My buddy Alan and I celebrate our birthdays (they're a day apart) by doing a mountain bike ride that's the average of our combined ages. This year, we rode 58 miles.
As I was poring over the results of Sunday’s Off Road Assault on Mount Mitchell, I was surprised to see that of the nearly 400 riders who finished the 63-mile race, only five were older than me. (I was less surprised that all five finished ahead of me.)
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been; at 56 years of age, you might think that wisdom would finally overpower the need to punish one’s self, thus keeping contemporaries away.
Apparently not.
I became curious about my fellow silver cyclists and discovered that, indeed, we are not becoming sedate and reflective in our golden years. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, the number of mountain bikers age 55 or older grew by more than 41 percent in the past decade. In 2011, there were 383,000 mountain bikers who were eligible for 10 percent off their curly fries at Arby’s, up from 271,000 10 years earlier. (Curiously, the overall number of mountain bikers dropped 5.5 percent during the same 10-year span.)
Mountain biking was no anomaly. The number of 55ers working out at gyms climbed 614 percent during the period, the number of 55+ kayakers rose by 350 percent, the number who did aerobic exercise increased by 226 percent. Growing interest in these more active pursuits outpaced growth in activities typically associated with a graying population: golf, darts, fishing and bowling, to name a few.
This week, Ultimate Hike Raleigh began its recruiting sessions in the Triangle and, again, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of people in the audience who also looked like they remembered “Fernwood Tonight.” At the end of Tuesday evening’s info session Tuesday at the North Hills REI I struck up a conversation with a 50-year-old woman who had signed on for the 28.5-mile hike to benefit pediatric cancer. She spoke about taking challenging hikes in the Smokies with her 20something daughters — and about how both loathed the experience. Neither were out of shape, she said. They just didn’t like hiking for that long.
We speculated as to why mom enjoyed the hike, her young, fit daughters not so much. Are you more accustomed to suffering the older you get? Do your performance expectations diminish to the point where you don’t care if it takes all day to do something? Or does it take so long for your body to get warmed up that when you finally get there you simply don’t want to stop? Does it really matter, since we’re the ones happiest with epic adventures?
Again, apparently not. Perhaps reflective of another benefit of aging we concluded that time was short and dropped the topic in favor of one more appealing.
Our one day, 28.3-mile Ultimate Hike.read more
“You came all the way from Cary?” the woman exclaimed. “That’s, like, an hour away.”
She and a friend were asking directions from a guy who seemed to be something of an impromptu trail ambassador when I walked up. We were standing at about the midpoint of the 4.25-mile Glencoe section of the Haw River Trail, just downstream of the NC 62 bridge. Although an hour didn’t seem like that far to drive for a hike, it did occur to me that it might seem far on a day when the temperature and the humidity were both in the low 90s.
“Have you been here before?” the trail ambassador asked?
“Oh, yes,” I said. “In more hospitable weather.”
The Haw River Trail is a 70-mile work-in-progress that will eventually link two state parks: Haw River State Park to the north with Jordan Lake State Recreation Area to the south. About half of the trail will be part of the statewide Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
At present, less than 20 miles of the Haw River Trail exists. One of the longest stretches is the Glencoe section, which runs from (and along) the Indian Valley Golf Course downstream to the Stoney Creek Marina. It’s an entertaining stretch, for several reasons:
Part of it is on a golf course. On the north end, the trail traces at least three fairways of the Indian Valley Golf Course. (Please observe golf course hiking etiquette, including: speaking in hushed tones when play is in progress and standing still when a player is putting. Also: There is icy cold water at the No. 5 tee box.)
In the gentrifying mill town of Glencoe, the trail does a horseshoe up Hodges Road and back down Glencoe Street, giving you the opportunity to check out the revived mill homes.
Also in Glencoe, the trail passes the Textile Heritage Museum, fascinating look at the local and statewide textile industry. A great diversion that’s free. Hours are limited, though: 1-4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Just over a mile downstream from Glencoe is the old and abandoned Carolina Mill.
Just beyond that, the trail departs from the dense jungle along the Haw and quickly climbs into a drier oak/hickory forest typical of the Piedmont.
