Last Updated on April 27, 2020 7:24 pm
The organizers of the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games (GMHG) have announced the 2020 event is cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.
In a letter by Steve Quillin, President of GMHG, “It is with deepest regret that I must inform you that the Board of Trustees has taken a unanimous vote to cancel the 2020 Grandfather Mountain Highland Games. This was to have been our 65th anniversary, and it is difficult to find words to adequately express my sadness and disappointment at this outcome. As you can no doubt appreciate, this was an agonizing decision, and one that was informed by the best information we could gather from health and government resources. We waited as late in the year as we could before making this difficult call, putting forth every effort we could to try and hold the games, but the provisions contained in the April 23, 2020, statement from the N.C. governor's office will make it impossible to even set up for the event.”
The letter goes on to say, “Our decision was driven by several factors, but primarily we could not gain any reasonable guarantee that we would be permitted to gather in a group of more than 50, nor that it would be safe to do so in July of this year given that we still have limited testing and no vaccines.” The full letter can be viewed below.
Organizers with Singing on the Mountain also announced the cancellation of the 2020 event. “Due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19 and the cancellation of the Highland Games, the 96th annual Singing on the Mountain has been cancelled,” according to a post on the group's Facebook page. That event was to take place on Sunday, June 28.
