Keeping the Trails Open

A Conversation with John Whitehouse, Co-Founder of North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association

John is one of the founding members of the North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association (NCHPTA), a volunteer group based in Yancey County that maintains more than 60 miles of trails in and around the Black Mountains and partners closely with Mount Mitchell State Park, Carolina Mountain Club, and the U.S. Forest Service. We talked about how the group began, what Hurricane Helene really did to the trails, and what keeps a mostly retired crew coming back every week.

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Michael: You’re one of the founders of North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association. How did this all get started?

John: First of all, you’ve done your homework with these questions. Secondly, I can be verbose, so cut me off if I talk too much.

My wife and I retired up here in 2005. I was already a member of Carolina Mountain Club, but I’d never done trail work. I signed up for a crew, and before my first day out I went to a CMC training where a Forest Service instructor certifies volunteers to use chainsaws.

That was eye-opening. I’d been using a chainsaw for 30 years — just not very safely. The training was excellent. You have to be recertified every three years, and I’ve done that seven times now. I always learn or relearn something.

I started on a crew based out of Asheville. We worked all over western North Carolina, but we never went to the Black Mountains. Over time it became clear: CMC has a big territory, and the Black Mountains were simply too far to justify sending a weekly crew, even though they led hikes there.

By around 2010, a number of us had hiked those Black Mountain trails and were honestly aghast at the condition. The Black Mountain Crest Trail — the highest trail east of the Mississippi — was so overgrown in places that you had to push through shrubs and briars. Not inside Mount Mitchell State Park; the park kept their section up. But the Forest Service miles were in rough shape.

There are a lot of retirees in Yancey County and Asheville. One of them, Jake Blood, approached me with the idea of forming a local hiking and trail group. The idea was simple: we live here, we hike here, so why not take responsibility for these trails?

We started as maybe a dozen people going out on weekends, just chipping away at the worst spots. A bit later I was asked to take over leadership of one of the weekly crews, and I brought more High Peaks members in. To this day, most of the folks on my crew belong to both Carolina Mountain Club and High Peaks.

Over a few years we got those trails back into “hikable” condition. Since then we’ve tried to split our time: some days on CMC-assigned trails like the Appalachian Trail and Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and some days on High Peaks–assigned trails in the Black Mountains. That’s really how High Peaks grew into what it is now.

Michael: There are a lot of groups in play — Carolina Mountain Club, High Peaks, “Friends of Mount Mitchell.” How do they all relate?

John: Carolina Mountain Club is the big regional club. They just celebrated their centennial. Their members helped build the Appalachian Trail in this area back in the 1930s. Today they maintain 94 miles of the AT and about 140 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, under formal agreements with the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Forest Service.

When we set up North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association in 2010, the first step was becoming a 501(c)(3). Then we approached the Forest Service and signed an agreement for specific trails in and around the Black Mountains — sections of the Crest Trail, parts of the MST, a few others. They even gave us our first set of tools, including a new chainsaw. Before that, we were using whatever we had in our garages.

In 2012 we also became the official “friends” group for Mount Mitchell State Park. Roughly half the state parks in North Carolina have a friends group. For Mount Mitchell, that means we help with trail work, manage the donation boxes, and apply for grants on the park’s behalf. The money that goes into those boxes doesn’t disappear into some general pot — it goes straight into projects that benefit the park.

So to simplify:

• Carolina Mountain Club – big regional club with multiple crews and a huge mileage responsibility.
• North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association – local group focused on the Black Mountains and nearby trails.
• Friends of Mount Mitchell State Park – a specific role High Peaks plays as the nonprofit partner helping support the park.

We all work together with the Parkway, the Forest Service, and the state parks. There’s a lot of coordination behind the scenes.

Michael: Helene disrupted so much across western North Carolina — people’s homes, access roads, entire communities. When you were finally able to turn your attention to the trail systems, what did you find?

John: Right after Helene, nobody was thinking about trails. Everyone was just trying to get out of their driveways, check on neighbors, get supplies in. Every person you talk to up here has their own version of that story.

Once people’s immediate needs were handled, we started to look up and ask, “Okay, what’s the situation on the ground?” The Blue Ridge Parkway was closed. The Forest Service told us, “We have to assess everything before we can turn volunteers loose,” which makes sense.

When we finally got permission to work, the first place they sent us was the Big Butt Trail. It runs from NC-197 up to the Parkway. At the gap where the trail starts, it looked like a tornado had gone through. DOT had clearly spent weeks just making the road passable, and the woods were a tangle of downed trees.

We went up with seven certified sawyers and Forest Service staff. From the parking area you could already see huge trees down across the trail. It took three Mondays to clear about half a mile. In places the trail was buried under piles of wood we’d never seen the likes of — whole stacks of trunks, criss-crossed and jammed together.

