Carolina Mountain Club
Hike - Save trails - Make friends
March 20, 2009
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| Upcoming Hikes | Hike Reports | CMC Calendar |
| Happenings in the next two weeks | Last chance to enter the photo contest |
| Other News | Spring picnic - April 25 |
| Heard on the Ground | Maintenance Crew Instructions |
| Heard on the Trail | Looking for forest fires |
| The small print | Deadlines, change of addresses and other details |
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What's Happening in the Next Two Weeks Extend the MST - March 21 Join us for the next chance this spring to extend the MST South on Saturday March 21. When: March 21 This is your opportunity to give something back for all the fun and enjoyment you have had on the trails these past years. We hope to have a large group to help us extend the MST going south to Soco Gap. Meeting Place: Moose Café at 9:00 A.M. for car pooling. Tools will be available, but if you have digging tools of your own, please bring them. Please call all your friends and acquaintances and invite them. The more hands the more fun! Let’s Go to the High Mountains. ---------------------- Back to Top CMC Photo Contest
The winners will be chosen by us, the members at the Spring picnic. The deadline is March 31 - so this is the last time it will be in the eNews. Check out all the details. Photo is by Becky Smucker. ---------------------- Back to Top Book Launch and Fundraiser - April 7 at Diamond Brand Outdoors Help me launch my new guidebook, Hiking North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Heritage.
I'll present a slide program and Earth Fare will provide refreshments. For every book sold that evening, Diamond Brand outdoors will donate 50% of the proceeds to Trails Forever program in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In addition, Diamond Brand Outdoors will offer a $20 gift card for anyone that registers to become a member of Friends of the Smokies, at the book launch event. Trails Forever is the signature fundraising initiative connected to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s 75th anniversary celebration. The Trails Forever endowment will fund an additional permanent trail maintenance work crew to support trail improvement projects along the more than 800 miles of hiking trails inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
---------------------- Back to Top Spring Picnic Save the date - Saturday April 25. Hikes, food, friendship and a great slide show are promised. You all received an insert with your Let's Go. Please fill it out and send a check to reserve your spot. For more information, contact Les Love. ---------------------- Back to Top Smoky Mountains: Backpack - Eight 6000 foot peaks - May 8-11 Complete the CMC's SB6K Challenge. This 4 day, 3 night backpack will go to the top of the 8 otherwise very difficult to get to peaks in the SB6K Challenge. Usually the Backpack is a very difficult three day backpack which scares some people off. This backpack spreads the work out over 4 days also reducing backtracking. It's about 39 miles total - 6.6, 9.2, 11.1 and 10(or 12) miles each day. Details are in the hike map document on the website. Charlie Ferguson will lead the hike - email him if you are interested. Priority will be given to those who have not been to these peaks before. There is a limit of 8 on the backpack. We will stay in shelters each night so there is no need to carry a tent, unless you want to. The hike is #651. You must be a CMC member. ---------------------- Back to Top Appalachian Trail Festival 2009 Who's going to the AT Conference in Vermont July 17 - 24? Rocko and I are planning to make a vacation of it as we've spent very little time in that part of the world. I'm just wondering who all might be thinking of going. It looks like a full and interesting schedule of workshops, hikes, excursions, etc. Lenny and Danny Bernstein are each doing a workshop. It would be fun to know who's going, and we might be able to help folks carpool or plan to room together if that's needed. Let me know if you're going, and what your plans are, and if you might want to get heads together to at least plan to meet once while we're all there. Details and registration are at http://www.vermont2009.org/. Becky Smucker bjsmucker@gmail.com. ---------------------- Back to Top Eperience Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. A week long trip to Rocky Mtns. National Park in Colorado is being planned by CMC members. The proposed dates are September 12-19, 2009.
On the 2006 trip, we enjoyed the beauty of the golden aspen trees, hiking in snow at the higher elevations, moose on the trail and watching herds of elk in the park and Estes Park itself. We plan to do dayhikes from several different trailheads in RMNP to fully experience this beautiful park and return to our lodge each evening (the lodge we have in mind has a large hot tub in a separate building with a view of the mountains). A complete hike list will be provided when you contact Kathleen. Many hikes are of the A-A level with some B-B or B-C options depending on what the participants would like. Some hikes will take advantage of RMNP’s bus shuttle system. Depending on the number of hikers on the trip, there may be a choice of hikes each day and the option of splitting into groups depending on the challenge level desired. Most of these hikes start above 9,000 feet. We will set rooms aside at a lodge a few miles west of Estes Park, CO with discounted pricing and arrange for the rental of vans to transport us for the week. The air travel will be the responsibility of the individual. Contact Kathleen Hudson at mstish1325@gmail.com for more information. This trip is limited to 20 people. If you are interested, please contact Kathleen as soon as possible. ---------------------- Back to Top Franklin's April Fools Trail Days Event April 3-5, 2009 My name is Bill Van Horn and I am the President of the Nantahala Hiking, one of the thirty volunteer hiking clubs that maintain the 2,175 miles of the Appalachian Trail.
