Conservancy team hikes Appalachian Trail to log views
LUKE WEIR, The Roanoke Times
CATAWBA — Legwork, and plenty of it, is required to catalogue scenic views along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, a team of conservationists said. To be precise, Pam Roy said her crew logged 326.4 miles trekking southbound from the West Virginia border since June 3, recording the qualities of viewpoints along the way.
Roy works for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy as manager of the visual resource inventory team. Her task is to help the nonprofit better understand what sights abound along almost 2,200 miles of the famed national scenic trail. “We’re hiking every mile of the trail and inventorying all the views we come across,” Roy said. “Not just the really popular views that folks are familiar with.” The four-person group finished their season at the high rocky outcrop known as Dragon’s Tooth in Catawba last week.
It is year four of what’s expected to be an eightor nine-year project, Roy said. The team methodically records noteworthy sights along the trail using a combination of camera, tripod, GPS tracker, electronic tablet, pen, data sheet, eyes and legs. “Views are something that we’re drawn to as humans,” Roy said. “We know that scenic values are incredibly important to our visitors. Why do you hike up a mountain?”
So far over four summers, Roy and her seasonal crew have documented sights along more than 900 miles, nearing half of the Appalachian Trail’s total mileage from Georgia to Maine. “We are evaluating the scenery, but there’s another piece of our process,” Roy said. “We also consider all the cultural and historic importance of the viewpoint, and also the viewed landscape.” The Visual resources field is still emerging, Roy said. The methods used by Roy’s team are also applicable to other park lands. “There’s a rubric,” Roy said. “This whole process was developed by National Park Service landscape architects.”
On paper, data is recorded, including landscape forms, lines, colors and textures. The team gives names to features that have previously been nameless. “We use a pretty expansive definition of what a view is,” Roy said. “We do have views that we would consider features, like a really cool rock formation, a waterfall, a lake or a pond… we would inventory those as well.” Visual inventorying is quite different from other trail jobs, she said. “The trail crew is actually building and making the trail,” Roy said. “We are documenting and collecting data in the hopes that we can preserve some of these really important views into the future.”
Part of the trail closest to Roanoke is known as the Virginia Triple Crown — one of the most-visited stretches of the entire trail, famous for its views. On high atop McAfee Knob, Tinker Cliff s and Dragon’s Tooth, hikers can see for miles into the Roanoke Valley — far beyond the narrow park boundaries of the trail. Providing a visual inventory enables the trail conservancy to better plan how and where to secure easements that preserve the forested viewsheds. “We capture what portion of the viewed landscape you can see from the viewpoint. We use that information for a lot of our [geographic] modeling,” Roy said. “Our partners, in addition to our organization, also use that data to determine what parcels of land might be really valuable for conservation, in terms of preserving the scenic quality.”
Last year, for example, the conservancy announced it purchased an 850-acre section of the view from McAfee Knob, securing its protection into the future. “This is a national scenic trail,” Roy said. “We want to also preserve the scenic values.” One member of the visual resource inventory team is Roanoke County native Jordan Henegar. He graduated from Virginia Tech last December with a degree in wildlife conservation. “I’ve lived here my whole life,” Henegar said. “It’s been definitely a good experience to get out here and see places that I’ve lived right by my whole life, but haven’t gotten to see until now.”
Comment: This was on the front page above the fold in my local paper yesterday. Far better reading than campaign or convention coverage. This sounds like a great job. One of my nephews has a similar job this summer mapping snowmobile trails in Maine. A niece is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail this year. She’s made several detours due to wildfires so far.
I have to admit to being the origin of my family’s penchant for wandering in the woods for extended periods. A couple of friends and I began wilderness camping in sixth grade and never stopped all through high school. Most of our trips involved the blue blaze trail system in Connecticut. Our final trip was a hundred mile trip along the Mattatuck, Mohawk and Appalachian trails. The trails were largely well maintained, but little traveled. I don’t think we passed anybody in our week in the woods. We didn’t have the luxury of topographic maps. We relied on a locally published Blue Trail Guide that one of my brothers still possesses. The guide had simply drawn sketch maps along with written descriptions of the trail and landmarks along the way. It was a great adventure and great fun.
I have a few photos of that trip digitized from the old family slide deck. Enjoy.
Note: I’m not sure the link above will work for all of you. It’s available to me as a subscriber of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. I also hope I adequately attributed this article to the reporter, the Free Lance-Star and the Roanoke Times. I don’t want to get on the bad side of my local paper.
TTG
Hi TTG,
Have you ever traversed the Knife Edge on Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park in Maine?
It is, AFAIK, the most interesting and challenging trail on the East Coast.
This playlist gives some information about it
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6WIWapSWYke3EVLjOO3UIE3JQUB3zWpo
It is a challenge, but great fun if you can do it.
