“I’d be damned proud if they called me a Hillbilly,” Logan Smith said after spending her first seven days in Western North Carolina’s mountain towns, amid utter destruction and an inspiringly hardy people—the Hillbillies of Appalachia.
Tricia and Mo Smith with their daughter, Logan, at her graduation from USMC bootcamp in 2018. When father and daughter deployed into Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene hit in late Sept. 2024, they were uniquely qualified for the task ahead.
Photo courtesy of the Smith Family.
Logan is a 25-year-old resident of Danbury, North Carolina. There, she lives with her mom, Tricia, and dad, Mo, training horses and getting the wheels turning on their new nonprofit, Forged Valor. She’s a trained Marine, and she’s watched her dad spend nearly the last 15 years running a horsemanship program and teaching tradesman skills to the military veterans of the Semper Fi & America’s Fund.
In short, the Smiths are a family committed to service. And when Hurricane Helene did its worst to their Appalachian neighbors, they were in a uniquely qualified position to do something about it.
Appalachian Aftermath
“Chimney Rock was there, and then Chimney Rock was not there…”
Logan Smith on what spurred her to take action.
“We saw the pictures of Chimney Rock,” Logan said, explaining the catalyst in her decision to deliver hands-on help. “Chimney Rock was there, and then Chimney Rock was not there. Me and my brother, Bryant, saw that picture on Saturday morning and, Saturday night, we were like, ‘Okay, let’s go help and see where we’re needed.’”
Danbury is 170 miles northeast of Chimney Rock and, pre-Helene, a three-hour drive. But by Saturday morning, as the magnitude of the storm’s destruction was just beginning to be understood, all roads in Western North Carolina were reported closed as it was discovered that bridge after bridge after bridge had been washed out. It took the Smith siblings five hours to make it to Chimney Rock.
“I’m prior military and [Bryant] is prior law enforcement,” Logan said. “I have some Search and Rescue training because I was a crew chief on Hueys. We collected a bunch of supplies—people were already bringing stuff over for us because I had just put a post on Facebook saying we were headed up there. We intended to go up Saturday night, but we realized pretty quick that we were kind of half-cocked going in.”
[READ: Interested in Horse Packing? Check Out Our Horse Packing 101 Guide]
A Team Effort
Logan got in touch with folks who could provide some early intel on travel logistics and where they might have the best success getting in to help people. Then, in the morning, they loaded up and left, knowing they had two days before Bryant had to return to work.
“We loaded up some horses and a bunch of supplies, and we just went as far as we could until they stopped us,” Logan said, speaking of the authorities already on the ground. “We’d got to Old Fort, and we said, ‘We’re willing to do Search and Rescue, body recovery, sadly; whatever.’ We had another girl with us, as well, so we ended up bringing a crew of three and two horses. My father got the call the next day and I was like, ‘We’re not going to be home anytime soon, so that’s where he came in.’”
A Resume Fit For Responding
For nearly 15 years, Mo Smith has played a pivotal role for the Jinx McCain Horsemanship Program—a program filmed and featured by the Equine Network in 2021—which he led in lockstep with retired Marine Col. John Mayer. The program hosted its final event in 2023. But the men have since developed an independent nonprofit, Forged Valor, which is the support mechanism for the aid the Smith’s are giving to Helene’s victims.
Forged Valor is a product of the goals accomplished and lessons learned across the years Mayer and Mo ran the JMHP. A program that used horsemanship and hard days of real ranch work to show military veterans the possibilities that exist for them beyond their service. From gathering herd in backcountry, mountain terrain to roping and wrestling calves at a branding, they guided men and women beyond their comfort zones to a place of accomplishment and confidence.
Mo has also trained with the Army’s Delta Force—an elite special operations unit based out of Fort Liberty, North Carolina—giving him a very unique and elevated set of skills for the task ahead. Still, the degree of destruction he encountered was not anticipated.
“I didn’t really know what it would look like, but it is beyond anything I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot,” Mo said.
Like Father, Like Daughter
As a dad, especially, Mo felt the need to provide support and security for Logan.
