Severe weather has left workers scrambling to cleanup and patch Blue Ridge Parkway

Three months of snow and ice have left workers with the Blue Ridge Parkway scrambling to clean up the roadway, campgrounds and picnic areas by early spring.

Although warmer weather and rain is melting much of the snow, some sections remain covered under seven-foot snow drifts, which make it difficult for parkway employees to clear trees and limbs.

"We have tons of limbs down and we can't even reach them," said Rick Baker, the facility manager for a 112-mile stretch of the parkway in Virginia. Baker, who is based at Rocky Knob near Floyd, Va., has worked on the parkway for 14 years. "We haven't seen anything like this in a long time."

Potholes also have formed along some sections, particularly in North Carolina.

Parkway officials are feeling particularly pressed to clean the parkway because of all the fanfare surrounding the 469-mile-long scenic parkway's 75th anniversary, said Phil Francis, the superintendent for the parkway.

The parkway, which stretches from Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Shenandoah National Park, is open year-round but sections are frequently closed because of snow and ice during the winter. Most of the facilities along the road are seasonal.

"We don't have any official events scheduled on the parkway until September, so we're not challenged in that regard," Francis said. "However, we want people to visit the parkway on its 75th anniversary and some of the communities along the parkway are having special events of their own and they would like to see us open as soon as possible."

The National Park Service, which operates the parkway, will use money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to hire seasonal workers to help in the cleanup. The number of permanent employees at the parkway has dropped from 120 to 80, Francis said.

Terry Osborne, the co-owner of Station's Inn in Laurel Springs at mile marker 248, is among those anxious to see the snow cleared. The parkway is open at that stretch, but is closed between mile markers 234 and 242 and from mile markers 305 to 308 near the Linn Cove Viaduct.

Osborne's business is a motel and restaurant geared toward motorcyclists. Not long ago, some workers from the parkway stopped by the restaurant and told him that they expected the parkway would soon be cleared.

"I'm going to trust in them," he said. "We count on parkway traffic."

Francis said he believes many of the campgrounds and picnic areas that close for the winter season will reopen within a week of their usual opening time. Most of those places begin to open around the middle of April. However, they may not be as tidy as usual.

Roy Jones, who oversees an 85-mile stretch of the parkway in North Carolina for the National Park Service, said that because his crews have spent so much time clearing snow, they've had to neglect some of the work they do at campgrounds in the offseason.

"Spring is going to be spent doing some of those repairs," Jones said.

Jones and Baker said they were not able to mow slopes along the road or any of the large fields that border the parkway, jobs they usually do during the fall.

They have had to put that off for months because the winter weather hit early and continued until the first week of March. Typically, snow will fall, but then melt within a week.

Jones said that a section of the parkway known as Ice Rock, near mile marker 242, closes every year when water seeping from a granite slab freezes on the road. Usually, the ice patch forces the road to be closed for about 11/2 months. This time, that section of road has been closed since November.

Once the parkway opens, it will take some time before workers are able to clear trees and mow overgrown fields.

"The damage is going to be there for months and months. It's going to look like (Hurricane) Hugo in most spots," Jones said. "I want folks to know that it's going to take months to get it close to what it looked like when they last came through."

lo'donnell@wsjournal.com.