end of your story. Thank you. The CMC Calendar is meant to answer the perennial question "When is this happening again?" It is also meant to prevent conflicts between competing CMC events. Please check it often. Westgate parking - Park in the northernmost part of the lot - past EarthFare, in the last row of parking spaces. How to join the Carolina Mountain Club If you are a non-member subscriber, you need to go back to the | ||||
Danny Bernstein
danny@hikertohiker.com
September 18. I hope no one is thinking of starting the MST or starting from the top of Clingmans Dome next week.
Come and see what's beyond Mt. Mitchell on the MST.
These traps were placed in ash trees in the Smokies in late spring. A thumb size bait soaked with exotic oils was hanging in the middle of each trap to lure emerald ash borers (EAB) onto the sticky purple surface. Volunteers lowered each trap biweekly and plucked off any suspects, which were bagged and submitted to park biologists at the Twin Creek Nature Center.