A summer hike isn’t a summer hike unless it includes water, the more water, the better. And the more water in more forms, better still.
Forms?
You know, the 5 major forms of mountain water:
Today, we share one of our favorites in each of these 5 categories. And the envelopes, please …
Summer arrives and our thoughts turn to hiking in the mountains. Until now, the weather, by and large, has been decent for hiking in the piedmont. Come Memorial Day, however, the steamy reality of summer settles in; for many, the prospect of a 90/90 (heat/humidity) day moves hiking to the bottom of their recreational to-do list. Or makes them re-think their options. So we turn to the mountains, which offer two forms of relief.
Summer’s too hot for hiking?
Poppycock!
It’s simply a matter of where to go, when to go and how to prepare. Our summer hikes include morning and evening hikes to beat the heat, and a Weekend Summer Escape series that includes three memorable weekends of hiking on high country sections of the statewide Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
Usually it’s mid-June before we’re forced to address the issue of summer heat. Before, that is, we’re forced to issue our annual plea to stay on the trail during the summer months ahead.
In some parts of the U.S. — the Northeast, the Pacific Coast, the mountain states — hikers live for the summer and its warm days. Not here, where Summer is equated with still air, sticky clothes and sweat-stung eyes.
A late spring day, temperature in the mid-50s under a cloudless sky, hiking down Yellowstone Prong east of Graveyard Fields along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was during that soft-focus, three-day flash that marks the transition from winter to spring, when the natural world is enveloped in pastel greens and yellows and pinks and oranges, the colors, I’ve heard, that the tress will revert to in fall. There was the slightest of breezes, just enough to make the budding trees whisper.
