• Wednesday, Feb. 4, REI in Cary, 7 p.m.
• Thursday, Feb. 5, REI in Durham, 7 p.m.

And if you’re thinking, “I’m not really much of a hiker, this probably isn’t for me,” then cease that line of thinking. This hike and the 12-week training program is exactly for you: that’s what the training is all about. If you’re curious about what hiking 28.3 miles in a day is like, here are some scenes from the first Ultimate Hike on the Foothills Trail, in 2011.

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Today’s 90-Second Escape: A wet ‘n’ wild Ultimate Hike

Saturday was the first Ultimate Hike Alumni Hike — a stepped-up version of CureSearch for Children’s Cancer’s epic fundraising hike to help battle childhood cancer. The hike is for hikers who have done the regular Ultimate Hike and are looking for an even greater challenge. Though Saturday’s hike was three miles shorter — 25.1 miles vs. 28.1 miles — it was on a much more rugged stretch of the Foothills Trail straddling North and South Carolina. For instance, the last 0.7 miles gained 1,100 vertical feet! Adding to Saturday’s challenge: it rained almost all day — and this was a day that started with a 2:15 a.m. wake-up call and ended, for the last hikers to finish, at 8:20 p.m.

Here’s a taste of one long day on the trail for a great cause.

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Friday, I told you about an opportunity to make this fall truly epic by taking the Ultimate Hike.

Yes, it sounds like the title of a bad reality TV show (oxymoron?) about five people who go on a hike — and only one comes back. In reality — real reality — it’s an opportunity to test yourself and help a bunch of kids in the process. Ultimate Hike is a fundraiser run by CureSearch for Children’s Cancer. CureSearch promises to put you through a 12-week training program, at the end of which you’re able to hike 28.3 miles in one day. In return, you raise $2,500 to help the fight against childhood cancer. Pretty good deal.

You can read more about Ultimate Hike in Friday’s post. I’m back today to remind you that you can learn more about the Ultimate Hike at our five informational meetings throughout the Triangle, which begin this evening at the REI in Raleigh’s North Hills and run through next week. Here’s a rundown of thoe meetings:

• Tonight, July 30, 6:30 p.m. — North Raleigh: REI, 4291 The Circle at North Hills (Six Forks Road at the Beltline/I-440).
• Wednesday, July 31, 7 p.m. — Durham: Bull City Running, 202 W. NC 54 (just off Fayetteville Street north of I-40)
• Monday, August 5, 6:30 p.m. — Cary: REI, 1751 Walnut St. (off US 64 at Walnut).
• Tuesday, August 6, 7 p.m. — Chapel Hill: Great Outdoor Provision Co., 1800 E Franklin St. (Eastgate Shopping Center).
• Wednesday, August 7, 7 p.m. — Raleigh: Great Outdoor Provision Co., Cameron Village.

Preregistration is encouraged. Make it happen by going here.

I’ll be at each meeting. In fact, I’ll be running each meeting: I’m the hiking coach and local contact for the Triangle Ultimate Hike. We’ll be doing training hikes over the next three months on some of the region’s best trails: Umstead and Eno River state parks, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake, Raven Rock State Park, Hanging Rock State Park, the Uwharrie National Recreation Trail. We’ll also do a night hike or two, as well as a couple of early morning hikes. The program culminates on Nov. 9 with a 28.3-mile hike on the Foothills Trail straddling the North Carolina/South Carolina line. Expect to challenge yourself. Expect to have a lot of fun.

If you’re interested but can’t make the meetings, drop me a line at joe@getgoingnc.com and we’ll talk. Otherwise, I hope to see you at one of our UH gatherings.

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Those 50 folks will be about to take their first steps on an epic adventure called the Ultimate Hike. You could be one of them.