On occasion, Logan was able to lend her dad a helping hand at a few JMHP clinics and, now, she’ll be contributing her hard-earned talents to Forged Valor’s mission.
Photo courtesy of the Smith Family.
“She’s horrible,” Mo said of his daughter, as if she isn’t cut straight from his cloth. “She don’t have back-up in her. She don’t have a ‘No’ in her. She’s a force to be reckoned with. She had that whole fire department rallying and everything. She pulled it all together. I was just there for security; just watching out so people wouldn’t loot our stuff, wouldn’t mob her. I was just trying to give her information about how people can be in these kinds of situations.”
Appalachian Aptitude
In the wake of disaster, people can and do find themselves in absolute survival situations. For those who weren’t afforded the opportunity to prepare and/or lack the tools to cope in the aftermath, desperate measures suddenly seem less desperate. Coupled with the unavoidable chaos that even happens between aid agencies and leadership when lines of communication are minimally available, it’s understandable that Mo and Logan and their crew encountered their share of animosity and ill will along the way.
They also witnessed the extreme resilience of the Appalachian people.
“We would go in, and we would hire local people to operate chainsaws,” Mo explained. “They didn’t have nothing. They’d lost everything, too. We hired young boys in their early 20s and paid them a couple hundred dollars a day and, man, they worked their tails off. We got up into their community so they could get aid up in there.”
By this point, the general public knows that most of the roads had washed out in communities like Black Mountain, Boone, Old Fort, Asheville and Swannanoa, but the Forged Valor team—which included seven saddle horses and three pack horses—encountered blockades dozens of feet high and miles long of full-sized trees that stood 20 and 30 feet tall before the floods and landslides ripped them up by their roots. Horses could get the team so far, but manual labor was the missing link between them and the people suddenly isolated on their mountainside islands.
Appalachians Are a Different Breed
“Bat Cave was the last place, and one of the guys that was with us stayed—him and two ER nurses—and a handful of people cut their way in there [last] Saturday morning,” Mo explained. “There was about 100 people up there. They were fine; they just couldn’t get out. So the lower communities got washed downstream, and the upper communities got separated from access.”
In those communities, Mo and Logan discovered that most people wanted to stay right where they were.
“I will tell you,” Logan started, “the people of Appalachia, they’re a different breed. Okay, I’m tough, and I would not want to be on their bad side. They were rebuilding roads already. Just some Hillbillies out there with their excavators. And you better call them Hillbillies, too. They’ll be mad as hell if you don’t.”
I said, ‘You don’t understand the 4.5 miles of road and trees we just cut out to get to you. There is no road. They’re not coming back up here [for you again.] This is the last bit of food and gas you’re going to get.’ And they said, ‘We’re not leaving.’”
– Mo Smith on the resilience of the Appalachian people
“This is the Appalachian people we’re talking about,” Mo added. “They’re about as resilient as any redneck can be. I’m telling you, these guys are tough as nails…. We hauled some gas up, and they said, ‘No, we’re not going anywhere.’ I said, ‘You don’t understand the 4.5 miles of road and trees we just cut out to get to you. There is no road. They’re not coming back up here [for you again.] This is the last bit of food and gas you’re going to get.’ And they said, ‘We’re not leaving.’”
Horseback Heroism: Can’s and Cannot’s
Of all the coordinating Logan has done in the past few weeks, finding willing riders wasn’t a challenge. The challenge was finding willing, trained responders who had horses and horsemanship skills.
“We turned a bunch of people away,” Logan admitted. “I was like, ‘If you’re not a first responder, a medic with search and rescue training, something of the sorts that can be of use, I hate to say it, but we can’t take you. We had two medics ride with us one day, and both them girls had hospitals packed on the back of their horses they had so much gear.
“I asked one of them, ‘You got enough stuff?’ Logan continued. “She said, ‘I could cut your horse apart and put it back together with this bag.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”
Heroic Horsepower
Then there’s the actual horses that are thrown into an environment they’ve never experienced, with downed timber and misplaced, jagged rock, slick with sediment. The Forged Valor team consisted of six Quarter Horses, two mules and two mustangs.