The northern section of the Appalachian Trail we help with was even worse in some spots. There were sections where we literally couldn’t see where the trail went. We had to send a volunteer crawling over and around the mess to find the tread on the far side so we’d know where to even start cutting.

In the Black Mountains, the lower part of the Black Mountain Crest Trail was hammered. Streams jumped their banks, channels widened, and landslides dumped debris onto trails. Helene also weakened a lot of trees and softened the ground, so even after we’d cleared something, more trees would come down with the next wind.

It’s important to say: we were not the only people out there. Professional crews hired by the Forest Service, other partner groups, and plenty of local volunteers all pitched in. It was a huge, shared effort.

Michael: For hikers looking at Western North Carolina now, what’s the current status? What’s open?

John: The good news is that almost all of the trails in our area — and most of western North Carolina — are open again.

There are still a few closures tied to road work, especially where the Mountains-to-Sea Trail parallels sections of the Parkway that had major landslides. Those require big machinery and long timelines, so some stretches remain off-limits until the road is fully safe.

Inside Mount Mitchell State Park, things were better than people might expect. The park had serious infrastructure issues — water system damage, part of the restaurant roof, that sort of thing — but the trail network itself held up pretty well. There was cleanup and repair to do, of course, but no long-term closures based on trail damage alone. The park officially reopened in mid-September and is now fully open to visitors.

So from a hiker’s perspective: check current closures, but you absolutely can come here and hike. The work people did after Helene shows every time someone gets to enjoy a trail that isn’t choked with debris.

Michael: You’re retired, and much of your crew is too — yet this is demanding, physical work. What keeps you and the team motivated to show up week after week?

John: There are a few layers to that.

The first was shock. When we started High Peaks, the trails in the Black Mountains were in such bad shape that we were honestly embarrassed by them. Once you’ve put in the time to cut back briars and rhododendron and re-establish a corridor, you want to keep it open — not just for yourself, but for everyone who comes after you.

The second is the crew itself. When I took over one of the CMC crews, the previous leader told me, “You go out and you have fun. You have fellowship. And maybe you get some work done.” I’ve tried to keep that spirit.

We’ve got retired engineers, teachers, tradespeople — all political stripes. I have one rule: no politics on the trail. It’s not helpful. But when you’re all focused on a shared task, that stuff falls away. At the end of a day, you can stand back and say, “That section was a mess this morning, and now it’s a solid, safe tread.” That’s satisfying.

The third thing is personal. The woods are my gym. I spent most of my career as a desk jockey. I’ve never been a gym rat. Give me a Pulaski and a hillside and I’m happy. Having a purpose — knowing the work matters — just adds to that.

Helene added another layer. Once your own place is in order, you want to help your community and your landscape recover. The scale of the damage was so large that it became its own motivation. You don’t want to sit at home when you know the trails you love are buried.

Michael: For people like me, who’ve enjoyed these trails without realizing how much volunteer work goes into them — what’s the best way to say thank you or get involved?

John: First, go hike. That’s step one. Fall in love with the place.

If you’re curious about trail work in the Asheville or western North Carolina area, look up Carolina Mountain Club. Their website lists all the crews, who to contact, when they go out. They have a quarterly “super crew” that brings in a lot of new folks. You get paired with experienced leaders, work a short section of trail, and usually end the day at a brewpub. It’s a good introduction.

If you’re closer to the Black Mountains or Yancey County and have a flexible schedule, you can come out with High Peaks on a Monday. Every crew welcomes novices. We always bring extra tools and we’ll show you how to use them safely. The only thing we won’t hand you immediately is a chainsaw — for that you need proper certification.

If you don’t have the time or ability to do physical work, a simple “thank you” goes a long way. When hikers stop to say they appreciate what we’re doing, it lifts everyone’s spirits.

And if you want to support the work financially, you can donate to Carolina Mountain Club or North Carolina High Peaks. For High Peaks, a general donation is the most flexible because our board can direct it where it’s most needed — whether that’s tools, materials, or specific projects at Mount Mitchell.

But really, the biggest thing is awareness. Once you know that trails don’t maintain themselves, it changes how you see every step you take out there.

Michael: Before we wrap — is there anything else people should know? Anything important you want hikers or supporters to be aware of?

John: Yeah, a couple things worth mentioning.

We’ve now got live webcams set up on Mount Mitchell. They’re fully up and running. They let hikers check weather, visibility, and conditions before heading out — which is useful in a place where conditions can change on a dime.

We’ve also installed a dedicated radio information channel. The infrastructure is in place already. It won’t be fully meaningful until the Parkway and surrounding access points are consistently open again, but once everything stabilizes, that channel will be a reliable source of updates in an area where cell service is spotty at best.

And I’ll just add: none of this happens without volunteers and generosity. Every donation, every “thank you,” every bit of support matters. More than people realize.