The primary purpose of this event is to benefit the Appalachian Trail, the Hiking Community and the Town of Franklin, NC and its surrounding community. Supporting purposes include but are not limited to the following: [Photo is of Nonah Bridge on the Little Tennessee Greenway in Franklin, taken by Danny Bernstein] ---------------------- Back to Top Appalachian Trail Gathering - April 14 The special event will kick off at 7 p.m., again on the second Tuesday, April 14, at Jack of the Wood. Highlighting the best-of-times along the Appalachian Trail, the event will be Celebrating the A.T. in 10 Voices. Will you sign up to Volunteer your Voice for the event? We're looking to assign a name to most or all of story topics below. Each story-teller gets five minutes to tell their story. Audience participation and response to the presentations will help judges pick the evening's "winner" who will receive a prize-pack for their infamous trail tale. Multi-media presentations are encouraged, too. We will have a laptop, LCD projector and screen. We'll follow the award up with any questions the audience may have for our presenters. Sign up for one of these topics below by e-mailing ljoyner@appalachiantrail.org, with Voices in the subject line, and include the topic name and up to a three sentences overview of your story. Only one person per topic, so act fast to get the one you want! Most poignant lesson from the Trail;
Most interesting positive interaction on the Trail; We'll also have A.T. games and prizes. Celebrating the A.T. in 10 Voices is an event for all ages. Bring friends and family, too. Leanna Joyner ---------------------- Back to Top We Get Letters I read with interest your article on finishing the Smokies. I have been on a now 48 year quest to hike all the trails in the Smokies. I began when I was 11 in the BSA and we hiked up to Cosby Gap (ugh) and then on to Cades Cove over the next week. It was miserably hard and rained the first three days and a guy in another group died from a heart attack. Despite all that I developed an love of the GSMNP and have been biting off sections of trail and reading the histories ever since. I afraid to count how many miles I still have left but it is about 150 or so I think. I have a three-year plan to finish up. Always looking for someone who has similar interests or just likes to “go”. I can sympathize with all your comments. I have been defeated by the Eagle Creek Jenkins loop twice partly because we ran out of time trying to take our boots off at every crossing though we had wonderful weekends in that area both times. Those old rusted out cars are really neat on the Lakeshore Trail and both time we canoed over to the brick kiln and walked up the copper mine and all the machinery that is left. The last time they had put a fence over the mine entrance. Mike Knies ---------------------- Back to Top A Typical Maintenance Day In case you thought leading a trail crew was easy? Here are (just part of the) instructions from Skip Sheldon. Folks, This week we are going to start our A.T. walk through and the scheduling gets a little complicated. We need to cover the sections from Waterville School Road (WSR) to Max Patch Road. There are 4 saws available (Piet, Alan, Jack II, and Skip) if they all can come (Jeff is out of town). I think I have a plan to cover everything, but it takes a bunch of shuffling and a lot of driving by Howard. Here is my proposal. Saw team 1 goes to Brown Gap and works down to Deep Gap (Groundhog Creek shelter). They need to drive themselves and give an extra car key (or tell them where it will be hidden) to saw team 2. Saw teams 2, 3, and 4 go to Waterville School Road in Skip and Howard's cars. Drop saw team 2 at the steps going up from WSR and they will do the loop back to the road and wait for Howard to come back. Howard leaves his car where the loop comes back to WSR and goes with saw teams 3 and 4 in Skip's car --". Saw team 2 stays at WSR until Howard picks them up upon his return from the trip up Snowbird. Saw team 3 works down from there back to Waterville School Road. Saw team 4 works from there down to Deep Gap and the shelter. Howard drives Skip's car back to where he left his. Leaves it there for saw team 3 to drive out, and picks up saw team 2. He drives saw team 2 in his car to Max Patch road and they work down to Brown Gap. Howard then drives his car around to the Groundhog Creek shelter. He has work to do on the Bear cable at the shelter and will be assisted by saw teams 1 and 4 as they arrive at the shelter. Privy also needs work and firewood can be cut. When all is complete there, Howard drives saw team 1 and 4 and himself out to the Harmon Den Road exit. When they reach Brown Gap, saw team 2 picks up the car left by team 1 and drives to Harmon Den exit. When saw team 3 gets down to WSR (these guys have the longest walk), they pick up Skip's car and come back to Harmon Den exit to meet the other two cars. We try to make the meeting at the exit no later than 2:30, switch cars as necessary, and all go home tired and happy.... Skip ---------------------- Back to Top Adopt a Section of the Appalachian Trail None. Get on the waiting list. Adopt a Section of the MST Devil’s Courthouse Jct. to FS Road 816, 2.4 miles If you're interested in either the A.T. or MST, email Don Walton. ---------------------- Back to Top Maintenance Reports created by Don Walton
---------------------- Back to Top A CMC Member Looks for Forest Fires
On March 2, 2009, Mac Tippins was hired by the US Forest Service to staff the East Butte Fire Lookout in the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. Mac Tippins is a retired airline captain (Piedmont, US Airways), an aviation writer, and an avid outdoorsman. Tippins flew 250+ air combat missions in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1970-71. He is a member of the Appalachian Conservancy and the Carolina Mountain Club. Tippins hopes to build on the fire lookout experiences of writers like Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac. Look for dispatches from Mac in the CMC newsletter throughout the summer. ---------------------- Back to Top The eNews comes out on Fridays. So ... The next issue will come out on Friday, April 3. This will allow the Sunday and Saturday hike leaders a little more time to send in their report; 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 March 31, 2009 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. How to join the Carolina Mountain Club If you are a non-member subscriber, you need to go back to the CMC home page > News >Subscribe and change it there yourself. ---------------------- Back to Top |
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Danny Bernstein
danny@hikertohiker.com
Have you sent in your entries for the CMC Photo Contest. The theme is Defining the Carolina Mountain Club Experience.
Where: 
This trip is based on a similar superb trip organized by Jack Fitzgerald in 2006 that was enjoyed by all who participated.
I'd like to announce the first annual Franklin's April Fools Trail Days event April 3-5, 2009. The Town of Franklin's sponsored part of this event takes place on the Franklin Greenway at the Big Bear Shelter from 9AM to 2PM Saturday April 4, 2009.
