CATAWBA — Legwork, and plenty of it, is required to catalogue scenic views along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, a team of conservationists said.
To be precise, Pam Roy said her crew logged 326.4 miles trekking southbound from the West Virginia border since June 3, recording the qualities of viewpoints along the way.
Roy works for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy as manager of the visual resource inventory team. Her task is to help the nonprofit better understand what sights abound along almost 2,200 miles of the famed national scenic trail.
“We’re hiking every mile of the trail and inventorying all the views we come across,” Roy said. “Not just the really popular views that folks are familiar with.”
The four-person group finished their season at the high rocky outcrop known as Dragon’s Tooth in Catawba last week.
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It is year four of what’s expected to be an eight- or nine-year project, Roy said. The team methodically records noteworthy sights along the trail using a combination of camera, tripod, GPS tracker, electronic tablet, pen, data sheet, eyes and legs.
“Views are something that we’re drawn to as humans,” Roy said. “We know that scenic values are incredibly important to our visitors. Why do you hike up a mountain?”
So far over four summers, Roy and her seasonal crew have documented sights along more than 900 miles, nearing half of the Appalachian Trail’s total mileage from Georgia to Maine.
“We are evaluating the scenery, but there’s another piece of our process,” Roy said. “We also consider all the cultural and historic importance of the viewpoint, and also the viewed landscape.”
The Visual resources field is still emerging, Roy said. The methods used by Roy’s team are also applicable to other park lands.
“There’s a rubric,” Roy said. “This whole process was developed by National Park Service landscape architects.”
On paper, data is recorded, including landscape forms, lines, colors and textures. The team gives names to features that have previously been nameless.
“We use a pretty expansive definition of what a view is,” Roy said. “We do have views that we would consider features, like a really cool rock formation, a waterfall, a lake or a pond… we would inventory those as well.”
Visual inventorying is quite different from other trail jobs, she said.
“The trail crew is actually building and making the trail,” Roy said. “We are documenting and collecting data in the hopes that we can preserve some of these really important views into the future.”
Part of the trail closest to Roanoke is known as the Virginia Triple Crown – one of the most-visited stretches of the entire trail, famous for its views.
Heavy use of Dragons Tooth Trail leads to restrictions
On high atop McAfee Knob, Tinker Cliffs and Dragon’s Tooth, hikers can see for miles into the Roanoke Valley – far beyond the narrow park boundaries of the trail. Providing a visual inventory enables the trail conservancy to better plan how and where to secure easements that preserve the forested viewsheds.
“We capture what portion of the viewed landscape you can see from the viewpoint. We use that information for a lot of our [geographic] modeling,” Roy said. “Our partners, in addition to our organization, also use that data to determine what parcels of land might be really valuable for conservation, in terms of preserving the scenic quality.”
Last year, for example, the conservancy announced it purchased an 850-acre section of the view from McAfee Knob, securing its protection into the future.
Sizable piece of McAfee Knob viewshed to be preserved
“This is a national scenic trail,” Roy said. “We want to also preserve the scenic values.”
One member of the visual resource inventory team is Roanoke County native Jordan Henegar. He graduated from Virginia Tech last December with a degree in wildlife conservation.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Henegar said. “It’s been definitely a good experience to get out here and see places that I’ve lived right by my whole life, but haven’t gotten to see until now.”
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Luke Weir (540) 566-8917
luke.weir@roanoke.com
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