Mountain Stewards To Build New Trail In Gilmer

The Mountain Stewards Trail Crew will begin building the Clear Creek Middle School Cross Country Trail on Tuesday, June 2^nd . Work will continue for several months thereafter. The trail will be built in sections. Those sections that do not impact stream buffers will be constructed first.

The Gilmer County School System is currently preparing the paperwork for a waiver to encroach on the stream buffer of a trout stream on the property. Estimates are that the necessary permits will take about 120 days to obtain. When completed, the trail will be 3.2 miles long mainly following the perimeter of the school property. One section will loop through a 90 acre section of State owned property on the east side of the stream.

Don Wells, President of Mountain Stewards, indicated that they had hoped to start on a ½ mile handicap trail and other facilities on the Gilmer Elementary Schools campus for joint use by the citizens of Gilmer County. However the joint application submitted to the Georgia Recreational Trails Program by the Gilmer School System and Mountain Stewards has been turned down. Don stated “there are no other sources of funding at the moment to get this project back on line, for now. We may do some work to clean up the existing non-handicap trail but that remains to be determined later this year.”

Mountain Stewards have been very active trail builders in Gilmer County. They have completed improvements on 1.5 miles of trails at the Gilmer High School and 1.2 Miles at Gilmer Middle School. For more information about Mountain Stewards’ activities visit their website.