As the President of the River to River Trail Society I got the following email from Tim Pohlman yesterday and wasn’t able to post until now. This message is very important to those considering hikes along the R2R trail between Bassett Road and Karbers Ridge Road. If you have any feedback on this, please comment below. The map of the closure area is shown below.

Bill, I wanted to send you a notice before you read about this in the paper. We have a timber sale going right now in the Lee Mine area. Part of this area is bisected by the R2R trail. We have graveled a good bit of the road where the trail enters the forest from the Bassett Road. Where the R2R turns to the right following the old road we have had several people go straight along a logging road and end up in the middle of the harvest unit, which has some public safety concerns associated with it. We are closing the area around the sale to public use until the end of the sale or the end of this year, whichever comes first. Here is a link to the website with the maps and the closure order: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/shawnee/news-events/?cid=FSEPRD637775 The only means that we have to ask the public not to use an area is to implement an area closure. Closure orders are not very subtle. The map shows the section of trail that people will need to stop using during the closure. Instead what we would ask people to do is to continue going north on the Bassett Road to the Karbers Ridge Road, then east to the Cadiz Road until they intersect the trail again. I know that it creates a couple additional miles of hard-road walking. I apologize for that inconvenience. Feel free to contact me with questions. I will let you know if and when the order is lifted or modified in any way. Thanks