Backcountry Horsemen groom Crockford-Pigeon Mountain trails
Anthony and Patti Emanuel take the care and maintenance of trails on CrockfordPigeon Mountain very seriously.
As members of Back Country Horsemen of Northwest Georgia, the couple regularly travel from their home in Trenton to make trails along the mountain more accessible.
“BCHA is a national organization dedicated to perpetuating the common-sense use and enjoyment of horses in America’s back country and to assist land management agencies in their maintenance and management of equinerelated trails and facilities. BCHA has over 13,000 members and organizations in 27 states,” Anthony said.
Northwest Georgia Chapter members volunteer more than 2,000 hours annually — the equivalent of a fulltime Georgia Department of Natural Resources employee — as the primary caretakers of more than 60 mile trail network. The local chapter is one of four (Middle and South, Northeast, North and Northwest) in the state.
“BCHNWG focuses our support using local service teams,” Anthony said. “We believe equestrians tend to use trails close to home and thus we encourage those riders to help maintain the trails they use and enjoy.”
These equestrian volunteers join with hikers, cavers and offroad bikers to improve trails, many of which still show the effects of the tornadoes of 2011 that felled many mountain trees.
“Those tornadolevel type winds really leveled a lot of trees on the trails, so for the past five years we have been working very hard to clear those trees,” Anthony said.
The group’s 12 members (from Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia), schedule monthly workdays during which they pack in the tools (chainsaws, bush wackers, handsaws and hand tools) to clear the trails for safe passage by all recreational users.
“The thing too about mountain trails, and that many miles, is that we can go in and clear a trail and then find out about a month later that there’s two or three more blow downs,” Patti said.
Typical workdays involve about six hours of groundwork that result in five to six foot wide trails that are clear and safe.
“It’s tough work. You are chainsawing trees that are sometimes as much as 24 to 30 inches in diameter. We have specialized training to minimize the risk involved,” Anthony said.
Dealing with the litter
These Back Country Horsemen see their fair share of liter along the trails and at campsites.
“It is pathetic,” Anthony said. “It is disheartening. There is not a trail that we maintain that is at some point in the season not littered.We clean up as we go. We carry bags and pick the liter up.”
Patti added, “One thing that I have never understood, is why someone goes to the effort and get out in this remote area — gorgeous area — and then they throw down their beer bottles, or their water bottles. I don’t understand it.”
Anthony said that Pigeon Mountain used to be a dispersed camping area, where campers could camp anywhere on the mountain, but the trash problem increased until that the state now only allows camping in designated areas.
“People complained about it, but they had no one to blame but themselves,” he said.
The Emanuels said the Georgia Outdoor Recreational Pass (GORP) license has been a positive thing to happen at Pigeon Mountain.
“GORP is the best thing that has ever happened for the Department of Natural Resources and their efforts to develop and expand outdoor recreational activities for Georgians, simply because every dollar of GORP goes to the Department of Natural Resources. It does not go to the general fund like our taxes do,” Anthony said.
In addition to littering, graffiti is a problem at overlooks, campsites and along the trails.
“On of the things that bothers us is in the campgrounds, the equestrian campgrounds, is the destruction to the trees (carving graffiti into the trees),” Patti said.
Promoting Pigeon Mountain
The Emanuels said promoting Pigeon Mountain as an outdoor recreational escape for residents and travelers is a good thing, but accessibility has to improve.
Anthony said Pigeon is a wildlife management area in which the majority of its funding comes from hunters.
“There will always be a struggle to maintain a balance between having it wild so that you have game up there and the hunters can come in and hunt,” he said. “But you have to balance that against the recreational needs of the tri-state community and that can be accomplished.
“Right now, the hunters are the primary funding source for the DNR wildlife management, so you can’t ignore the need to balance the wildlife side of the mountain with accessibility to other users,” he said.
The biggest challenge Pigeon faces before this can happen, Anthony said, is that the mountain needs to be more accessible with safe access. Better roads will bring more recreational users, users who in turn will attract businesses to serve and outfit them.
“The key to retail businesses (being set up near or around Pigeon Mountain) coming there, again, gets back to how many people are going to come there for whatever activity,” he said. “Whether it is hunting, caving, whether it is equestrian, rock climbing — whatever. You have got to have that flow of people and to have that flow of people, they have to have safe access to those areas and that is why I keep telling everybody that I talk to that we have got to improve those roads.”
The need for volunteers
The Emanuels say BCHNWG is always looking for volunteers and you don’t have to be on a horse to participate.
“We need more people to come out and volunteer,” Patti said. “We need people to start getting involved. If they (only) volunteer one work day a year, or one every six months, it would be huge.
“We schedule work days for every second Saturday in the month have impromptu workdays on a perneed basis,” Anthony said. “We come across a trail that is real bad and we can’t clear it in one day, then we will schedule a work day during the week.”
Back Country Horsemen of Georgia can be found on Facebook or online at bchnwg.org.
To volunteer, call 423-580-8745 or email aemanuel0413@ gmail.com.
“Come help us, we need you. You don’t have to have a horse to volunteer and there is always something to do,” Patti said.