Mill Branch Trail

The Mill Branch Trail (FS Trail 96) is a trail within the Cherokee National Forest in the Tellico Ranger District which connects Doublecamp Road with the Benton MacKaye Trail (FS 2) at Big Stack Gap. The BMT is also known as the Fodderstack Trail in this area. The trail is 2.5 miles long and rises about 1880 feet from Doublecamp Creek to the ridgeline. The trail parallels Mill Branch along most of its length.

November 24, 2008: We started work on logging out Mill Branch Trail yesterday. We began clearing trees with the crosscut and axe shortly after leaving the trailhead on Doublecamp Creek. Even though the forecast was for rain, we didn’t really get wet until after lunch. We cleared a total of 22 trees for the day, along with a number of others that we pushed off the trail. Ed worked on brushing out and also cleared a lot of small stuff from the trail. I believe that we cleared to a point about ¾ mile up the trail.

Next Monday we plan to continue work on clearing this trail. Here are our volunteer hours for the trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	5	7
Tazz Reid	2	5	7
Ed Ley	4	5	9
Totals	8	15	23

Monday, December 1, 2008: We continued our work in clearing the blowdowns from Mill Branch Trail yesterday. We began work with the crosscut saw about ¾ mile up the trail, working in the snow for the entire day. When we reached the Fodderstack intersection, the snow was 3-4 inches deep with drifts near Big Stack Gap of almost a foot. We cleared 17 trees with crosscut and axe, and cleared a lot of additional small stuff. This work completed logging out the entire trail. We also cleared some of the Rhododendron from the trail corridor, but a lot of work remains to return this trail to standards, especially in the hanging valley at the top of the trail.

Here are the volunteer hours for the trip:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	2	5	7
Tazz Reid	2	5	7
Bobby Mitchell	3	5	8
Rick Harris	1.5	5	6.5
Ed Ley	4	5	9
Totals	12.5	25	37.5

Saturday, June 6, 2009: We had a large group of 23 volunteers that participated in the National Trails Day event on Mill Branch Trail in the Citico Wilderness. This event was sponsored by the Southern Appalachian Back Country Horsemen and the Hiwassee Hiking Club. We also very much appreciate Leslie Smith working with us representing the Forest Service for Tellico Ranger District. After a discussion of the work and a safety briefing at the Cherohala Visitor Center, we made our way to the Mill Branch Trailhead on Doublecamp Creek. We had a lot of work planned for the day, and with the great support of all of the work crews, we accomplished everything that was planned. We brushed out about 1.5 miles of the trail, reworked a washed out stream crossing, cleared 18 blowdowns, and dug in 21 new water turnouts for the steep sections of the trail. We did have one huge rock that thwarted completion of the stream crossing, but we will get back on the trail in the future to solve that issue.

We met one day hiker on the trail who was hiking a 12 mile loop of Pine Ridge, Fodderstack, Mill Branch, and Rocky Flats Trails. We also want to thank Bobby and Joanne Mitchell for provided food fresh from the grill at the end of our hard work trip. Special thanks go to the following trail volunteers for making this event such a success:

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	3	5	8
Bobby Mitchell	2.5	5	7.5
Joanne Mitchell	2.5	5	7.5
Carey McHugh	3	5	8
Tazz Reid	2.5	5	7.5
Steve Cartwright	3	5	8
Ed Ley	4.5	5	9.5
Ross Broadway	3.5	5	8.5
Elberta Broadway	3.5	5	8.5
Jeremy Green	2.5	5	7.5
Judy Hadorn	3.5	5	8.5
Phil Hadorn	3.5	5	8.5
Roy Hutsell	3.5	5	8.5
Jennifer Hutsell	3.5	5	8.5
Arlin Phillips	2.5	5	7.5
Philip Gooch	2	5	7
Todd Gooch	2	5	7
Jane Bohannon	3	5	8
Linda Norton	2.5	5	7.5
Richard Norton	2.5	5	7.5
Sherry Neidich	2.5	5	7.5
Ellis Neidich	2.5	5	7.5
Holly Nicholson	2.5	5	7.5
Totals	66.5	115	181.5

Thursday, December 17, 2009: We started back working on Mill Branch Trail to bring it up to standards yesterday. We spent most of our time digging the tread back in spots to the required 24” width. I would estimate that we completed 300 – 400’ of re-grading for the day. We also cleared one dead pine blowdown and lots of small stuff from the trail. I think that we completed the work to a spot just across the first side stream and about 0.7 miles from the trailhead. We still have plenty of future work to do to get to the Fodderstack intersection.

