Seasons Greetings from TPC! Here’s to a happy and restful holiday with loved ones and a well-needed respite from the craziness of the last few months. Our crews have been busy this December; from the heights of Graveyard Fields to the deep coves of South Mills River, we have been working hard in service to Pisgah and its many splendors, capping off a year of many great achievements.
Red spruce restoration at Graveyard Fields:
I’m excited to announce that December 12th marked the first major on-the-ground action of the Graveyard Fields project, with TPC joining partners from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC), Southern Highland Reserve (SHR), and the National Forest Foundation (NFF) to plant red spruce trees in the Graveyard Fields area.
After years of planning and compliance work, this is an exciting step in this comprehensive rehabilitation project incorporating trail improvement, red spruce restoration, and stream restoration projects in the years to come.
With the final authorization of the project in late September, and the first scheduled spruce planting postponed in the wake of Hurricane Helene, I am extremely happy that we were able to find an appropriate window to put these spruce in the ground and get started on this much anticipated project.
Our Invasive Plant Management (IPM) Crew was instrumental in this effort, assisting myself and partners from the NCWRC in transporting trees from their nursery at the SHR, to the Cradle of Forestry for overnight acclimation, and then to the Graveyard to stage them for planting.
This behind-the-scenes work set the stage for planting day on December 12th, where we were joined by our project partners and a group of 12 volunteers. Among those volunteers were a group of seven Forestry students from Rosman High School and their teacher.
TPC’s IPM Crew co-leaders, Sam Byars and Will Coffee, planting red spruce trees.
The IPM Crew’s participation was a huge help operationally and they helped to provide the students with hands-on experience implementing forestry projects and working directly with land management professionals, an important complement to the classroom curriculum of this new program, North Carolina’s first-ever high school forestry course offering an industry-aligned credential.
Many thanks to all of our great partners on this project. It has truly been a team effort years in the making, and we look forward to continuing this important habitat restoration project with further plantings in the coming years.
Trail Crew Updates:
Our Trail Crew has spent the last month wrapping up bridge construction on the Estatoe trail and working to rehabilitate degraded sections of Mullinax trail in the South Mills River area. In late November, the crew completed construction of the final new bridge on the Estatoe trail along with associated boardwalk demolition and ramp and turnpike construction.
This major project has been in process on and off since PPD this past spring and the completion of the final bridge marks a significant achievement in our goal of making the Estatoe more safe, more sustainable, and more enjoyable for all trail users. All that remains for us to do is the construction of two turnpiked sections on the east side of the trail, which we will return to at the beginning of the new year.
Our main efforts this month have been on Mullinax, where the Trail Crew has been working alongside local trail builder Shrimper Khare to address major entrenchment, tread, and drainage issues on an approximately 1-mile section of trail.
Even with delays due to weather, the Crew has accomplished a lot, with Michael and Shrimper working on mini-excavators to restore and construct reverse grade dips, regrade and rework trail tread, and construct rock features, while the ground crew has been busy filling ditches with local stone, constructing subgrade locust check dams, brushing, and doing the finish work on machine-worked trail tread.
In addition to these major projects, TPC has continued working with the U.S. Forest Service to identify and document impacts from Hurricane Helene and begin planning recovery work.
Looking ahead:
We have also been busy planning for the coming year, laying the groundwork for a successful 2025.
- We are currently hiring for a new Lead River Ranger.
- We have just released a Request-for-Proposals for a new trail project constructing a connector between the Cove Creek and Daniel Ridge trail complexes.
- We are planning to construct a bridge and decommission a section of trail negatively impacting the creek on Avery Creek trail.
- We will continue our invasive plant management project at Kuykendall and the Catheys Creek watershed at large while beginning initial treatments at North Mills River and Wash Creek campgrounds.
- We hope to start tackling the kudzu problem along the Davidson River corridor.
- We will continue the work up at Graveyard Fields that we began with the spruce planting last week.
- And of course, Pisgah Project Day 2025, scheduled for April 26th, is right around the corner.
Here’s to the close of a successful year of great people and projects and to the coming of 2025! Thanks, as always, to all of you for your continued support of The Pisgah Conservancy and Pisgah National Forest. Happy holidays!
