A glorious experience in a Dismal place, riding with the polar bears, avoiding getting lost (but what to do if you do). Just another diverse weekend of outdoor adventure in North Carolina.
Coast
“Remember that resolution you made to get outside and exercise more this year?,” asks Dismal Swamp State Park. (Hey, if companies are people and are entitled to a voice, certainly a great natural area is as well.) “There’s no time like the present to start!” And this chatty park would like you to start with its Resolution Hike this Saturday. Meet at the Visitor Center at 10 a.m., then explore what POTUS No. 1 and avid surveyor George Washington called “a glorious paradise.” The Great Dismal has a fascinating natural and human history (check out Bland Simpson’s highly entertaining “The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir”) that can’t be captured in two miles, but it’s a start.read more
"Gosh, according to my journal it's been three weeks since I've done a decent fartlek workout. Better hop to it."
I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d done a 5.9 climb? My journal said it had.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 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.
Today’s 90-Second Escape: Everybody Loves Umstead
Not only was parking lot full — which I had never seen before — but the road leading into Umstead State Park from I-40 was sidewalled with cars. “I’ve never seen it this full,” observed avid hiker Liz King, hiking the Company Mill Trail.
Impressive, but not surprising. It was a Saturday afternoon, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the mercury was zeroing in on 70. A good hiking day anyday, but especialy in January, when you never know when your next shorts-and-T-shirt day will come. And Umstead, located in the heart of the Triangle, is one of North Carolina’s most popular state parks.
So what’s it like when you need practically need a ranger to direct traffic over foot bridges? If you weren’t one of the hundreds at Umstead on Saturday, spend 90 seconds and take a look.read more
If you're good at hoisting yourself or have David Thompson's vertical leap, the Little Lick Creek bridge is open.
The Triangle is two ramps away from having a 60-mile hiking trail.
Just before Christmas, contractors using a really big crane lowered a steel bridge onto concrete footings spanning Little Lick Creek at Falls Lake. The bridge will join Sections 14 and 15 of the Falls Lake portion of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and will make it possible hike undisturbed from Pennys Bend on the Eno River in Durham County downlake to the Falls Lake dam in Raleigh — when it’s completed.
“When it’s completed,” because there’s still the matter of those two ramps. While Little Lick Creek lives up to its name, it’s in a floodplain that is wide. Thus, the bridge’s deck sits about seven feet off the ground, and lead-up boardwalk ramps are required.
“The contractor has until February 10 to install the ramps,” Friends of the MST Executive Director Kate Dixon said yesterday. “But I think it will be done before that.”
Initially, the plan was to save money by having volunteers build the bridge. (Except for more involved projects such as this, the 1,000-mile-long statewide trail, a little over half of which is completed, is being built by an army of volunteers.) But Dixon said they had money left over from the two grants used to fund the bridge — $150,000 from the state’s recreational trails program and $55,000 in Durham open space funds — so they decided to hire the work out.
A formal dedication ceremony is scheduled for May 19.
While the 60-mile trail will be one of longest urban trails in the nation, it’s just over a third of what the trail eventually will be. On its journey from 6,643-foot Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee border to Jockey’s Ridge on the Atlantic, the MST will spend 150 miles in the Triangle, running from Clayton in Johnston County to Hillsborough in Orange County. That entire 150-mile stretch could be completed next year.
A progress report, from east to west:read more
We start the year by offering something for a variety of ability levels. Been on the sidelines for a while but have vowed to move more in 2012? We’ve got a mellow, one-mile guided hike at Goose Creek State Park that’s bound to make you want to get out more and stay out longer. Already active but ready to up your game? At South Mountains State Park there’s a 7.5-mile ranger-led hike over hilly terrain that will test your fitness level. And for the active and competitive, there’s NASTAR.read more
