Little Citico Horse Trails

The Little Citico Creek Horse Trail system is in the Citico Creek Wilderness of the Cherokee National Forest in the drainage of Little Citico Creek. The trails for the most part follow old forest service and logging roads. Some trails follow ridgelines and others follow along the creeks in the area. A horse camp is available along the Citico Creek Road (Jake Best) and a large parking area is found where Little Citico Creek enters the main Citico Creek, accessed by a bridge over Citico Creek.

A piece off a railroad engine lying by the side of the trail Thursday, April 24, 2008: Ken Jones, Rick Harris and Tazz Reid worked on clearing blowdowns on the Little Citico Horse Trails yesterday. Tazz had seen some blowdowns on Trail #4 when he rode it about a month ago. He had also received a report from another horse rider that a big blowdown was blocking Trail #2 near the upstream intersection with Trail #3. They drove to the end of the right fork of Bivens Branch Road and walked down Trail #3 to Little Citico. They then walked upstream on Trail #2 about ¼ miles, turned around and walked about ½ mile downstream and never found the blowdown. For this trip in, they sawed 3 smaller trees off the trail, and Rick Harris cleared a lot of small stuff from the trail. They then covered almost the entire length of Trail #4 with the chainsaws, only clearing small stuff and 4 more small trees. It turns out that someone had already cleared the trees that Tazz spotted from his previous trip.

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	3	5	8
Tazz Reid	3	5	8
Rick Harris	2	5	7
Total	8	15	23

Thursday, June 12, 2008: Rick and I worked on brushing out Little Citico Trail #2 yesterday. We started at the trailhead just across the bridge, and worked from there upstream on Little Citico Creek. We completed brushing out and mowing 1.2 miles of the trail. About 2:15 pm it started to rain on us, and rained hard for about 30 minutes as we walked back to the truck. We were hot enough that the rain felt great at the end of a work day.

Here is our volunteer time for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	1.5	6	7.5
Rick Harris	1	6	7
Totals	2.5	12	14.5

Thursday, July 17, 2008: Tazz and I continued working on re-flagging the new horse trails in preparation for the botanical survey. Today we worked on a 3.2 mile segment of the Salt Spring Mountain Trail. We again found a number of flags on the ground, but I would guess less than 1/3 of the total hung on the route last fall. Again we saw evidence of a lot of bear activity along the flag line, and found bear scat with pieces of blue flagging in it. We saw dozens of trees that had fresh scratches on the bark, with one place being about 7’ high. We re-flagged this entire route, and it is now in good shape for the botanist to make their way through.

I almost stepped on a fawn hiding in the thick brush. It was so young that it could not get up on all fours to run, and was only able to move slowly away from us.

Here is our time for the trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2.5	5.5	8
Tazz Reid	2.5	5.5	8
Totals	5	11	16

Monday, July 21, 2008: I continued working today on re-flagging the new horse trails in preparation for the botanical survey next month. I started at Farr Gap this morning and worked my way to the un-named gap very near Webb Gap. I flagged the entire old Milligan Creek Road, heavy at the intersections and sparse where there is no where else for a botanist to go. We have one short section that is flagged off the old road through a dead pine ridge. There were very few of the original flags on the ground, but the vicious summer growth managed to hide many of the hanging flags. At one point I went astray down a spur ridge, then had to backtrack and remove about 5 – 6 flags. I hung flagging so that you can always see at least one flag ahead.

The heat was brutal today, nearing 100 degrees with high humidity. The climb back to Farr Gap in the afternoon was the hardest thing I have ever done on a trail. I saw a hog on the skyway near mile 11 this morning. I also saw a deer upslope as I headed down from Farr Gap.

Here is my time for the day:

Travel Hours = 3 Work Hours = 6 Total Hours = 9

Thursday, July 24, 2008: We continued working on re-flagging the new trail routes today in preparation for the botanical survey next month. We had four of us, so we split into 2 teams and covered another 5 miles of the Milligan Branch Trail. We drove around the Mountain Settlement Road to the gate on Jake’s Creek. From there we all hiked in about ¾ mile up the creek to intersect the flag line. Jim and I made our way back toward Little Citico Trail #2, while Tazz and Bobby made their way toward Webb Gap. With this method, we were able to cover 5 more miles. Together with the 2.5 miles I did on Monday, we completed this entire route from Farr Gap to Little Citico #2.

Here are our volunteer hours for the work trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	3.5	5	8.5
Tazz Reid	3.5	5	8.5
Jim Holland	4	5	9
Bobby Mitchell	3.5	5	8.5
Totals	14.5	20	34.5

Monday, July 28, 2008: We continued our work on walking and re-flagging all of the new trail routes in preparation for the botanical survey. We had two teams, so we were able to split up again and cover a lot of ground. One team started at Cold Spring Knob and walked the new trail route on Cowcamp Lead all the way down to Doublecamp near Mill Branch. The other team covered the flag line from the Gold Cabin Branch Road to the Bivens Branch Road. After that both teams eventually met back up at Cold Spring Knob to complete 0.4 miles on the south and east side of the knob. The only remaining flag line that has not been recently reworked is about 1 1/3 miles long, and runs to Farr Gap just off the vehicle road.

Here are the volunteer hours for the trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	3	6	9
Tazz Reid	3	6	9
Bobby Mitchell	3	6	9
Rick Harris	1.5	5	6.5
Totals	10.5	23	33.5

Thursday, July 31, 2008: The SABCH had a maintenance trip on the Little Citico Horse Trails last Thursday. I want to especially thank Tazz Reid for the work report, and Matt Henry for leading this trip in my absence. Everyone split up into three work crews, and worked in different areas to brush out as much trail as possible with weedeaters. One group completed all of Trail #1 (1.5 miles), another group worked on the eastern end of Trail #4 (3/4 miles), while the last group worked the western ends of Trails #3 and #4 above Citico Creek (3/4 miles). This work trip completed a big portion of all of the trails, and we should be able to complete the remainder for this Fiscal Year’s targets.

Here are the volunteer hours for the trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Tazz Reid	2	6	8
Roy Hutsell	2	6	8
Jennifer Hutsell	2	6	8
Phil Hadorn	2	6	8
Janice Butt	2	3	5
Arlin Phillips	1	6	7
Totals	11	33	44

Monday, August 11, 2008: Matt and I continued brushing out the Little Citico Horse Trails yesterday. We started on the western portion of Trail #3, and worked from the #4 intersection up to the end of the Left Fork of the Bivens Branch Road. From there we drove to the gate at the end of the Little Citico Road on Trail #2. We started work at the gate and spent the rest of the day working in the tall weeds through the old timber sale area. I estimate that we brushed out 0.5 miles on Trail #3 and 0.2 miles of Trail #2.

It was a great work trip since neither of us got any yellow jacket stings.

Here is my time for the trip:

Travel Hours = 3 Work Hours = 5 Total = 8 hours

Thursday, August 14, 2008: We continued our work on brushing out Trail #2 today. We started behind the gate where Matt and I finished up last Monday. I estimate that we brushed out about 2 miles of trail for the day. The work today completed brushing out this entire trail during the summer. We lack about 1.5 miles more on Trail #3 and #4 to complete brushing out all of the Little Citico Horse Trails for the growing season.

Here is our volunteer time for the work trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2.5	6	8.5
Tazz Reid	2.5	6	8.5
Bobby Mitchell	3	6	9
Joann Mitchell	3	6	9
Totals	11	24	35