Fall, with its crisp air, cool temperatures and dazzling color, is a time when everyone, it seems, wants to be on the trail. Those crowds, especially now, can detract from the experience we seek when we head outdoors. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Category Archives: Hiking
Embrace winter hiking with these 7 bits of advice
I was putting together a curriculum for a new hiker in our Adventure Coaching program and realized that some of what she needed to know was especially pertinent to this time of year. Today, I share some of those tips that will be especially helpful, hopefully, going into winter.
Winter Wild: Solitude when you need it most
In the early 1980s I lived in Loveland, Colo. On weekends, I would drive up U.S. 34 along the Big Thompson River toward Estes Park, into the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forest. I would typically stop well short of Estes, sometimes not even making it to the tiny crossroads of Drake. I’d find a roadside pullout, get out and start hiking: there didn’t need to be a trail, as long as the terrain was passible. It wouldn’t be long, scrambling up the steep canyon walls, before I’d start fantasizing that I might be the first person to have ever made it to the ridge above. Hey, I was in my 20s. What did I know?
GetOut! N.C. State Park programs resume
If you love fall, you’ll adore this weekend.
After a little rain on Friday, the skies clear, the temperatures drop and it’s fall again. Look for a temperature when you wake up Saturday in the upper 30s, look for daytime highs both days in the 60s, look for lots of sunshine. And look for something that’s starting to reappear after a long hiatus: programs at North Carolina State Parks.
5 Fall Blue Ridge Hikes: Great Color, No Crowds
If you get the urge to check out fall color in the next couple of weekends, a bit of advice:
Don’t go where the leaf peeping experts say to go.
Their advice gravitates to the easily accessible go-to color hotspots, mostly along the easily accessed Blue Ridge Parkway: Graveyard Fields, Rough Ridge, Price Lake … . Sure, photos taken within the past few days scream chamber-of-commerce-certified color, but they’re screaming it to the tens of thousands of others looking for a quick autumn fix. A fix that can be had without venturing too far from the car. With a classic fall forecast for this weekend, expect those hotspots to be just that in more ways than one.