This Land, Your Land

The new issue of The Steward, the state parks newsletter, details the volunteer effort to construct the 1.8-mile summit trail at Elk Knob State Park near Boone.

The five-and-a-half-year project took more than 6,000 hours of labor, the article says. Most of that labor was supplied by Appalachian State University students and members of scout groups, outdoors clubs and civic organizations.

The trail, which climbs about 1,500 feet to the 5,520-foot peak, replaces "a barely navigable, steep and exhausting vehicle trail as the only route to the summit."

Elk Knob is the tallest mountain wholly in Watauga County, the article says. The park was designated a natural area in 2003 and became a state park in 2007. Since then, development has been slow, with a ranger station, picnic grounds and parking areas completed in 2008 as "interim facilities."

The November issue of The Steward also has articles about the dedication of the Neuse River Trail in Raleigh as a 6.5-mile segment of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, about Hanging Rock State Park's 75th anniversary, and the opening of an interim office for Grandfather Mountain State Park on N.C. 105 in Banner Elk.

The July issue of The Steward, the State Parks newsletter, provides an overview of May's public airing of the ongoing development of a master plan for Chimney Rock State Park.

The park encompasses some 4,300 acres in the Hickory Nut Gorge area at Lake Lure, including the formerly private Chimney Rock Park tourist attraction.

Nearly 200 people, most of them from the area, attended the day-long public planning session in Lake Lure.

The article describes three types of development plans:

- The “conservation-focused” alternative, which considers protection of eight significant natural heritage areas to be paramount and would allow limited public access. "It includes about 10 miles of hiking trails, two new day use areas, and a visitor center near Lake Lure, but otherwise, very little development outside of the existing Chimney Rock access."

- The “low impact recreation” alternative proposes using only previously disturbed areas for future park development. It would establish a visitor center at “the Meadows,” which is at the lower elevation of the existing Chimney Rock Park and would serve as a hub opening to an extensive network of trails and backcountry camping options on the gorge’s south side. The park would have three day use areas leading to mountain biking, climbing and additional hiking trails, with two of these on the north side of Hickory Nut Gorge.

- The “intensive recreation and use” plan calls for a visitor center on the summit of Chimney Rock Mountain above the developed area, in an abandoned 25-acre orchard. It would be a hub for backcountry and tent/trailer camping, picnicking and hiking. There would be five day use areas on the north and south sides of the gorge with access to camping, mountain biking, climbing, equestrian and hiking opportunities. A secondary visitor center and satellite park administrative offices would be built on the Rumbling Bald Mountain access area – property now under the protection of The Nature Conservancy.

The intensive recreation plan would require either access to the visitor center from the side of the park farthest from the Lake Lure area or construction of a "very expensive" road through the eastern area of the park.

Chuck Flink, president of Greenways Inc., the Durham-based environmental planning and landscape architecture firm responsible for completing the plan this year, said it’s highly likely the final master plan proposal will be a hybrid that sifts the best ideas from all three versions, the article says.

The public comment period for development of the Chimney Rock State Park master plan closed June 23, the Greenways site says.