First thing: Saturday — Christmas Day — is the one day North Carolina State Parks are closed. All of them. So let them have their day of peace and instead take a hike on your own. And if you have little or no experience doing that, well, Happy Holidays, friends — we’re here to help.
Category Archives: Winter
GetOut! T’was the weekend before Christmas …
On our weekly Tuesday Night Hike this past week we lingered at hike’s end to take in the three-quarternmoon that lit the tree-lined parking area. While our 3-mile night hike on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail was pretty great, we might have been just as content to hang out in the lot and bask in the moonlight. Imagine, I thought, being under a full moon and in an area with even more exposure.
GetHiking! Winter 2022
A brilliant bluebird day without a cloud in the sky — yet not another soul is on the trail. Can this possibly be so? you wonder. And if it is, what price must be paid for the privilege?
How about just enduring a little cold weather.
We love hiking this time of year. The air is typically dry, the diminished foliage lets you see deep into the woods, the slanted winter sun seems to light the forest from the ground up. Yes, it’s cold, and perhaps you’ve shied away from hiking in the cold in the past. But not this year, not when you can escape the hordes of recent hiking converts and have the trail nearly to yourself.
This year, warm up to cold weather hiking
Note: We run a version of this post, tweaked and updated, every year around this time. We run it because every year around this time, when the sun spends less time with us and the temperatures drop, a lot of folks think about hanging up their hiking gear for the season. That, we believe, is a bad idea. In this post, we explain how to make friends with the cold on the trail.