Trail Work in Panthertown — Valhalla Hikes

Making our way through an abandoned logging forest

Panthertown has recently become one of my favorite places to explore. It is designated as public lands, and more specifically as “Back Country Recreation” meaning that there is minimal human interference with the area. “Minimal” is hard to define from the conservation’s point of view, especially considering parts of the valley are filled with artificial logging forests, power lines, and access roads, but the actual trail system and valley itself do feel as rugged as advertised. Panthertown has no visitor center, no restrooms, water stations or food vendors, and, to bring this discussion into focus, rather minimalist-oriented trail designs.

Thanks to the Friends of Panthertown and their various supporters, the valley now can afford to hire their very own trail-maintenance crew leader to ensure recreation in Panthertown can continue with minimal interference to the land’s natural state. The importance of this position cannot be stressed enough as traffic in Panthertown has significantly been increasing over past years, and that means a greater footprint on the trails and more erosion.

I recently had the chance of working alongside the trail leader for a day, and it felt really good.

We met at the Salt Rock parking area and began our descent into the valley adorned with helmets, pickaxes, and loppers. It took about a half-hour of walking down before we began evaluating our assigned section of work for that day. A small trail barely bigger than a spur shot right off the main valley trail and immediately met us with a thirty-odd foot eroded runout.

Our trail leader informed us that the most important part of the job isn’t necessarily fixing what was already broken, but attempting to shape the trail so that matters can’t get any worse. With that in mind, we went to work shaping what’s called rolling grade dips (RGDs). In essence, these are bowls that minimize the length water remains on the trail. They catch water streaming down the mountain and send it across the trail horizontally and immediately down the other side. Installing these is as simple as moving and packing the dirt and rock so that there is a nice, shallow bowl to catch the water and a smooth, long ramp on the far side to ensure that -

1) There are no steep drops in the trail that will invite more erosion

2) Bikers don’t go airborne off an accidentally-designed kicker (save it for the dirt parks, my friends)

3) Horses don’t break their ankles on the humps and leave both themselves and their riders injured in the backwoods

After installing the RGD we threw our gear back on our shoulders and moved further down trail. The more we talked about trail design ethics and land conservation, the more I felt like I was beginning to understand just how primitive many of the trails in the East seem. Many of them were originally designed for loggers, miners, traders, and various other workers to make it back and forth from their camps and job sites. With that in mind, it’s very understandable why many of our trails are b-line climbs that shoot straight up the mountain with almost no infrastructure. They were for people trying to get work done, and devoting significant amounts of time to designing and building a sustainable trail (though it would be much safer for workers) was not within the budgets and schedules of the settlers who helped establish communities all across Appalachia. That means it is the burden of the modern world to help correct the issue, and the entire US trail system relies on volunteers to get the job done.

Another hour of swinging pickaxes and installing RGDs went by, and it truly began to feel like progress was being made. The entrance to the Granny Burrell Falls trail was hidden underneath collapsed rhododendrons, so we lopped it, shaped it, and moved on.

Finally, we came across a muck-saturated section of the trail that was full of limbs and branches other hikers tossed in to make primitive bridges. This may seem counter-intuitive, but every time a hiker “builds” a bridge using forest-debris they make the problem worse. The issue with bog and muck areas is that water stands still. Whenever debris is tossed onto the ground, that’s just one more obstacle that stands in the water’s way. Before long, there are so many branches, leaves, and rocks standing between the water and the off-slope that only rainstorms will get it moving at all, leaving users with a problem twice as large as it was before - so down in the trenches we went.

We were pulling logs longer than we were tall from the muck and chucking them down the embankment alongside armfuls of leaves and rocks to free up the pool. The pickaxes helped us to dig trenches and knock-out the off-slope bank so that the water had a large enough opening to begin flowing away again. We raked leaves and mud, widened the pool, and walked away hoping that it was enough to help dry the trail and make it more accessible for everyone.

I had to leave to get ready for work, so I threw my pickaxe on my shoulder and began climbing my way back out of the valley. It was nice getting to see the progress we made that day. I’ll definitely be back to help again.