Tag Archives: hiking

Great Smoky Mountains National park rangers are searching for a missing 53-year-old woman from Cleves, Ohio who was last seen in the Clingmans Dome area of the park on Tuesday, September 25, 2018. Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements was hiking with her daughter on the Forney Ridge Trail, near Andrews Bald when the two separated. She was last seen around 5 ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials continue preparations for Hurricane Florence and have announced road and facility closures beginning Saturday, September 15. Predictions from the National Weather Service call for strong, gusty winds and rainfall amounts of 4-8 inches moving into the park on Saturday evening, with Sunday morning seeing the worst of the storm. The higher rainfall totals are most ...

Despite saying on Wednesday that a bear found near a man’s remains in Great Smoky Mountains National Park had been euthanized, officials said Friday that efforts to locate and euthanize the bear are ongoing. Areas of the park remain closed for public safety. 30-year-old William Lee Hill, Jr., of Louisville, Tenn., along with friend Joshua Morgan, entered the park Friday, ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently received help to restore key elements of the historic Palmer Barn. Asheville building contractor Sean Perry and his crew partnered with the park and Friends of the Smokies to preserve the structural integrity of the barn and improve visitor safety through the renovation project in Cataloochee in the North Carolina section of the park. ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials announced that the Clingmans Dome Observation Tower will be closed Monday, June 4 through Friday, June 15, 2018 to complete a rehabilitation project that began last year. Workers need to apply a final surface overlay along the tower ramp. While visitors will not be able to climb the tower, the Clingmans Dome parking overlook ...

Featuring more than 250 free sessions and activities spanning five days, Pigeon Forge’s award-winning Wilderness Wildlife Week runs May 8-12, 2018. The event is headquartered at the LeConte Center at Pigeon Forge. In its 28th year, Wilderness Wildlife Week offers a variety of workshops, lectures, seminars, concerts, hikes and other activities designed to introduce or reacquaint participants of all ages with the great ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park may have experienced an eclipse in 2017, but the support it received from one of its largest retail partners was anything but eclipsed, with more than $2 million contributed to a vast array of activities during the year by Great Smoky Mountains Association. In its recently released annual report of activity for 2017, GSMA listed ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is celebrating 20 years of conducting biodiversity inventories. Park managers, biologists, educators, and non-park scientists initiated an effort to discover all life in the Smokies through an All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) on Earth Day in 1998. The non-profit partner Discover Life in America (DLIA), created in 1998, coordinates the inventory. Over the last 20 ...

Cultural history, natural surroundings, park cemeteries, and sweat-inducing, blood-pumping hikes. These are just a few of the topics to be explored in Great Smoky Mountains Association’s Branch Out activity series this May. Those interested in learning more about our country’s most visited national park are encouraged to join any of these programs set within Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Program: ...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials announced that work crews will remove ten structures in Elkmont beginning the week of March 12, 2018. The removal of these structures, located near the former Wonderland Hotel, marks the end of major demolition work in the Elkmont area which began in 2010 as specified in the 2009 Memorandum of Agreement (MOU) among the ...