Category Archives: Paddling

Take back the night

Night hike.

Alan and I were overdue for an epic ride. During the early summer we’d done a handful of 4- to 5-hour rides at Umstead, Lake Crabtree and adjoining single track networks that will go unnamed for fear of prosecution for trespassing. But since July — or specifically since I’d done ORAMM and no longer had the incentive to put in long hours in the saddle — our longest ride had barely topped 2 hours. So we were overdue, we realized last week, but we were also short on after work daylight. read more

This weekend: Celebrate the Scuppernong, do an Amazing Race, Dig the Du

Scuppernong River at Columbia.

We’ve got a celebration of the Scuppernong River by paddle craft, a Great Amazing Race for you and a member of your family near Charlotte and a duathlon (trail run/mountain bike) on private property (worry not, it’s legal) near Asheville.

Coast read more

Where to go paddling in and near 7 North Carolina cities

Lake Johnson

We tend to think of paddle trips as epic affairs: get out the maps, surf the internet, pick a spot, pack a lunch, load the boat and go. Whew! No wonder we don’t get out as often as we’d like: it takes a lot of work to get out on the water.

But it doesn’t have to. read more

90 Second Escape: Farewell to the Warm Waters of Summer


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

This weekend is a fall classic

Abbey Nature Preserve (photo courtesy N.C. Coastal Land Trust)

A 5K  through an old plantation at the coast, a paddle on a Piedmont river, a waterfall hike through the Pisgah National Forest. A weekend doesn’t get much more North Carolina than that.

Coast

Chances are you aren’t familiar with the Abbey Nature Preserve just north of Wilmington. Chances are you don’t know that in addition to the preserve, there’s the historic Poplar Grove Plantation and a museum documenting the Foy family’s nearly two centuries of farming on the land. And chances are you didn’t know that Saturday is a great day to explore the grounds as part of the Abbey Nature Preserve Autumn 5K. Run through Cedar forests, on trail beneath a leafy canopy, past a scenic pond and across a wooden footbridge. read more