Note: The following is a tweaked re-run of a post that originally appeared in July 2022. With the current heat it’s even more relevant today than it was when it originally appeared.
Tuesday afternoon I was driving back from a meeting in Oxford when I made a detour in Stem. Specifically, to the Tar River Land Conservancy’s Ledge Creek Forest Conservation Area. It was 98 degrees, with a Heat Index of 105, no one’s idea of ideal hiking conditions. Yet once I got under the canopy, the heat became less of an issue.read more
We were sitting around what would have been a campfire had it not been 85 degrees, when one of the hikers asked, “How does tomorrow’s hike compare to today’s?”
It was asked with a hint of trepidation. “Today’s” hike — a 6.6-mile out-and-back with just 1,000 feet of elevation gain — was supposed to be the easy one, the warm-up for tomorrow’s 14-miler, which gained nearly 2,400 feet in 4.3 miles. Yet today’s hike had kicked our butts.read more
Granted, we ran a version of this blog in April, but with the appearance of The Heat Dome and the possibility of temperatures topping 100 in the region this weekend, it seemed appropriate to repeat the high points. Starting with …
Don’t hesitate to adjust your plans based on the forecast. For instance, GetBackpacking! was scheduled to do the 35-mile Virginia Triple Crown loop this weekend. The four-day trip takes a high route, largely sticking to ridges.read more
The following post originally appeared on June 5, 2019. We revisit it today because it’s always important to know where you are in the woods. And if you’ve lost track of where you are, it’s likewise important to be able to figure out where you are — and then how to get where you want to be. And if you’re the type who does better with hands-on instruction, check out our GetHiking! Finding Your Way in the Woods class, below.read more
What kind of Top 10 list would you have if it didn’t evolve over time? You’d either have a Top 10 list that wasn’t honest, or you’d have evidence that you need to get out more and experience new trails.
Fortunately, neither is the case with this year’s running of our Top 10 Cool Hikes with Water, because it includes some new entries from the last time we ran it. To keep the list at 10 — arbitrary, perhaps, but it keeps things manageable — we’ve had to drop a couple hikes from last year’s list, which you can read here. But that doesn’t diminish those hikes; after all, these lists are subjective anyway, so be content with 10.read more
