Asheville’s Bent Creek River Park closed for six weeks for natural gas pipeline replacement
Bent Creek River Park on Brevard Road in Asheville will be closed for up to six weeks while Dominion Energy replaces a natural gas line. Josh O’ Conner, Director of Buncombe County Recreation Services, told WLOS that they worked with Dominion to close the park during the slowest time possible, since Bent Creek River Park is a popular spot for kayakers and tubers to put in during warmer months.
In a statement, Dominion Energy said, “as the regulated natural gas provider in the area, our responsibility is to ensure system reliability and safety in compliance with regulations, and this project is a part of that. We apologize for the inconvenience and will work diligently to complete the project in a timely manner, weather permitting.”
Read the full story here: https://wlos.com/news/local/bent-creek-river-park-to-temporarily-close-for-up-to-6-weeks
Great Smoky Mountains National Park breaks visitor record in 2019
The country’s most visited national parks keeps getting more popular. In 2019, Great Smoky Mountains National Park saw record visitation numbers, welcoming 12,547,743 visitors. That’s up from a record-breaking year in 2018 which saw 11,421,203 visitors.
The park says that each of the three primary entrances near Gatlinburg, Cherokee and Townsend all saw an increase in visitors, but the secondary entrances also helped contribute to the large number. “Secondary park entrances experienced tremendous growth, due primarily to the new section of the Foothills Parkway between Walland and Wears Valley,” the park said in a news release. “Over one million visitors enjoyed this new driving experience.”
Read the full story here: https://www.wbir.com/article/entertainment/places/great-smoky-mountains-national-park/great-smoky-mountains-national-park-sets-visitation-record-with-125-million-visitors/51-1c6762a5-cb32-4ee0-aff2-3da87fda17db
Waynesville, NC native wins Gold at 2020 X Games
Twenty-year-old snowboarder Zeb Powell won gold in Wendy’s Snowboard Knuckle Huck at the X Games in Aspen last week. According to Powell’s Red Bull athlete profile, he grew up skiing at Cataloochee Ski Area where he learned to ride with “creativity, flow and style.” His signature blend, states the website, is “of a super-smooth rail game with shifty spins and tweaked-out grabs.”
According to the Aspen Times, the knuckle huck is a competition that “allows for, encourages and celebrates the flair, the style and the fun at the heart of snowboarding as riders huck themselves off the “knuckle,” or rollover, of the big air landing before landing in the formal landing area.
