Many of the Chattanooga area’s hiking and mountain bike trails became beaten paths in a different sense on April 27, and the damage continued after that day of tornadoes and other vicious storms.
As Wild Trails executive director Randy Whorton pointed out recently, the storms of late April felled numerous trees throughout the area’s forests as well as in residential areas, but they also “wounded” a bunch that went down during subsequent lesser storms and gusting winds.
Helping people whose homes were hit or blocked by fallen trees was the immediate priority for Whorton and his band of certified chainsaw handlers, but they eventually turned to clearing the trails. A similar responsibility fell to Noel Durant, the land manager for the Lula Lake Land Trust, which oversees one of the most beautiful wilderness sites in the area — and one of those most affected by the storms.
“The hardest hit sections were Lula Lake, the Cumberland Trail from Edwards Point on Signal Mountain to Mushroom Rock — that just got pummeled — and the lower north slopes of Lookout Mountain,” Whorton said. “And a good section of Stringers Ridge got hurt pretty bad.
“We had some sections where we couldn’t figure out where all the trees went, but we also had areas where trees were stacked on top of each other 15 to 18 feet high.”