Ultimate Hike is the chief fundraiser for CureSearch for Children’s Cancer. CureSearch is a nonprofit that traces its roots back to 1987. Though its name has changed over the years, its mission has not. The nonprofit funds research efforts to fight children’s cancer.  If there’s a more noble effort to support, I’m pressed to think of it. The primary way these newbie hikers lives will change is through the stories they’ll hear of children and families touched by childhood cancer, the No. 1 cause of death by disease among kids. The very children and families they’ll be raising money to help. More about that shortly.

The lives of these 50 hikers will change in another big way. That’s especially true for the roughly 50 percent who come into the program having little if any experience on the trail. For many of the others, it’s likely been 10 or 20 or 30 years since they last hiked. Yet here they are, bodacious in the assumption that in just 12 weeks they’ll be able to hike 28.3 miles in the mountains. But before they can hike that 28.3 miles on the Foothills Trail of North and South Carolina, they’ll have to start with the 4.5 miles planned for that morning. For some, that 4.5 miles will be more challenging than the 28.3.

Which is just fine, because I have a plan to get them into shape.

Since Ultimate Hike came to the Triangle three years ago I have been the local hiking coach. My job is make sure each one of these 50 hikers is ready come Hike Day, which this year is Nov. 9. I’ve devised a hiking and fitness plan for the hikers, with the highlight being our every-other-week group hike. Our first hike will be a truncated 4.5-mile version of Umstead’s Company Mill Trail. We’ll start with a brief meeting, maybe with bagels and coffee, before hitting the trail. It will likely be hot and no doubt humid. (The first year the temperature reached a comically — and record — hot 104.) I will tell everyone that while the hikes will get longer, the weather will cool. Eventually.

Every other weekend we’ll meet to do another group hike. Our next hike will be eight miles along the Eno River. It probably won’t be any cooler, and people will complain, good-heartedly for the most part. “It’ll get better,” I’ll assure them. “Trust me.”

Over the next couple months we’ll do increasingly longer hikes, at Raven Rock State Park, on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake, on the Uwharrie National Recreation Trail (our longest training hike, at 22 miles), at Hanging Rock State Park (our “elevation” hike, at which unkind words will be said about the coach). We’ll do a handful of midweek hikes, both predawn and post dusk. (Hold that question.)

Along the way, we’ll not only develop impressive hiking legs but some great friendships as well. If that sounds vaguely like the pitch from summer camp when you were a kid, it should. Training hike day is, for most of us, a chance to let go of the day-to-day grind and escape into a fantasy world of indulging a day in the woods with friends. It’s the kind of environment that fosters the kinds of conversations you don’t get to have much as a busy adult.

The journey is a blast. The destination — the the Ultimate Hike — will make your checking-out highlight reel.

On Friday, Nov. 8, our now-buff hiking group will meet at a central location in the Triangle and take a couple of passenger vans to Lavonia, Ga. At one hiker’s instance we’ll stop at Cracker Barrel for lunch, then arrive at the local Holiday Inn Express in Lavonia around 5 p.m. We’ll check into our rooms and mingle with other Ultimate Hikers from Greenville and Columbia, S.C. We’ll gather for a big pasta kick-off dinner, at which we will be reminded what it is we’re hiking for. Afterward, after hearing the stories of families and little kids battling cancer, our challenge the following day will seem trivial.

The following day will begin around 2:30 a.m. In the morning. We’ll stumble through breakfast, then pile into vans for the hour-long drive to the trailhead. We’ll arrive where the Foothills Trail transitions from North Carolina to South Carolina, pull into a gravel parking lot, pile out, take a group picture, then start going out in waves — slowest hikers to fastest — beginning at 4:30 a.m. For a good two hours we’ll hike by the light of our headlamps (hence, those midweek training hikes in the dark).

We’ll be pampered and fed at three rest stops by volunteers and the stellar Oconee County EMS crew. (Expect the latter to tell you there are more bears in Oconee County, S.C., than anywhere else in the country.)

Some will finish the hike as early as 2 p.m. I will be with the last hiker, finishing up around 7 p.m., just before it becomes necessary to get the headlamps back out. We’ll have a big celebratory dinner back in Lavonia. Most of us will fall asleep before 9 and sleep really, really well. A few will toast one another into the wee hours and have a rough ride home the next day in the van.

