A workday last summer on the Penny's Bend to West Point on the Eno stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
Fred Dietrich, who oversees construction and maintenance of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in Durham and Orange counties, reports: “2013 was a good year for the Eno River Section of the MST trail. Thanks to your hard work we were able to keep the trail maintained, and to build the final section and final bridge to complete the trail between Penny’s Bend and West Point on the Eno.
“Over the past five years,” he adds, “we have built three sections of trail that are now part of the completed 14.8 miles of trail from Pleasant Green Road to Penny’s Bend.”
Nearly 15 miles of uninterrupted trail from Pleasant Green Road to Penny’s Bend. And at Penny’s Bend, you hook up with another 60 miles of uninterrupted MST along the south shore of Falls Lake.
That’s 75 miles of uninterrupted hiking on natural surface trail.
How does a metro area come to have a 75-mile (and growing) hiking trail in its midst? Same way the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, stretching from Clingman’s Dome to Jockey’s Ridge, is now more than 500 miles finished: because of people such as yourself. People who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves once a month and spending a Saturday building and maintaining trail. If you haven’t yet joined the ranks of dedicated MST volunteers, now’s the time to do so. We’ve even got a list of Fred’s monthly work days that you can jot into your calendar. Pencil ready?read more
Another year, another opportunity for change. And what better way to think about what that change may look like and how you can make it happen than with a head cleared by fresh, clean air. Fresh, clean air inhaled on a New Year’s Day hike.
Lucky for you, such events abound.
Thanks to the North Carolina State Parks’ First Day Hikes program, every park in the system is hosting a hike today. That means that no matter where you live in the state, there’s an organized New Year’s Day hike near you.
The hikes vary in length and when they start. To find out what’s happening at a state park near you, go to ncparks.gov.
A great way to start a new year.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video or slide show of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.read more
As available sunlight goes, we hit our annual nadir on Saturday: the winter solstice, officially commencing at 12:11 p.m. The sun rises at 7:19 a.m. and sets at 5:06, with just 9 hours and 47 minutes of daylight in between. From Saturday on, gradually at first, the sun starts setting a little later every day incrementally increasing our daylight for play.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video or slide show of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.read more
