When Raleigh’s Neuse River Greenway reaches the Johnston County Line in the spring of 2013, it’ll have company. “It should be done by this time next year, if not sooner,” Bob Mosher with the NC Department of Transportation’s Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety said Thursday. “It” is a four-mile stretch of greenway now under construction that starts at the Wake County line near Mial Plantation Road and extends downstream…
Sunday, I woke up as sore as I’ve been in a long while. Not just leg sore from running, say, a half marathon, or riding a mountain century. And not the shoulder and arm sore from a long paddle. Full-body head-to-toe sore. That’s what a day of honest work will do. Saturday, I observed National Trails Day with the Friends of Mountains-to-Sea Trail, sprucing up Section 20 of the MST…
I bolted upright, wide awake, at 4:45, 15 minutes before the alarm was scheduled to do its ugly business. In 10 minutes I was dressed, had my daypack packed, poured a mug of coffee and was ready to go. I wasn’t my usual morning self. But then, on this morning I wasn’t going about my usual morning routine. For the past several years, my friend Alan and I have attempted…
Judging from the weekend forecast, a blanket of wet and cool will cover much of North Carolina this weekend. Not what you hope for on the first full weekend of spring. But lots of great weather is ahead, which should help soften the damp blow. And what better way to spend a rainy weekend day than planning for your next sun-drenched outing — and indulging in a vicarious escape in…
Wilderness areas shouldn’t be the private domain of only the most intrepid swashbuckling types who have no compunction about pushing through where the trail disappears, about fording waist-deep streams, about scrambling through rhododendron hells ever-so-deserving of the name. They shouldn’t be their private playground and they needn’t be. Provided you know how to get in the back door. At the beginning of the week I made a two-day escape to…
I’ve been following the schizophrenic Christmas weather forecasts as closely as anyone. In part, because I love a white Christmas and haven’t seen one since the Denver blizzard of ’82. I’m also keeping a close watch to see whether I should dig out the cross-country skis (in the event of 6 inches or more), the sled (a minimum of 3 inches), or the hiking boots (a photogenic dusting). At this…
We were hiking a new section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Eno River today when we came upon an old rail line, which I realized was the Norfolk Southern line that, for a while, looked like it might turn into a rails-to-trails project running from Person County south to downtown Durham. Downtown Durham and rails-to-trails projects reminded me of the American Tobacco Trail, the northern end of which begins…
“Usually,” Alan observed, “we wait until we’ve been hiking a while before we get lost.” Indeed, getting lost before we could even find the trailhead was a record. It was also a tribute to the trail, five newly opened sections of the Falls Lake portion of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which is expanding at breakneck pace through the Triangle. Likely by year’s end, and possibly at a Nov. 21 Friends of…
An hour or so into the hike, the lightbulb went on for Alan. “Now this looks familiar.” The problem up until now? We’d been hiking in the daylight. Alan Nechemias and I had probably hiked this stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake — sections 10 and 9 — a couple dozen times over the past three years. But we could only recall hiking it once in daylight. The…
Cool weather returns to North Carolina this weekend, making for good hiking at the coast and the mountains, with frightfully fun running in between. Coast Mid- to late fall, in my humble opinion the best time to explore the coast. Temperatures have dropped enough that bugs — and snakes! — are less of a problem, yet they haven’t dropped enough to seriously affect the greenery. Lots to see, fewer things…