Warriors Passage Trail

The Warriors Passage Trail is an 8.1 mile long National Recreational Trail in the Tellico Ranger District of the Cherokee National Forest which runs from Waucheesi Mountain down to the Bald River Road and Wildcat Road, then crosses Wildcat Creek and up to the Lyons Creek FS road. The trail was originally designed and constructed by a Boy Scout troop. The trail is now maintained by the Tellico Ranger District. A major arson fire destroyed a part of the route of the trail several years ago. The arsonist was caught and is in jail. Many hours have gone into and will go into reopening this trail through the burned out area of the forest, which continues to recover with wildflowers and young trees. The route follows roughly an old Cherokee Indian footpath across the mountains.

Monday, June 2, 2008: Ken Jones spent Monday with the weedeater, brushing out the closed portion of Warriors Passage Trail. He began at the trailhead on the Bald River Road, working up toward Mule Pen Gap. He brushed out about ½ mile of the segment. He ran out of gas for the weedeater in the early afternoon, so he continued walking toward Mule Pen Gap to see the trail condition. Within about 50’ of where he stopped, he found that someone had recently brushed out the trail coming down from Mule Pen Gap. It wasn’t brushed out to standards, but it will certainly help on future trips. H believes that we can possibly complete this segment (Bald River Road to Mule Pen Gap) with one more day with the weedeater and one day with the chainsaw. That will let us open the trail back up to Mule Pen Gap, then route hikers on the old Bald River Road until we get the segment to Waucheesi Road back open.

When h got back to the truck, Ken decided to walk the trail in the other direction toward Wildcat Creek. This portion of the trail starts out through the dead pine area, and only one snag remained with a blaze on it. He managed to follow the trail on the way uphill, but lost it coming back down. We need to brush out this area this summer to ensure that we don’t loose the trail entirely.

Volunteer time = 8 hours

Monday, June 9, 2008: We continued our work yesterday on the Warriors Passage Trail segment from the Bald River Road to Mule Pen Gap. Matt Henry logged out the entire segment of 1.3 miles. Rick and I ran the weedeaters to brush out the remaining ¾ miles of the segment. This segment of the Warriors Passage Trail has now been brought back to Forest Service standards. With the completion of this work, this portion of the trail can now be re-opened to Mule Pen Gap. We can post a sign in the gap to notify users that they can walk the old Bald River Road (a gated road recently maintained for a wildfire) to Basin Gap. The remaining segment of the trail from Mule Pen Gap to the Waucheesi Lookout Road (1.5 miles) will require a tremendous amount of work to re-open.

We met a man on the trail yesterday, Philip Gooch, who had been working on maintaining this Warriors Passage Trail segment. He lives just above trail, and we will work on recruiting him on a volunteer agreement for future trail work.

Here is our volunteer time for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	4.5	6.5
Rick Harris	1.5	4.5	6
Totals	3.5	9	12.5

Monday, June 16, 2008: Matt Henry, two volunteers, and I continued working on the Warriors Passage Trail on Monday. We drove into Mule Pen Gap and started on the segment toward the Bald River Road. This was the segment that had a wildfire last week. We worked on rehabilitation of the trail along a dozer line that was used to control the fire. Greg had done a great job in minimizing the impact to the trail with the dozer, so we only had a little work to get the trail back in good shape. We dug about 20 feet of new tread, chopped out some roots, and cut about a half dozen water turnouts in the effected part of the trail. We will go back in at a later date and seed all of the fire lines.

After lunch, we went back to Mule Pen Gap and started log out work on the trail segment headed up toward Waucheesi. This is the portion of the trail that is full of dead pines. We sawed out another ¼ mile of the trail, and our two other volunteers worked on brushing out with loppers. The first ½ mile of the trail going in from Mule Pen Gap has now been logged out and is passable.

Here is our volunteer time for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	6	8
Philip Gooch	0	6	6
Gordon Spratt	0	6	6
Totals	2	18	20

Monday, June 23, 2008: We continued working yesterday on the upper portion of the Warriors Passage Trail. I ran the chainsaw logging out, while the other volunteers worked up ahead on brushing out a path. I would estimate that we cleared about another 1000’ of the trail for the day. We are now into the worst part of the trail with dead pines piled on top of one another, and brush underneath so thick you can’t walk through. Even with the flagging that Robert, Josh, and I did last year, there were places where it took a lot of time to find the old trail amongst the old fire lines. We found one spot where we probably flagged the wrong location, but you physically can’t get through to find a switchback on the old trail without a lot of work. We will just have to take our time, and do our best to cut the trail into an acceptable location.

I started the day by unlocking the post at Doc Rogers Fields so that Kenneth Dalton could mow the accessible parts of the trails there with his tractor. He was going to lock the post back when he finished. At the end of the day, I brought the hoses back to the Ranger Station from the site of the Tree Fire at Philip Gooch’s house.

Here is our volunteer time for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	6.5	8.5
Philip Gooch	0	6.5	6.5
Lee Gooch	0	6.5	6.5
Todd Gooch	0	6.5	6.5
Totals	2	26	28

Monday, July 14, 2008: We continued work on brushing out the Warriors Passage Trail yesterday. I started the day with the intention of taking care of signage to open the trail segment from the Bald River Road to Mule Pen Gap. I put up new signs at the Waucheesi Lookout Road and at Mule Pen Gap. These signs direct people to use the old Bald River Road between Basin Gap and Mule Pen Gap. This will be the temporary trail only until we complete work on the bad trail segment. I intended to take the metal sign down, but got stung by yellow jackets while trying to jack the post out of the ground. They have a nest nearby, and I could not get the post down without incurring their wrath. It may just have to stand until a cold morning.

I worked the rest of the day brushing out the trail, starting at the Bald River Road and working toward Wildcat. I was able to complete about ¼ mile up the hill to the point where the trail enters the woods again. This portion was nothing but sunshine and no canopy cover since all of the dead pines came down. There was only one blaze left on a standing tree, so I was concerned that we would loose the original trail route entirely due to the new growth. A fire crew had sawed out the trail about 3 years ago, so I was just able to follow the cut trees to determine the original route. This segment was all pines, but is recovering well with lots of hardwoods in new growth.

Philip Gooch and his sons worked with loppers on brushing out the closed segment of the trail from Waucheesi Road to Mule Pen Gap. This work will be a real help when we get back in with chainsaws.

Here is the volunteer time for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	6	8
Philip Gooch	0	5	5
Todd Gooch	0	2.5	2.5
Lee Gooch	0	2.5	2.5
Totals	2	16	18