Category Archives: Advice

10 HIKES FOR HOLIDAY VISITORS

In today’s Lunch with GetHiking! session, we share tips for hiking with visiting friends and family. You can join that Zoom session at noon by clicking here. In today’s blog, which is suspiciously similar to a blog we ran this time last year, we share 10 hikes we think are especially well-suited for visitors who might not have their hiking legs under them, but might well enjoy a venture into the woods.

The holidays are upon us — and so, too, are our holiday visitors. 

You’re eager to show your visiting friends and family why you love living in the region: the outdoor opportunities that make this such a wonderful place to explore. You also don’t want to alienate your guests — or worse, harm them! — by taking them on an outing beyond their capabilities. Fortunately, you can do the former while avoiding the latter with the 10 hikes below, hikes that offer considerable esthetic bang for minimal physical exertion.  read more

Welcome the early dark with a night hike

The following is a version of a piece we run every year at this time, a time when our spirits are buoyed by day by cloudless skies and cooling temperatures, but bummed when those days of sun end earlier and earlier.

Most of us don’t expect the day — the daylight part, that is — to end so soon until the demise of Daylight Saving Time, which is Nov. 6 this year. So when we walk out the door on Oct. 6 expecting to get in a hike and discover a setting sun that will be completely set by 6:52, we’re taken aback. And a bit sad.  read more

Our favorite resources

Every week in our GetHiking! enewsletter — which is delivered free every Thursday afternoon — we have a main story, a rundown of all the upcoming hikes in our eight GetHiking! chapters in North Carolina and Virginia, a gear recommendation, a media review, a hiking tip. We also list a favorite resource, sometimes one we find invaluable in planning our hikes, sometimes one that leads us to information that can help enhance our time on the trail, and sometimes one that’s just fun, entertaining, quirky. read more

This year, warm up to cold weather hiking

Note: We run a version of this post, tweaked and updated, every year around this time. We run it because every year around this time, when the sun spends less time with us and the temperatures drop, a lot of folks think about hanging up their hiking gear for the season. That, we believe, is a bad idea. In this post, we explain how to make friends with the cold on the trail. read more