Keith Harbaugh,
I’ve been to Mount Katahdin, but did not take the Knife Edge trail. It looks exhilarating and somewhat frightening for someone who’s not thrilled with heights. I’ve been on similar knife edge ridges in Hawaii of all places. They were not near as impressive as Katahdin’s Knife Edge, but the rock and soil of those Hawaiian ridges were a lot more crumbly. We often used ropes in my Recondo School patrols crossing those ridges.
As to what traversing that involves, this is a good description:
https://www.hikingme.com/Trails/Highlands/Baxter/KnifeEdge.html
I have to admit to being a great fan of the Knife Edge in Maine.
Here is a glowing, detailed description of what it is like to traverse it, with lot of photos
https://trekkingsketches.com/2021/09/28/mount-katahdin-via-knife-edge/
https://i0.wp.com/trekkingsketches.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Katahdin-18.jpeg
https://i0.wp.com/trekkingsketches.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Katahdin-28.jpg
“I was not shy about making my way on all fours!
Kathy said I moved like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
…
From Saddle Trail, we also got some great views of the basin and the route we ascended over Knife Edge.
The angle showed just how steep The Chimney really is and we couldn’t believe we actually climbed that!”
In case anyone is wondering, I did it in 1972, with the woman who was then my wife.
I am proud of her for being able to do that.
To accomplish it is very satisfying.
Talk about a tough hike!
See the videos of her hiking/wading through waist deep water,
as a result of the remnants of Hurricane Debby in Maine:
https://thetrek.co/appalachian-trail/so-i-summited-mt-katahdin-now-come-get-me-please/
Keith Harbaugh,
I would never have tried crossing those rivers. Both hiking and kayaking has taught me to respect fast water.
I started hiking in Germany with the Volksmarschen when I was 2. My parents took us every weekend for years. Growing up in the US I was involved in scouting, between that and my family we camped often. It is something I have carried on as an adult in the US, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
I have continued it with my 6 year old daughter. One of the best things I could pass on.
Look at all those potential log cabins to house the homeless refugees needing a place to build their own futures. All that is needed are saws and hammers and a willingness to work for their own future.
Fred,
You’ve been especially cranky the last few days. Has something happened?
TTG,
I believe I posted the same observation a year or more ago.
I’ve done about half of the Pacific Crest Trail. Nowadays at just a few months shy of 82, I mostly hike the beach or the low Willapa hill trails. But my son recently bought me a pair of those aluminum trekking poles. So with those, I might try to do a bit more on the PCT.
If Any of You Viet Nam Vets..Knew Sgt Kenneth Roberts…Radio Operator..Who Was in Viet Nam on a MACV Team Teaching South Viet Nam Troops As An Advisor ..
from 1964 -1965…..Ken was a riend…He Retired as a Master Sgt…and Became
a Firearms Instructor..and Corrections Officer….Hev Just Passed away This Week…
A Good..And Honorable Man..And Veteran…RIP Ken…
This is unreal. In a year or less the forces of the West will be able to sever the Caucuses from greater Russia by charging due East from the Donetsk region straight to Volgograd. Consult a good map. Sounds crazy, right? Maybe it did at one time but not now. Would that lead to nuclear war? Yes it might. It would be absurd to wait around and find out.
Sorry TTG. I am an ardent fan and onetime practitioner of hiking and can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s just that this news item is potentially more critical than the news about Kursk, hard as that may be to believe. Russia has been utterly f’ed by the cretins and thieves in power now. (Roughly half of Shoigu’s close associates are in prison now or awaiting trials for thievery of military funds and materials – during a war. It’s obvious to informed people that were it not for the humiliation to Putin personally, Shoigu too would be awaiting trial, but now he’s the head of their security council). Those who know history will get it. Kursk and Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). And Murmansk attacked by drones yesterday as Proletarsk continued burning in Rostov oblast. It’s time, in my opinion, to fully digest the reality that Russia is rapidly approaching a state of being defenseless and try to ward off the potential of a catastrophic nuclear exchange. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to see Putin’s latest invitation to the world’s anti-LGBT contingents as being something very different which repeats their catastrophic 1990s. Namely he knows full well that he’s lost so he’s opening the doors to CIA and MI6 agents to flood the country so that the drawdown can be managed sanely and covertly. I hope that’s what’s going on. There are vast millions of Russians, many of them children, who don’t deserve what is coming to them if this continues.
—————————————————
Two schools have damaged windows, people will be helped: Volgograd region was subjected to a massive UAV attack.
Everything we know about the morning emergency in the Kalachevsky district is collected online –
https://v1.ru/text/incidents/2024/08/22/73989245/
The Kalachevsky district of the Volgograd region was massively attacked by UAVs. The emergency occurred early in the morning of August 22. At first, local residents and eyewitnesses reported an explosion and a severe fire in the village of Oktyabrsky. Later, the information about the drone attack was confirmed by the governor of the Volgograd region Andrey Bocharov. We collect everything we know about the emergency in an online broadcast. (More, including comments at link -In Russian).
