Though the shortest month of the year, this February has been filled with great accomplishments that portend an amazing year to come. With another successful dumpsite cleanup, the construction of our second trail shelter on the Art Loeb, volunteer collaborations, ongoing work by the TPC Trail Crew, and hiring for new field-going positions to remove noxious invasive plants from the landscape, I am excited to share with all of you the happenings of another month on the Pisgah.
On February 15th, in what has now become an annual tradition, TPC collaborated with Headwaters Outfitters and the US Forest Service on its 3rd major dumpsite cleanup project on the Forest since the inception of its Pisgah Cleanup Fund. After tackling Tucker Creek in 2022, and an old transfer station off Macedonia Church Rd last year, we focused this year on two severe dumping sites in the southwest region of Pisgah near the Quebec and Balsam Grove communities. A group consisting of volunteers, TPC staff, and Forest Service personnel divided into two groups to clean up sites located off Silversteen Rd. above the beautiful West Fork of the French Broad and up near Tanassee Gap off Highway 215.
Steep slopes and winching operations were the order of the day at the West Fork site, with the crew filling demo bags with pieces of discarded furniture, appliances, household trash, construction waste, tires, and more, low on the slope to be winched up the hill and into the dumpster by a crew above. At the end of the day, we removed 4,780 pounds of trash from this site situated directly above the West Fork. Up near Tanassee Gap, a second crew removed 2,380 pounds of trash from a series of pullouts that had been used for dumping and left a mess. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and partners, these beautiful areas are now clear of trash, and we aim to keep them so into the future. We sure will be monitoring. Thanks to all of those involved in this successful project: our volunteers, Headwaters Outfitters, the US Forest Service, and Transylvania County Solid Waste, who again waived dumping fees so that we could get this trash out of the Forest.
Construction of a new trail shelter on the Art Loeb trail near Deep Gap was also completed this month, with TPC crewmembers teaming up with volunteers from the Conservative Anabaptist Service Program (CASP) to build this great new amenity for backcountry users on the Pisgah. January was spent shuttling the lumber and hardware required via UTV up Pilot Mountain Rd, an undertaking in itself requiring many, many trips and some creative rigging to transport lumber up to 20 feet long up a rugged mountain roadbed. We then spent the first week in February building the structure with support from 6 CASP crew members over 4 days. With both the Butter Gap and Deep Gap shelters now complete, it is a great time to get out and thru-hike the Art Loeb trail, a real Pisgah treasure. Great thanks to CASP for their help on this project and for the other projects they have worked on during their 4-week service trip to the Pisgah.
In addition to the Deep Gap trail shelter, here are some of the other projects they have completed during their stay:
• Construction of a new sawmill shed on the Forest Festival trail at the Cradle of Forestry
• Rebuilding picnic pads at Sycamore Flats
• Hardscaping at Ledford Branch trailhead
• Demolition of a condemned picnic shelter at the Pink Beds
• Reroofing trailhead and recreation area kiosks
• Performing preservation treatments on the historic buildings on the Cradle of Forestry campus
The TPC trail crew also finished trail improvements on the first section of Looking Glass Rock trail this month. Locust logs were used to create check steps, box steps, and water diversions to fill in and restore the gullied-out first 100 feet of trail out of the parking lot. The crew also repaired the next section of trail consisting of eroded, high steps built from dimensional lumber. By adding additional 6×6 steps in between the existing steps, installing 6×6 on the sides to ensure the containment of fill, and incorporating drainage features into this climbing section, the crew has made this opening of a signature Pisgah trail safer, more accessible, and more sustainable. With this project complete, they are turning their attention to bridge construction and will be replacing a 20-foot-long bridge on the Pilot Cove-Slate Rock trail as their next project.
It has truly been both an exciting and a busy start to 2024 and we are just getting started. With our inaugural Non-Native Invasive Species (NNIS) crew due to hit the ground in late March, hiring underway for our 2024 River Rangers season, and Pisgah Project Day coming up, we will continue our work to provide direct on-the-ground benefits to the Pisgah Ranger District. Many thanks to all of you for making this possible and for your continued support of The Pisgah Conservancy and Pisgah National Forest!
