This Land, Your Land

As fans of the state's Mountains-to-Sea Trail celebrated the opening of a 6.5-mile segment in Raleigh last week, leaders of the Friends of the MST said Saturday they expect another 70 miles of trail to open by the end of 2012.

Kate Dixon and Jeff Brewer said in The News & Observer that the MST should measure about 610 miles after segments open near Boone, Pilot Mountain, Greensboro, Burlington, Hillsborough, Durham and Clayton in the next year.

The entire Mountains-to-Sea Trail is to eventually cover about 1,000 miles between Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Jockey's Ridge State Park.

The 6.5-mile Upper Neuse River Greenway Trail opened last Wednesday between the Falls Lake Dam and the WRAL soccer complex off of Perry Creek Road in North Raleigh. It is the first leg of what will eventually be a 28-mile trail along the Neuse River between Falls Lake and the Johnston County line. (Joe Miller has a nice Google mashup map of the trail at his Get Going NC blog.)

"Within five years we expect people will be able to walk from Clayton to Hillsborough on one continuous 150-mile trail," Dixon and Brewer said.

Still, more money and volunteer help will be needed to make the state-spanning trail a reality, the two said.

Goose Creek State Park has reopened on its regular fall schedule of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., the state Division of Parks and Recreation said on the park's website this morning. Campgrounds and some trails remain closed due to unsafe conditions caused by Hurricane Irene.

Farther south, the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail reports that extensive storm damage in the Croatan National Forest will likely mean the Neusiok Trail remains closed until next spring.

We've previously reported the National Forest alert that says only three recreation sites in the Croatan have reopened since the late-August hurricane, and about numerous downed trees in the campground at Goose Creek.

The FMST says in an email sent yesterday that "boardwalk, bridges and hundreds of trees were uprooted" along the 20-mile Neusiok, which is Section 36 of the MST.

"The damage is extensive enough that FMST volunteers are estimating that the trail may not reopen until next spring," the group says on its website.

The storm also caused breaches in five places in Section 38 of the MST, the Outer Banks from Ocracoke to Jockey's Ridge State Park. Temporary bridges over the breaches are expected to be in place by early October.