Cumberland Trail

Looks like just a ribbon on a tree, right? Well what you are looking at is a future section of the Cumberland Trail that when finished will traverse Tennessee from Kentucky to Georgia.

On Saturday I was fortunate to get to go with 4 other folks responsible for the completion of the Cumberland Trail. The trail will eventually be about 300 miles long. Currently it is about half finished.

Most of the actual work on the trail is by volunteers. In March several hundred college students will give up their Panama spring break (or wherever they go these days) to volunteer for manual labor on the Cumberland Trail.

Cumberland Trail Program Coordinator Tony Hook led the 4 of us to the Royal Blue Wildlife Management area to flag about 1 1/2 miles of trail. Flagging involves figuring out exactly where the trail will be built and marking the trees with ribbons. Sometimes the decision is easy. Sometimes it involves walking and re-walking an area to try to determine the best route for the trail to follow. We had to take into consideration steepness, erosion potential, possible wet areas after rain, switchback locations, ease of construction, etc., etc.
In the picture to the left are my 4 companions for the day....Tony Hook, Gary Ruetenik, Carolyn Miller and Jim McCullough.

Tony is the expert. He is responsible for the trail from Kentucky to Georgia, but Gary, Carolyn and Jim know quite a bit about trail work also. I was the rookie.

The ribbons that we put on the trees will be followed by the volunteers in March with picks, shovels, McClouds, (a trail building tool) and chain saws to build the trail. Nancy and I plan to volunteer the week of March 12 to work on the trail on Black Mountain, a little closer to home.

If you go to the web site for the Cumberland Trail you can learn more, as well as see a previous photo (near the bottom of the page) that I took when the Fairfield Glade hiking club worked on Black Mountain. Nancy is in the middle of the photo with the white name badge and a McCloud in each hand.