Читать книгу Five-Star Trails: Asheville - Jennifer Pharr Davis - Страница 9

Acknowledgments

THANKS TO MENASHA RIDGE PRESS for producing this second edition of Five-Star Trails: Asheville. It struck me while doing work for this guidebook that a lot of credit for the trails in and around Asheville should go to George W. Vanderbilt. The owner of The Biltmore House, he collected, preserved, and managed huge tracts of property as part of his estate and forestry school. Today, those landholdings form a large percentage of Pisgah National Forest, and they also created a corridor for the southern portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I want to thank the modern-day agencies that govern those former Vanderbilt holdings, along with the additional public lands and trails in Western North Carolina. A special nod goes to the private organizations and government bureaus that manage the 2,181-mile Appalachian Trail, the 1,000-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway. It is nice to know that your expedition doesn’t have to end in Asheville.

Like other outdoor enthusiasts living in the region, I am also indebted to the hardworking employees who manage Pisgah National Forest, Bent Creek Experimental Forest, and the Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wildernesses. However, my biggest thanks goes to the countless volunteers who spend their time maintaining the hundreds of trails that wind through Western North Carolina. I especially appreciate the work of the trail maintainers within the Carolina Mountain Club. Thank you CMC for exploring, building, and maintaining the trails near Asheville for more than 80 years!

I also want to personally thank Diamond Brand Outdoors for helping people to get out and explore the wilderness in Western North Carolina and beyond. I am particularly indebted to Gary Eblen, the Community Outreach Coordinator at Diamond Brand, who served as a consultant on some of the hikes in this book.

And, finally, I want to thank my parents. When I was a young child, they got me started on many of the hikes mentioned in this book. I have many memories of struggling up a mountain slope behind my two older brothers, but I have no doubt that those early adventures gave me a love for the outdoors and the confidence to climb any mountain.