Left to right – Along the Asheville corridor on the Blue Ridge Parkway, before clean-up (left) and after clean-up (right).
Eleven more miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina opened to the public Wednesday as National Park Service crews continued to remove debris left by Hurricane Helene and make repairs.
The section that opened falls between milepost 382.5 at U.S. 70 near the Folk Art Center near Asheville to milepost 393.6 at North Carolina 191 near the North Carolina Arboretum, including the French Broad Overlook at milepost 393.8.
The Asheville Visitor Center, at milepost 384, will now resume year-round operations daily from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Folk Art Center operations, at milepost 382, are scheduled to resume on Saturday. Trails in this section of the Parkway are also open, but the Park Service urges extreme caution for trail users who may experience hazards resulting from landslides, downed or leaning trees, washouts, and other damage.
Visitors are also asked to avoid parking on the roadside in any location other than official, paved parking areas, as heavy equipment is still active in the area. Since storm recovery began, Park Service staff and contractors have moved more than 350,000 cubic feet of storm debris from this 11-mile road segment. This volume of woody debris could fill nearly 150 shipping containers.
The Park Service does not yet have projected opening dates for areas of the parkway immediately north and south of the 11-mile road segment that opened Wednesday. Ongoing roadway and roadside damage evaluations, significant debris removal, and miles of technical hazard tree work remain north of US 70 and south of State Route 191. The Park Service will provide updates on those sections when additional information is available.
“With today’s opening, we have now restored access to over 310 miles of the Parkway,” said parkway Superintendent Tracy Swartout. “Incident teams and contractors have been working on this section for over a month, with large numbers of damaged trees, vast amounts of tree debris in the roadway, and heavy equipment at work simultaneously throughout the corridor. I am grateful for everyone involved in the effort to reopen this critical section of the Parkway.”
Due to the severity of the storm, conditions on park roads and trails are expected to continue to change in the next weeks and months. Visitors should plan carefully for their visit and share travel plans with others in advance. For safety reasons, the park asks that people continue to respect all closures.
