Winter Does Great Damage to Trees on Blue Ridge Parkway
April 3, 2010
April 1- Roanoke Times: Winter storms knocked down about 2000 trees on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina. Trmendous damage to the Campgroung at Rocky Knob delays opening.
"Roger Compton clears tree limbs from the Blue Ridge Parkway's Rocky Knob campground Monday in Floyd County.
Winter storms knocked down about 2,000 trees along the parkway in Virginia and North Carolina, and crews are still working to get campsites ready for visitors.
The Blue Ridge Parkway celebrates its 75th anniversary this year with concerts, festivals and a marathon. But before the season of hiking and grilling, the park's supervisors are scurrying to clear damage from the harshest winter in 14 years -- a task so laborious that campsites will open two weeks late and a stretch of road in North Carolina is closed through July."
"Repeated snow, ice and windstorms over the winter knocked down up to 2,000 trees along the national parkway's 469 miles in Virginia and North Carolina, the National Park Service said. Thousands more trees, especially in Virginia's Floyd and Carroll counties, will remain scarred for years by jagged, broken limbs.
Officials have deployed contractors to clear the wreckage and are using federal economic stimulus money to pay a temporary nine-person crew in Virginia. The crew, hired to perform the parkway's routine spring cleanup, instead has been assigned to haul trees off roads, trails and picnic areas and to chop and chip the downed wood. Cleanup workers still have at least a month's work before the parkway will be presentable, so officials postponed the regular May 1 campground openings to May 15, said Rick Baker, who manages parkway facilities along 112 miles from U.S. 460 in Botetourt County to the North Carolina line. "
"Don Stringfellow, a retired human resources manager who owns rental cabins in Meadows of Dan, said Rocky Knob's Rock Castle Gorge looks like all the treetops have been sawed off."
"If it hadn't been Mother Nature -- if it had been a man-made mess -- I would be really upset looking at it," Stringfellow said. "In fact, I'm pretty upset about it. It's really an eyesore."
Source: www.roanoke.com