Here are the volunteer hours for the work trip:

*Name*	*Travel Hours*	*Work Hours*	*Totals*
Ken Jones	1.5	7.5	9
Bobby Mitchell	1.5	7.5	9
Tazz Reid	1	7.5	8.5
Bill Hodge	1	7.5	8.5
Totals	5	30	35

Thursday, December 31, 2009: Mill Branch Trail - We took advantage of a damp New Year’s Eve to continue our work on Mill Branch Trail. We continued to dig in the tread in the narrow spots, completing another 1/3 mile of the trail. Along the way we chopped two small trees, but left 4 larger trees that will need a crosscut saw on the next work trip. We have now finished re-grading the tread to the main stream crossing at 1.0 miles in from the trailhead.

Here is the volunteer time for this trip:

*Name*	*Travel Hours*	*Work Hours*	*Totals*
Ken Jones	1.5	6.5	8
Bobby Mitchell	1.5	6.5	8
Tazz Reid	1	6.5	7.5
Bill Hodge	1	6.5	7.5
Totals	5	26	31

Thursday, January 7, 2010: We worked yesterday on Mill Branch Trail in some adverse weather conditions. The ground was frozen deep and made for some tough digging. However, we finished widening the tread by completing about 300’ of trail in various spots above the stream crossing. We cleared 5 trees with the crosscut saw for this trip. We also flagged and mapped a short re-route (0.2 miles) for botanical survey in the spring. We have now completed our work up the trail to a point about 1.5 miles in, and I believe that all of the digging work is done. The remaining work will be logging out and brushing out.

The snow started to fall on us at lunch time. When we left the trailhead, the roads were covered with less than a half inch of snow. We had no problems getting back to the Ranger Station in 2WD, but places on the way home required 4WD. I saw one serious wreck on Old Federal Road on my way back home.

Here are the volunteer hours for this work trip:

*Name*	*Travel Hours*	*Work Hours*	*Totals*
Ken Jones	1.5	6.5	8
Bobby Mitchell	1.5	6.5	8
Tazz Reid	1	6.5	7.5
Ed Ley	3	6.5	9.5
Totals	7	26	33

Thursday, January 14, 2010: Mill Branch Trail, BMT Section 18b, Crowder Branch Trail. We covered about 7.5 miles logging out 12 trees, only 2 on the BMT. We headed up Mill Branch Trail in about 2-4 inches of snow, logging out and doing some minor brushing out in the laurel thickets near the top. We ate lunch at the top with the intersection with the Benton MacKaye Trail, then headed north along the BMT to the Crowder Branch Trail. Only 2 blowdowns were found on this stretch of the BMT. We then headed down the Crowder Branch Trail. The Crowder Branch Trail is in quite poor shape. Numerous creek crossings, thick brush with at times not sure even where the trail goes, poor narrow siding with several slips by us off the side of the trail in the snow. We logged out the trail but did little else. When we finally reached Doublecamp Creek Road, we then hiked on down the road to our vehicles. Our volunteer hours are as follows (Greg Kirland, USFS Trails Tech was also with us):

*Name*	*Travel Hours*	*Work Hours*	*Totals*
Blue Goodson	2	9	11
Bobby Mitchell	2	9	11
Rick Harris	1	9	10
Tazz Reid	1	9	10
Ed Ley	3	9	12
Totals	9	45	54

Thursday, July 21, 2011 - Mill Branch Trail - Crowder Branch Trail - Thanks to good reporting from Stephen Eren, our Citico Wilderness Ranger, we were able to focus our efforts on clearing problem blow downs from 3 of our wilderness trails yesterday. One crew went up Mill Branch Trail about 1/2 mile to the site of a multiple tree blow down completely blocking the trail. This blow down had 5 trees across the trail and took almost 3 hours for us to clear. The other crosscut saw crew went up Crowder Branch Trail and cleared 9 trees along the lower mile of trail. The SAWS crew had recently cleared the rest of the trail of blow downs. After the two crews ate lunch, we met up and traveled to Falls Branch Trail. There was a large buckeye tree down across the trail at the falls and about 50' before the end of the trail. We removed 2 tree forks and chopped footsteps in the two remaining large forks that were buried in the ground. The Crowder Branch Trail and Falls Branch Trails are now clear of any blow downs, and Mill Branch has about a half dozen remaining trees across the trail, spread out over the upper 2 miles. Here are the volunteer hours for this work trip

Name	Travel Hours	Work Hours	Totals
Ken Jones	1.5	7.5	9
Jim Holland	2	7.5	9.5
Julia Chromiak	2	7.5	9.5
Tazz Reid	1	7.5	8.5
Roger Taylor	1	7.5	8.5
Kyle Atkins	1.5	7.5	9
Totals	9	45	54