According to a National Park Service news release dated April 19, a man died on April 18 after slipping into water near the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Jie Huang, 40, of Plymouth, North Carolina, was hiking on the Boone Fork Trail near Price Lake at Milepost 297. According to the news announcement, at 2:57 p.m. on April 18, the parkway communications center received a report of a hiker falling into waterways next to the trail.
NPS law enforcement rangers and Watauga and Blowing Rock EMS arrived on the incident, rescued the hiker, and performed CPR on Huang. He was pronounced dead at the spot. According to preliminary findings, Huang died from injuries experienced after his fall.
The Citizen Times contacted the park service for additional information.
Freddie Morgan Jr., a 70-year-old hiker from Concord, died Nov. 24, 2024, on the adjacent Price Lake Trail, “due to a medical emergency.”
The parkway is one of the National Park Service’s most frequented units, with more than 16.7 million visits expected in 2024. Tropical Storm Helene reached Western North Carolina in late September, causing major damage to much of the state’s roadways.
The parkway stretches 469 miles along the North Carolina-Virginia border. The Price Park Lake and Boone Fork locations are about 85 miles northeast of Asheville on the parkway, about an hour and a half away.