“They did a good job,” Mo said of the string. “They didn’t tear packs up; they had chainsaws hooked to them, and food and water. And we couldn’t keep the packs up tight, because we were constantly untying them and getting junk out.”
Mo praises one of Logan’s mustangs, who has been a valuable teammate.
“One of them was a psycho horse just last month, and then just decided to grow up,” Mo said with a touch of bewilderment. “It just grew up and decided to be a stud—just turned into a superhero out there.”
Logan had a feeling, though.
“Her name is Minnow,” Logan said. “I’ve had her for a year now, and she has tried everything under the sun to end my life. I didn’t bring her out with me, [but I told Dad,] ‘Bring Minnow. She’s going to rise to the occasion; I know she is.’ Sure enough, she is like a working dog. She just needs a job.”
Logan did her best to keep the horses on rotation to minimize them getting sored up walking on all the rocks, but the terrain did mean Mo was the on-call farrier for the week. And though they started with a few hay bales, they quickly switched to cubes. Finally, finding a place that was simply flat enough for the horses to overnight and rest was an additional challenge.
Mission: WNC 2.0
Forged Valor is returning to the mountains for the second leg of their mission as we speak. But they’re pivoting away from using the horses moving forward.
“The need for horses dwindled quickly,” Logan explained. “We did our part on the ground, but now it’s time for ATVs and heavy equipment to be in there, unless someone calls us and tells us exactly where they need us. Plus, you don’t have to find a place for your ATVs to eat at night and be on soft ground.”
Mo and Logan both emphasize that the need for supplies and support for the Appalachian people isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the opportunity for people to help will persist for months, if not years.
“What we need is chainsaws, tents, cots, beds and blankets,” Mo explained. “We’ve got people that have nothing. Nothing. They’ve got their clothes on their back and that’s it.”
“We’re going into winter,” Logan emphasized. “In the mountainous areas of North Carolina, it’s already starting to hit 30 degrees at night. So we’re doing coats and stuff like that, which is pretty critical. Most of these people’s stuff is just gone.”
Where There’s a Will…
There’s nothing inexpensive about quality gear or heavy equipment. Forged Valor is employing whatever the Smiths already own to make the mission work, but Mo, who is a heavy equipment operator in his “spare” time, is hoping to secure a DOT contract in the area for road work so that he can put the money made on the contract right back into the aid Forged Valor can provide for the community.
“I have very little funding,” Mo admitted. “But we have a ton of equipment. We’re going to try to bring equipment up there and do debris removal for the DOT. That way, half our team will do humanitarian work while the other half of the team makes enough money for all of us. That way, we can self-fund our humanitarian work.”
Forging Ahead
In the mountains and for Forged Valor, the to-do list is long. Getting access to supplies and surviving winter will be paramount throughout Appalachia. And, for Forged Valor, seemingly smaller tasks like developing a website to keep folks informed and the organization funded present their own challenges.
But Logan and Mo have seen things they can’t unsee, now: A 7-year-old boy found alive, buried beneath a bridge, his parents lost, it seems; young men with nothing left leaning into a mountain of manual labor to help their neighbors; people from near and far ready to give anything that could possibly help.
“The best part is the community,” Logan said. “Especially watching the community around here come together, and also the communities up there. And we’ve had people donate thousands of dollars, thousands of pounds of supplies. People that are willing to go at the drop of a hat, and people that are just so willing to go help others when they have no idea who they are. And that’s what we would want. If Danbury, North Carolina, had got struck by that, I sure as hell want the people from Appalachia up here for me on horses!
“People have come together,” Logan continued. “And what people need now is hope. If they know that America has got them, that’s a beacon of hope to these people.”
How to support Forged Valor
Venmo: @Forged-Valor-2024 (Forged Valor Inc.)
About Forged Valor: Paperwork for Forged Valor’s 501c3 status was submitted in July. It is in the final stages of official approval. Donations made to the organization’s Venmo are tax deductible, and donors can expect a receipt for their donation. Unlike the JMHP, Forged Valor is not just for the military community. In Mo’s words, “It’s for anybody that chooses to engage life as a warrior. I don’t care if you’re a 9-year-old girl. Life is the ultimate battle and, if you want to make it, you better be a damn warrior.”
