My favorite time to be on the Blue Ridge Parkway?
When it’s closed.
As of Thursday, 81.8 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina are closed because of wintery weather conditions. (With few exceptions, the entire 469.1-mile parkway isn’t plowed during the winter. When it snows or the road ices over, the road stays closed until the snow or ice melts.) When those sections are closed to automotive traffic they become some of North Carolina’s best outdoor playgrounds.
The Triangle is two ramps away from having a 60-mile hiking trail.
Just before Christmas, contractors using a really big crane lowered a steel bridge onto concrete footings spanning Little Lick Creek at Falls Lake. The bridge will join Sections 14 and 15 of the Falls Lake portion of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and will make it possible hike undisturbed from Pennys Bend on the Eno River in Durham County downlake to the Falls Lake dam in Raleigh — when it’s completed.
“When it’s completed,” because there’s still the matter of those two ramps. While Little Lick Creek lives up to its name, it’s in a floodplain that is wide. Thus, the bridge’s deck sits about seven feet off the ground, and lead-up boardwalk ramps are required.
“The contractor has until February 10 to install the ramps,” Friends of the MST Executive Director Kate Dixon said yesterday. “But I think it will be done before that.”
Initially, the plan was to save money by having volunteers build the bridge. (Except for more involved projects such as this, the 1,000-mile-long statewide trail, a little over half of which is completed, is being built by an army of volunteers.) But Dixon said they had money left over from the two grants used to fund the bridge — $150,000 from the state’s recreational trails program and $55,000 in Durham open space funds — so they decided to hire the work out.
A formal dedication ceremony is scheduled for May 19.
While the 60-mile trail will be one of longest urban trails in the nation, it’s just over a third of what the trail eventually will be. On its journey from 6,643-foot Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee border to Jockey’s Ridge on the Atlantic, the MST will spend 150 miles in the Triangle, running from Clayton in Johnston County to Hillsborough in Orange County. That entire 150-mile stretch could be completed next year.
A progress report, from east to west:
While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we shrink, on average, 0.4 inches a year; we dehydrate more easily; our joints stiffen … . Suffice it to say that on May 11 of last year I didn’t feel I could wait seven months to set some goals, so I set 10 immediately. All with a theme of 55.
Last week, I wrote of the need to get out — at least once — on a sanity-saving hike over the holiday season. Because we realize you have a lot going on this time of year, and because we realize the one chance you might have to venture out should be extra special, we offered to come up with the perfect hike, just for you. To make that happen, we asked a few questions, such as: How long is your ideal hike? How far are you willing to drive? And what do you hope to find along the trail? You made my job easier by being pretty much in synch regarding your needs.
A week ago, we issued a challenge: Walk once a day through the end of the month and you might just survive this holiday season. Less stress, improved mood, you won’t emerge from the holidays 15 pounds heavier— pretty good deal for walking just 30 minutes a day.