Or go here for English translation:
Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) – Massive Drone Attack.
https://tinyurl.com/562uxz3s
Yet it belongs perfectly to the “Russia offers safe haven for people trying to escape Western liberal ideals” thread, NOT to a thread about hiking, WTF ???
You sound quite often as a bit of a maniac, have you ever contemplated the possibility that you might be wrong on some topics? (like anyone else…)
jld, F&L is no stranger to hijacking comment threads via off-topic issues. But here it may be the result of utter urgency. Since it is not so far off, one of our ongoing topics: Russia-Ukraine. Oops, sorry, wrong comment thread. 😉
jld,
I may or may not be a “maniac,” but I’m not driven to dash off 3 question mark questions by something as trivial as an off topic comment. Who’s the maniac, me or you?
I aleady apologized to TTG within the comment and it was his editorial choice whether to print it or not. I was sincere, btw, in apologizing, because I happen to believe, possibly incorrectly, that Russia has nearly been brought to ruin by the policies of the present administration in office there. Thus I wanted the people here with considerably more military expertise to take a look at the details I linked to. You can now add to the list of calamities in my previous post the destruction of an oil-carrying ferry in the Ru port of Kavkaz which is in the headlines worldwide this morning. People should be apprised that the Kerch Bridge doesn’t really carry much in the way of munitions and other military supply any longer but those tasks have fallen to water-routes and the Kavkaz port. In other words the ferry explosion is in a way almost as sensational as would be a disabling strike to the Kerch Bridge but without the prestige value it has for the Putin administration. So as Leander graciously pointed out – I thought the situation was urgent. Nonetheless please accept my apologies for outraging you. It didn’t belong on this thread. If I posted it on the proper thread it would have interrupted the informative back and forth walrus was having with TTG.
Why not both? 🙂
I suspect that, though not a materialist; you are afraid of death, for you and anyone else.
Having (probably) had a NDE at age 2 and 1/2 I am not afraid of death but of painful dying.
Even genuine researchers about consciousness fall to fear of death: https://x.com/donalddhoffman
Because the real mystery is not God or even life as such but consciousness, i.e. qualia, the perceived sensations, emotions and thoughts.
So, some pretend we are all interacting “souls” and matter is an illusion of our minds:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1429376/full
I don’t think so, matter obviously matter but is probably an emergent property of the whole universe just as well as minds.
The question is not settled despite a humongous amount of research, meanwhile I tend to trust the Tao.
Indeed, things flourish luxuriantly, each to return again to the root (from which it sprang). To return to the root is called stillness; this may be described as surrendering one’s trust.
The idea that all material matter came into being through the intention of some mysterious ineffable entity is maybe not as far-fetched as you might think. According to the “Standard Model” of particle physics everything that needed explaining was explained … except for one little detail. Namely, according to the Standard Model, no particle anywhere in the Universe should have any mass at all! This mystery was cleared up with the invention of the “Higgs boson,” which is the intermediary vector of what else – the Higgs Field! An inexplicable invisible molasses permeates all space and endows each particle, yes each and every electron, muon, proton, neutrino etc etc etc with it’s precise, exact rest mass. Don’t believe me? Google Higgs boson. The Higgs boson took awhile to invent and over thirty years to detect, and some physicists aren’t even sure it’s been detected, but enough have been so that awards and prizes have been distributed.
I won’t comment on your other observations other than to say that at birth I was given up for lost but kept barely alive for six months in hospital. At which point two doctors met with my parents, not together I don’t think. One was a very experienced older man who told my mother that if in fact I pulled through and lived, my life would be unworthy of living due to the suffering I would endure. He happened to be Jewish. Another doctor, young and fresh out of residency (who happened to be Quaker) believed that my fundamental problem (which was inability to absorb nourishment) could be solved with a drastic change of diet and further that I was allergic to the foods being administered to me up till that time. He proposed a new diet. They left my mother alone with my father for a few days and waited for their decision. They went with the Quaker doctor. The diet was changed and eventually I survived. Subsequently fate has proved that each of those doctors, in his own way, was correct. My life has been fairly unmitigated misery (everyone’s is fundamentallly, I’m not complaining) and chronic pain especially since early adulthood when my spine began to finish fusing. The older doctor definitely knew his stuff. So did the younger doctor — obviously — I lived. Am I grateful for my life? Absolutely. Do days happen when I curse my fate and wish the older doctor had been heeded? Yes they certainly have happened but less and less with the passage of time. Death will bring relief to me finally. But I’d still very much rather not die.
I use to love doing this stuff. I still like the outdoors but the hiking, camping out and even boating hard pass. I did so much of it in the military I never want to do it again. Lots of vivid horrible memories but my favorite is camping out in USMC basic in CA and getting hit with the biggest monsoon I have ever seen. We packed up our gear in the storm and marched back to the base.
The DI didn’t the mud in the hooch so he put us all in the shower and blasted us with cold water. I ended up passing out from hypothermia. Good times.