McNabb Creek Trail

The McNabb Creek Trail (FS Trail 92) is a trail within the Cherokee National Forest in the Tellico Ranger District which connects North River Road up McNabb Creek to the Cherohala Skyway. The trail is 3.9 miles long and rises about 1600 feet from the North River to the Skyway. Work was done on this trail as part of a Spring Break work week in the spring of 2008. Continuing maintenance is to keep the trail open from the spring growth.

Monday, June 30, 2008: Omar and Ken Jones made a start at brushing out the lower end of McNabb Creek Trail. We started at the trailhead parking area, and completed a little over ½ mile up just short of the third stream crossing. Bo Reynolds and his group also worked near us on clearing Rhododendron from the stream banks, completing about the same distance. Some of the dog hobble was well above our heads, but we cleared a wide path to minimize having to return anytime in the near future.

Here is Ken's time for the day:

Travel Hours = 2 Work Hours = 4 Total = 6

Wednesday, January 14, 2009: Robert Thomas and I worked on McNabb Creek Trail with the chainsaws last Wednesday. Our goal was to saw all of the blowdowns off the ½ mile long re-alignment to put the trail back on the railroad grade. This segment begins about 1.5 miles down from Grassy Gap, and we cleared a few blowdowns walking in to the spot. We walked the existing trail down to the lower end of the railroad grade segment, and then started sawing our way back up the hill and through the switchbacks. We sawed a number of trees and cleared about 0.4 miles of the segment, leaving about 0.1 mile left to finish. This segment will also need brushing out, about 20’ of re-grading work and a carsonite sign on each end to direct users on the new segment.

The skyway was iced over and required a 4WD to get to Grassy Gap. It was so bad that it was hard to stand up in the Grassy Gap parking area, and we saw one car in the ditch on the way out. The people in the car were able to push it back out of the ditch and go on their way.

Here is my time for the trip:

Travel Hours = 2.5 Work Hours = 5 Total = 7.5

Thursday, July 9, 2009: We had a short work day due to a late start and quitting early due to rain, but we still seemed to get a lot of work done. We started the day by having to saw two trees off the road just to get into the trailhead parking. There were another couple of trees across the trail just after we left the parking lot. We also had to clear a number of trees off the trail to get to the reroute. I don’t have a count on trees cleared for the day, but I did have to refill the chainsaw with gas. The brush out crew was able to clear about 0.35 mile of the reroute, leaving about a tenth of a mile to complete. We don’t have much work left on the reroute, but do have a lot of work left on the rest of the trail to bring the trail back to maintenance standards.

Here are the volunteer hours for the work trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2.5	4	6.5
Tazz Reid	2	4	6
Ed Ley	4	4	8
Carey McHugh	2.5	4	6.5
Totals	11	16	27

Tuesday, July 14, 2009: I [Ken] continued work yesterday on the reroute on McNabb Creek Trail. I walked in about 2.5 miles to a short spot on the reroute where the railroad grade had been washed out at some time in the last 100 years. I spent the morning building about 25’ of trail. I dug up two tie rods and a spike from the railroad days that I left beside the new trail. There were lots of rocks, and I had to build up rock cribbing to cross a small ditch in the proper manner. After lunch I worked on brushing out some of the upper end of the reroute. This work will save time when we come back through with the chainsaw to finish the log out. I also spent a lot of time clearing the small stuff from the lower end of the trail to beyond the first switchback.

There remains another good day’s work to build 35’ of additional trail, finish brushing out the upper 200yards, paint the blazes, and finish logging out the whole trail before the reroute is complete.

Here is my time for the work trip:

Travel Hours = 2.5 Work Hours = 6 Total = 8.5

Friday, July 31, 2009: We finished off the month of July by also finishing the McNabb Creek Trail reroute, with the exception of painting the blazes. We worked in the rain all day, sometimes with a light rain and sometimes pouring down. We went in to the reroute from the upper end, since there was too much water in McNabb to attempt the 6 crossing coming up from the lower trailhead. For the day we dug 35’ of new trail, and logged out and brushed out 0.2 miles of the upper end of the reroute.

Ed found a large black snake under one of the freshly cut logs as he was swamping out. He relocated the snake out of the trail and down the slope to different, albeit wetter quarters. Here are our volunteer hours for the day:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	1.5	4	5.5
Tazz Reid	1	4	5
Bobby Mitchell	1.5	4	5.5
Ed Ley	3	4	7
Totals	7	16	23

Thursday, February 25, 2011: McNabb Creek Trail - We had a good work crew of 8 volunteers to move some heavy picnic tables on Thursday morning. We loaded up 4 of the tables at the Ranger Station on Bobby Mitchell's trailer and moved them to McNabb Group Campground. On the way back down river we stopped at the new Baby Falls Day Use Area and relocated 2 of the bear resistant trash cans that were also very heavy. After work we all enjoyed a huge lunch and moving on party for Greg Kirkland. Here are the volunteer hours for the work trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	1.5	2	3.5
Jim Holland	2	2	4
Jim Sirmans	1	2	3
Bill Hodge	1	2	3
Bobby Mitchell	1.5	2	3.5
Tazz Reid	1	2	3
Ed Ley	3	2	5
Roger Taylor	1	2	3
Totals	12	16	38

Thursday, October 6, 2011 - McNabb Creek Trail - The weekly Tellico trip this week was to log out the McNabb Creek Trail and also do some brushing out. We did completely log out the trail and partially brushed out the trail so that the trail is easily passable. USFS personnel Travis and Rob also joined us for the last part of the work trip. Volunteer hours are as follows:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Rick Harris	0.5	7	7.5
Tazz Reid	1	7	8
Bobby Mitchell	2	7	9
Joanne Mitchell	2	7	9
Rick Foster	1	7	8
Roger Taylor	1	7	8
Totals	7.5	42	49.5