You know why you haven’t taken up backpacking?
Because you think you have to hike with 40 pounds on your back with every footstep you take.
Well, you don’t. If every backpack trip we took involved lugging a full pack for days on end, we wouldn’t backpack, either.
We run this post when it gets hot, really hot. Like, as hot as it’s been lately. It’s part of our program to get you safely through the summer hiking season.
Now, with summer’s heat having set in, is a good time to talk about your drinking problem.
I used to love hiking in summer heat. The past couple years, though, not so much. Coming into this summer I got me to wondering why.
With the recent spate of record-breaking temperatures, I decided to hit the trail and see if I could pinpoint my growing problem with summer.
When Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina last September, we were awed by the destruction. How would places such as Lansing and Chimney Rock and Marshall, to name a few, get back to a semblance of normal?
Normal may still be a ways off in some cases, but the recovery has been remarkably swift. From what I’d seen of Hot Springs, a town that I’ve been leading hiking trips to for years, I was certain it could be years before we would return to hike on the Appalachian Trail, which runs through downtown.
Saturday is National Trails Day. OK, every day is trails day, or at least it should be. But things get in the way of us honoring trails on a daily basis, so for the last 40 years or so we’ve set aside the first Saturday in June to make sure there’s at least one day we won’t forget about our trails.
We’re getting to that time of year when the following debates occur on the trail: Is that a copperhead or a corn snake? A northern banded water snake or a cottonmouth? A black snake? Sure, but what kind?
Sunday, leading a hike in Panthertown Valley in far western North Carolina, there was no doubt about what was blocking the trail just 10 feet ahead. The markings may have been a bit murky, but the rattle sure wasn’t.
