CMC Hikers To Present Slide Show Nov. 7 at Diamond Brand

The focus of the October 5-7 weekend was Trail Design and Construction and included actual work on the Appalachian Trail.   Instructor Eddie Walsh from Tahawus Trails LLC taught us that trail design is about user experience and sustainability.  To read more click here. 

The reliable chimney once spewed smoke and radiated heat for the family that lived inside, now long gone. Casada approached the chimney and touched one of its stones, as if to remind himself it was real. He recalled that it was several feet shorter than when he first stumbled up upon it several years ago, with pieces of the chimney breaking off and falling to the ground around it as the clay and mortar deteriorate with time.

"History will fade; chimneys will fall; time will cover bottles; and metal will erode." Casada said of the looming historic relic and others like it found inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.Casada is an artifact and home site hunter, who scours forgotten trails of Smokies with a GPS system in search of artifacts and physical clues of the inhabitants who lived on the land before it became part of the park and they were forced to leave. To read more click here.  

There are still several remnant historic artifacts from the logging era on the wilderness trails such as cables to haul trees, railroad ties and rails.

There are no signs or blazes in the wilderness area. Where paths or manways intersect, one has to identify special features such as " The Uprooted Tree", "Split Y Silver Birch Tree in front of a large fallen tree whose branches have grown into big trees, " a side trail between a tree with lost bark 10 ft from a rock ", etc. With the current GPS technology and digital photography we can document these critical junctions for fellow hikers and incorporate them in the CMC Hike Database.