“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 the Mountains-to-Sea Trail workday, 60 miles of continuous trail will exist from the Falls Lake dam in Wake County to Pennys Bend on the Eno River in Durham County. That about 37 of those miles — from NC 50 northwest — have been blazed and cleared since 2007 is thanks entirely to FMST volunteers who show up once a month to rake, dig, hack and otherwise clear trail. That we were slightly challenged finding the trailhead for Section 20 wasn’t surprising considering how quickly this transportation project is evolving.