Stoney Creek Marina.
I would not recommend this stretch of trail in 90/90 weather. Even a stout breeze has trouble penetrating the dense foliage along the trail and the occasional stretches of open trail can be broiling.
I would, however, recommend it for more civil weather, such as the weekend ahead, when temperatures are expected to cool into the 80s. I recommend starting mid-trail in Glencoe (you can pick up a trail map at the paddle access at River Road and NC 62), doing an out-and-back (upstream to the golf course, downstream to the marina), then checking out the museum.
A good outing for kids, btw: The trail offers a jungle escape, the textile museum has toys circa grandma & grandpa.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.read more
When the weather gets hot — as it will again this weekend — our thoughts turn in two directions: up and toward water.
Coast
One of our favorite paddles is in the marshes between Hammocks Beach and Bear Island. It’s a fairly contained area, there’s a pretty well marked canoe trail and if you do manage to get lost, you likely won’t be for long. Of course, that’s not a concern this Sunday on a ranger-led kayak trip at Hammocks Beach State Park. Learn the basics of kayaking, learn about the flora and fauna of the sound, don’t worry about getting lost. Sounds like a great way to spend two or three hours on a weekend morning.read more
Last July 23, a Saturday, I was standing in front of about 40 people in the parking lot of Historic Yates Mill County Park in Raleigh. It was shortly before noon, the temperature was 101, and Allen Davis and I were on a 12-week mission to lead these hikers to ultragreatness. But first, we needed to lead them on a mile and a half march around the lake.
“Follow me!” I yelled — and promptly led our charges down a dirt path that dead ended within 50 yards. “Follow Allen!” I yelled, pointing to the back of the pack, where Allen exhibited the international palms-up sign for, “Me? Where?”
It was an inauspicious beginning to a journey that would affect, to varying degrees, the 28 who would make it through basic training.
The group was the inaugural Raleigh contingent of Ultimate Hikers. Ultimate Hike is the fundraising genius of CureSearch for Children’s Cancer, a non-profit that until recently relied on grants and philanthropic donations to raise funds for research into children’s cancer. Three years ago it started doing fundraising walks, then hit on the idea of the Ultimate Hike: Train for 12 weeks, then do a monster dayhike. In the case of the Raleigh hikers and hikers throughout the Southeast, a 28.3-mile stretch of the 77-mile Foothills Trail, which straddles North Carolina and South Carolina.
A few of the hikers who showed up that first day were of the hardcore variety, athletes in search of a good challenge made all the better by the chance to help a good cause. But the vast majority seemed drawn more out of curiosity: Could I possibly hike 28 miles in one day? Me? Most had never hiked more than 5 miles. For them as well, it was a test.
To get them down that trail, Allen and I led them on increasingly longer hikes throughout training. After our get-acquainted sweatfest at Yates Mill, we did 6 miles at Harris Lake, 10 miles at Umstead, 14 miles along the Eno River, 15 at Hanging Rock (our “elevation” hike) and 20 on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail at Falls Lake. Allen would typically lead the adrenaline junkies off the front, I hung with my stop-and-smell-the-flowers gals in the rear. We’d swap Clif Shot Bloks (“Trade you a citrus for a strawberry”), “we” talked about how uncomfortable female undergarments could get on a long, hot hike, we stayed as a group when one of us was dragging and needed encouragement. I assume the folks at the front of the pack, who typically were driving home by the time we finished, had a good time. We had a great time.
When Oct. 1 and the Ultimate Hike rolled around, we were ready. We got up at 2:45 a.m., were on the trail by 4:30. The speedsters were done by 2 p.m. I came in with the last hiker just before 7 p.m., with precious little sunlight to spare. We partied that night (until 9:30!), we dragged ourselves to breakfast the next morning, we drove home. We’ve kept in touch.
It’s an experience I would repeat in a heartbeat. And lucky me, being the hiking coach for Raleigh, I’ll get to, starting two weeks from today with our first information meeting for the 2012 Ultimate Hike season. Here’s part of what we’ll be telling you at the five sessions slated for the Triangle (see details on each meeting below):
Sign up and you’ll get:read more
