Shining Rock Wilderness Extensions

SHINING ROCK WILDERNESS AREA EXTENSIONS
Updated 10/25/07

Shining Rock is part of the larger Pisgah Cluster. It was one of the first Wilderness Areas
to be designated, one of only three in the Eastern US,
under the original Wilderness Act of 1964.
There are two proposed Wilderness extensions, Sam Knob and Graveyard Fields, separated only
by FS Road 816 to the Black Balsam/Sam Knob parking lot
at the south end of the bad dirt road to Ivestor Gap.

Taken from a 1993 Forest Service map of bear habitat, shown in green.

The orange lines show NC Mtn Treasures wild areas proposed for protection.

Red line area on the west is the Lake Logan tract, purchased by the Forest Service in 2000. Red area on the east is the Crawford Creek inholding, now mostly protected under a conservation easement held by the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.

Gray shows private and, on the SW, Nantahala National Forest land.

Major trails are shown as dashed lines.

Location: Haywood County, S side of Shining Rock Wilderness to Parkway, including Sam Knob and Dark Prong, but not including the road to Sam Knob parking lot and Ivestor Gap.
Access: From Parkway at Graveyard Fields, or from FS road to Sam Knob/Black Balsam parking area.

USGS Topographic Quadrangles: Shining Rock, Sam Knob. See also FS Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wilderness Trail Map. Also 1995 FS Pisgah Ranger District Trail Map, and 1996 Trails Illustrated Pisgah Ranger District Trail Map.

Features/Description/Potential:
    Includes Dark Prong plus Tennent and Black Balsam Mts which are currently managed now as heath balds by periodic burning. These balds are an extremely popular feature of this region, used heavily by hunters, blueberry pickers and hikers. Wilderness designation would prevent management as balds. There is no old growth in this part of the wild area, though once it was heavily forested. A great fire on Thanksgiving eve of 1925 burned the area so badly that even the organic soils were consumed. It will take hundreds of years before soils reform enough to allow a forest to grow again.
    It is hard to understand why Dark Prong was not included in the Wilderness area originally. Dark Prong is a small creek that falls in a very scenic way over a number of bare stone faces on its way to join the Big East Fork of the Pigeon River.
    Art Loeb trail (FS 146) crosses the area.   Shining Rock Wilderness is badly overused. Only closing the Ivestor Gap road and the Sam Knob parking area blacktop road would make access difficult enough to take some pressure off. The FS has considered a permit system.   The FS has determined that the upper 4 miles of the Big East Fork of the Pigeon River should be studied for "wild" status in the National River System.

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