New High Country park is latest link in trail system from Mount Jefferson to Boone

A High Country mountain that was once considered for clear-cutting will host a new public park and trail.

On a hike, Jordan Sellers of the Blue Ridge Conservancy talks about the future site of Paddy Mountain Park. 

“So we’re walking on this freshly built, sustainably built trail which is a lot different than most people are used to hiking in the High Country,” he says.

Along the way, he crosses a short footbridge made from amphibolite rocks gathered nearby. Sellers says this mountain region has more of these rocks than most places in the Southern Appalachians.

"They end up having a more nutrient-rich soil type, more calcium and magnesium-rich. And so you get a much more rich forest.”

He says that makes these lands important ecologically, recreationally and educationally.

"You’ll be able to get outside, you’ll be able to get where it’s quiet," he says. "You get into the interior of Paddy Mountain and you can’t hear anything except for the occasional bird.”

Sellers says it took about eight years for the conservancy to protect Paddy Mountain, which had once been eyed for logging — the forests are plentiful with maple, oak and hickory trees.

He says the effort to preserve it was a community-wide response that included individuals as well as the town of West Jefferson and Ashe County.

The Paddy Mountain Park Trail is planned to be part of a trail system called the Northern Peaks State Trail that stretches from Mount Jefferson in Ashe County all the way to downtown Boone, passing through such notable places as Howard Knob and Elk Knob State Park.

The park is expected to be opened by the end of fall.