Fall, with its crisp air, cool temperatures and dazzling color, is a time when everyone, it seems, wants to be on the trail. Those crowds, especially now, can detract from the experience we seek when we head outdoors. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Not every good trail gets overwhelmed on a gorgeous fall weekend. Some may be new and unknown, some may be hard to find, some simply fly under the radar.  In this package of Three Hikes for Fall, we have examples of all three.

• The new. Cane Creek Mountain Natural Area opened this spring with 3 miles of hiking on a mountain that tops 900 feet, practically Alp-esque by Triad standards.  Located south of Burlington, it’s also a bit off the beaten path.
• The hard-to-find. Orange County’s Seven Mile Creek Natural Area lies off a dirt road that’s fed by a dirt road that’s off a lonely country two-lane. You can’t get more off the grid than that in an urban area. Two miles of trail takes in a feisty Piedmont creek, mature hardwoods and a preview of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail’s path between Saxapahaw and Hillsborough.
• The under-the-radar. It’s hard to say why the 3.2-mile Day-Hike Section L of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake sees less traffic than its 17 fellow sections in the MST’s Section 10: it’s easily accessible, the trail tread is on great shape, the terrain is scenic yet mellow. Explore in solitude while you can.

These are great hikes any time of year. Because of their anonymity, they’re especially good during hiking’s peak seasons.

Find everything you need to know about paying a visit in these guides.

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It’s remarkable, the gems that exist right under our noses that we don’t know about. I’d heard tell of Seven Mile Creek for several years, but my attempts to find it were thwarted — that’s what happens when a preserve is tucked away off a dirt road that’s fed by another dirt road that’s off a country two-lane. The search, it turns out, was well worth it.

Seven Mile Creek is a portion of the 366-acre Upper Eno Nature Preserve, farmland long ago gone fallow and now supporting a thriving forest accessed by about 2 miles of trail. It’s a short hike on foot-friendly trail down to rocky Seven Mile Creek, then lots of hiking through bottomland and upland woods that are especially enchanting in the early morning and late day light. Beginner-friendly trail throughout.

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