We hiked in in the cold (about 40 degrees), the rain (roughly two inches would fall over a 36-hour period), the dark. The one consolation? The frozen rain that had been in the forecast failed to materialize.

In the end, our trip to the Birkhead Mountain Wilderness was the best trip in a year full of pretty great trips.

Why? Because backpackers are a little different. They start out as regular day hikers. Short, hour-long hikes at first. Then half days that become full days. Then one day the sun is setting and they aren’t ready to leave the trail. So they take the next logical step and make it so they don’t have to. They become backpackers.

If you haven’t made it to backpacking yet, you may be wondering how cold and rain and dark translate to a great weekend. Here’s how:

The forecast

Backpack enough and you learn to take the forecast into consideration, but you don’t take it as gospel. The forecast for our trip started out with a good chance of freezing rain. Then the rain window became a moving target: maybe it would begin Thursday and end Friday night, maybe it would begin in the wee hours of Friday and run through mid afternoon Saturday. Rain looked like a given, cold likewise. Consider those two factors as givens and it shouldn’t matter when they might occur.

Get a plan

Set up dry and you should stay dry. Since it looked like rain was a good possibility upon arriving at our campsite, we took an extra tarp, an 18’ x 18’ piece of super light polycro — that two of us could take turns holding while a third camper pitched his tent underneath. The weight and space investment was minimal in light of the benefit of setting up dry. A good bet, it turned out, since it was indeed raining when we set up camp Friday night around 8:30.

The plan also included making sure everyone came equipped with rain gear, either an adequate poncho or rain jacket and pants. It was a little over 3 miles to camp, about an hour and fifteen minutes of hiking in, yes, a steady rain. Again, good planning, a good investment of weight.

The likelihood of rain also meant bringing extra clothes. Rain gear may keep out the rain, but even when the temperature’s a nippy 40, wearing it and hiking in full pack will build up some heat, and sweating is inevitable, even with the best rain gear. Layers that get even a little moist stay that way unless the weather turns dry and sunny.

Always look on the bright side of life

In our case, the forecast did suggest the rain would end, anywhere from mid-morning Saturday to late in the day. Cloudless skies were forecast for Sunday. It was a forecast that made any inconvenience, any discomfort on the front end worth the trip if there was a chance of hiking a stark, winter forest under bright sun.

Saturday, we set out about 9:30 a.m. for a 10-mile day-hike in the Birkheads. It was moody when we hit the trail, but not raining. We had a very light spritz around lunch. Around 3, the sun made its first appearance, breaking out for good around sunset.

Sunset

Here’s where putting up with a rain early on started to pay off. As we were sitting around the fire having dinner, Aaron stopped. “Look at the sunset!” We all stopped and looked west and south, where the late-day sun was peeking over a lingering bank of low-level clouds. We readjusted to take in the sunset, which lingered for a good hour, switching from yellow to pink to orange to crimson to deep crimson. Our camp was atop one of the wilderness area’s rounded peaks: devoid of its canopy, we had a good view of the glowing Uwharrie Mountains to the south and west. Sunset held our attention until it was dark, the fire and its warmth for about an hour after that. When we’d our supply of both was exhausted, when we started to feel the temperature plunge into the 30s, we retired for the night.

Sunrise

As promised, the day dawned with nary a cloud. We packed up, hiked out, then drove about 20 minutes to the trail leading less than a mile to the lone unobstructed view on the Uwharrie Trail, atop 922-foot Little Long Mountain.

Almost everyone loves a view. Not everyone is willing to work for it. When you do, though, it’s all-the-more special. It wasn’t the eight-tenths-of-a-mile hike up to Little Long Mountain that made the view so stellar. If that were all it took, the view would have simply been “nice.” But for us, the view was a full-circle, 180-degree, zero-to-60 special viewing. We’d begun the weekend in a drenching rain, set up camp wet, spent Saturday hiking under a threatening sky. Saturday evening’s sunset marked the turning point, the start of being well-rewarded for our patience and perseverance. The forecast had promised a carrot and we were gnawing at it like Bugs Bunny. It got better with Sunday’s magnificent sunrise, with the dry hike out from camp, with the summit of Little Long Mountain.

To us, standing atop Little Long, taking in the sweeping view, soaking up the warming sun, basking in the quiet, the experience wasn’t just nice.

It was why we do this.

The post Why we do this appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

There are some things you do that you just don’t think about — you just do. Hiking is one of those things for me. Hitting the trail is just a part of life, as natural, nearly, as eating and drinking, sleeping and breathing. But every once in a while it’s not a bad think to look at why we do the things we do. For the three days, I will, quickly (in about 500 words) look at what it is that makes me hike.
Tuesday: The Outdoors
Wednesday: The People
Today: The Challenge

This is a shot from my last excursion into the woods. It was a great trip, which may surprise you if you look closely at this picture.

At first blush, it appears to be a tent pitched beneath a black balsam. Look closely at the base of the “tent,” and you’ll realize it’s just a shell of a tent — the rainfly.

Two weeks back I worked in a quick, two-night trip to the Shining Rock Wilderness in the Pisgah National Forest of western North Carolina. The trip was actually a trip delayed — and packed for — a month earlier. That trip got scuttled, but since I knew I’d be going back up soon, I didn’t see the need to unpack. My sleeping bag can survive being scrunched up for a couple weeks, I reasoned. And my food is mostly freeze-dried or otherwise soundly sealed; it can last a month or so in the cool basement.

But a sinking feeling came over me when I arrived at the trailhead at 10:30 my first night. As I pulled my pack out of the trunk, to the accompaniment of an incoming electrical storm, I noticed my tent poles weren’t strapped to the bottom of my pack, as per my usual custom. Maybe I packed them inside with the tent, I thought, a thought that seemed highly dubious. The impending storm and this new development casting doubt on my shelter for the evening prompted me to seek a site in a black balsam stand just a quarter mile in.

Sure enough, when I hurriedly started unpacking my poles were not to be found. Drops of rain were starting to ping in the canopy, claps of thunder drew closer. I flashed my headlamp around and discovered the balsam I’d decamped at was one of the few with branches near the ground. I fetched my rainfly and turned it inside out so that the velcro straps intended to secure the fly to the tent poles could clamp onto a sturdy branch four feet off the ground. I took the five available tent stakes and secured the fly’s ends into the soft bed of pine needles. Two ends remained; I used draw cord to tie those off to my hiking poles, which I’d driven into the turf. I threw my gear into my temporary shelter, crawled in after, and hoped for the best. The rain began in earnest about 20 minutes later and lasted most of the night.

There was a time, early on in my hiking and backpacking career, that the mere suggestion of missing poles would have driven me to the nearest Motel 6. And there was a time not long before that that the notion of heading out on the trail at 10:30 at night would have seemed daft. But exploring the outdoors is not about basic cable at night and letting the sun dictate your day. And while it’s not about disrespecting the power of nature, it’s also not about limiting your experiences to 72-degree days, cloudless skies and 10 percent humidity.

I worked through a little adversity, crawled into my sleeping bag and drifted off to the sound of distant thunder and rain working its way through the canopy onto my rainfly shelter.

I didn’t wake up until morning — bone dry.

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The post Why I hike: The challenge appeared first on GetGoing NC!.