Benton MacKaye Trail - Upper Bald River

Time Spent from Leaving to Returning: 30 hours (7.5x4=30 hours of maintenance work)

Wednesday, April 2, 2008: Ken Jones and Rick Harris worked from the Sugar Mountain Road down to just above the crossing over the Bald River, about 1.25 miles, brushing the trail and removing 4 downfalls with axe. We stopped when we got to the big mess of jumbled trees you see to the left here. We will probably work on this next week. Time for Ken 10 hours and for Rick 9 hours, total 19 hours

Monday, April 21, 2008: Ken Jones worked on some carsonite sign post problems at various places. He started out by driving up the Sugar Mountain Gated Road to the BMT crossing point. He placed a new Adopt-A-Trail decal on the post for the BMT headed down toward the Upper Bald River for the Section adopted by Rick Harris. He then replaced the name tape for Betty Petty on the other post headed down toward the Tellico River. From there he drove up the North River Road checking all of the trail posts. The post for Big Indian Trail had been broken off at the ground. He sawed it off and was able to re-plant it. He then drove up the Sycamore Road to the Upper end of the Sycamore Trail where he replaced a name tape on the Adopt-A-Trail decal. From there he drove up to Beech Gap to work on the carsonite post for Fodderstack/ BMT. When he was in there last Thursday the post had been pulled up. He propped it up by the Wilderness Sign last week, but it was nowhere to be found yesterday. He put up a new post, and got all of the correct decals on it except for the horse symbol for designated horse trail (which he didn’t have in the decal box). He will have to put one of these on the post at the next opportunity.

Volunteer Hours = 6

Thursday, May 8, 2008: We began work on logging out all of the blowdowns on Brookshire Creek Trail today. We started up the trail from the Bald River Road, Campsite 11 trailhead and sawed out 10 trees to the intersection of the BMT, at the confluence of Brookshire Creek and the Bald River. One of the last of these was a 14” maple with a lot of weight on it. After sawing about ½ way down from the top, it began to barber chair up the middle, resulting in us getting the crosscut saw stuck about 1” from the bottom of the log. We had to chop the saw out, so we spent almost and hour making sure we could finish this tree safely. After lunch we started up the BMT Section 16c toward Sledrunner Gap. On this section we sawed another 4 trees off the trail, but cleared almost a mile up from the intersection.

As we were walking up along side Brookshire Creek, a huge unseen tree fell just across the creek and up the next ridge. This had to be a Big tree, as the fall sounded like several charges of explosives going off. John also got to see a ground hog up close that was out for an afternoon stroll.

Here is our volunteer time for the day:

Name

Travel Hours

Work Hours

Totals

Ken Jones

2.5

6.5

9

Tazz Reid

2.5

6.5

9

John Kalabus

3

6.5

9.5

Totals

8

19.5

27.5

Thursday, May 22, 2008: We continued our work on logging out the Brookshire Creek Trail yesterday. We started in from the lower trailhead at Henderson Creek, and hiked up the trail about 3 miles to the first blowdowns where we stopped on May 8^th. We packed in two crosscut saws and actually had both saws going at once in several of the trees. We also had to saw two of the largest locusts that I have every seen (about 12” and 14”) right in a row as we worked our way up the trail. We cleared a total of 16 trees, and worked up to a spot about 1.5 miles from the upper trailhead.

Tazz and I had talked about a hazardous problem spot in the trail where there was nothing but large rocks running for about 100’. This spot is also a wet area and becomes a stream channel for Brookshire Creek in high water events. When we reached this location, we decided to look for a possible reroute around this spot. What we found was an old abandoned trail section that also contained a tree with an old painted blaze. This meant that the reroute was actually part of the original trail, and no NEPA work was required. We sawed out trees, chopped out roots, moved rocks, and cleared Rhododendron to open up this much needed reroute. This completed work for 0.1 mile of Trail Improvement for Brookshire Creek Trail.

Here is our volunteer time for the work trip:

Name

Travel Hours

Work Hours

Totals

Ken Jones

2

8

10

Tazz Reid

2

8

10

Jim Holland

3

8

11

Linda Pringle

3

8

11

Totals

10

32

42

Thursday, May 30, 2008: We continued our work yesterday in logging out all of the horse trails in Tellico Ranger District. We spent the day working on the lower half of Section 16d of the Benton MacKaye Trail. We went in from the Bald River Road on Brookshire Creek Trail, then continued on the BMT upper Bald River Section to the point that Rick Harris and I worked in to from the Sugar Mountain Lead side on April 2^nd. This was the location of a big blowdown blocking the trail. After clearing this blowdown, we turned around and worked our way back toward Brookshire Creek clearing all of the blowdowns. Rick also spent a lot of time in brushing out his section. We cleared a total of 14 blowdowns for the day. This work completes logging out all of the blowdowns on Section 16d in the last 2 months.

As we stopped to clear one of the blowdowns, we flushed a turkey near the trail. We found that she was sitting on a nest of 9 eggs about 30’ below the trail. When we returned to the trail head at Campsite 11, we met two young fishermen that were headed up the Bald River to fish the native brook trout. They we very complimentary of our work in keeping the trails clear for them.

Here is our time for the day:

Name

Travel Hours

Work Hours

Totals

Ken Jones

3

6.5

9.5

Clayton Pannell

3

6.5

9.5

Jim Holland

3

6.5

9.5

Rick Harris

2

7

9

Totals

11

26.5

37.5

Thursday, June 28, 2008: We continued out work logging out Brookshire Creek Trail this past Thursday. We made the long drive to the upper trailhead in the wildlife clearing on the shoulder of Beaverdam Bald. It takes about 1 ½ hours just to get there from the Ranger Station. We knew that we had one large tree down that turned out to be ¾ miles down from the wildlife clearing. We cleared this tree, as well as 5 others for the day. This work completed logging out all 6 miles of Brookshire Creek Trail with the crosscut saws. It also was another major milestone for Tellico District Trails, completing the logout of all of the horse trails in the District (50 miles) since February.

Here is our time for the trip:

Name

Travel Hours

Work Hours

Totals

Ken Jones

3

3

6

Tazz Reid

3

3

6

Jim Holland

3

3

6

Totals

9

9

18

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2.5	6.5	9
Tazz Reid	2.5	6.5	9
John Kalabus	3	6.5	9.5
Totals	8	19.5	27.5