If history is any indication, all will easily make their fundraising goal of $2,500.

Two quick hiker stories.

The Sunday morning after the 2011 hike, hiker Candi Barnes told me with authority, “I’m never putting these hiking boots on again!” She and her husband, Chris, had both done the hike on behalf of their daughter, a cancer survivor. Last summer, at our first recruitment meeting, the first person I saw was Candi. Must have scored a new pair of hiking boots.

Christy Griffith wasn’t quite as vocal after the 2011 hike, but she didn’t need to be: her hobbled body spoke volumes. At the midpoint of a remote 10-mile stretch of trail along the Chattooga River, it looked like Christy might have to abandon. I began scouting escape routes out of the canyon, when Christy decided she had the last eight miles in her. I’m guessing the thought of her daughter, Eve, also a cancer survivor, had something to do with her rally.

Christy, too, returned the following year. She offers this advice for anyone skeptical of their prospects.

“I’d like to say for anyone who is afraid they can’t do it that I had never hiked before UH. Or exercised since high school.”

Looking for a great challenge on several levels? Keep reading … .

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Be an Ultimate Hiker

Curious about the Ultimate Hike? At least enough to learn more about it? Then come out to one of five information meetings I’ll be doing in the Triangle over the next two weeks, between :

Tuesday, July 30, 6:30 p.m. — North Raleigh: REI, 4291 The Circle at North Hills (Six Forks Road at the Beltline/I-440).

Wednesday, July 31, 7 p.m. — Durham: Bull City Running, 202 W. NC 54 (just off Fayeteville Street north of I-40)

Monday, August 5, 6:30 p.m. — Cary: REI, 1751 Walnut St. (off US 64 at Walnut).

Tuesday, August 6, 7 p.m. — Chapel Hill: Great Outdoor Provision Co.,
1800 E Franklin St. (Eastgate Shopping Center).

Wednesday, August 7, 7 p.m. — Raleigh: Great Outdoor Provision Co., Cameron Village.

Preregistration is encouraged, which you can accomplish by going here.

Questions? Drop me a line at joe@getgoingnc.com or leave a comment below.

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“Is this for Diane?”
I drove to Greensboro last night to hear Diane Van Deren speak at the local Great Outdoor Provision Co., had arrived an hour early, but discovered the folding chairs supposedly set up for her presentation were nearly full.
“This is for the Trailblaze Challenge,” a GOPC employee told me. “Diane is speaking after their meeting.”
Trailblaze Challenge? That’s interesting, I thought.
The Trailblaze Challenge is a new fundraiser sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Pledge to raise $2,500, go through a 12-week training program, then do a 24.1-mile hike on June 1 on the Bartram Trail in western North Carolina. The Challenge is patterned after CureSearch for Children’s Cancer’s Ultimate Hike, which is patterned after the Cyctic Fibrosis Foundation’s Extreme Hike. The hikes, as I was soon to learn, are all extremely alike, and for good reason: they were all launched by Amy Brindley, who is now president and chief executive officer of Make-A-Wish’s Central & Western North Carolina Chapter. It was especially interesting to me because for the past two year’s I’ve been a hiking coach for Ultimate Hike.
I stepped up to the registration table. “Do you mind if I sit in on the presentation?” I asked, then explained that I was associated with what could be perceived as a competitor.
The woman on the other side of the table smiled. “Of course you can sit in,” she said. “I’m Amy, by the way.”
About 15 prospective Trailblaze Challengers listened intently as Amy explained Make-A-Wish and the Trailblaze Challenge.
Make-A-Wish was founded in 1980, initially to grant children with terminal medical conditions any wish they wanted. (The foundation has since expanded to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions.) Amy said the Central & Western North Carolina Chapter was formed in 1985. Since then, it has granted more than 3,000 wishes; this year, they expect to grant 230 wishes. She shared the most recent wish granted, for three girls to attend a concert last week in Greensboro.
One of the girls was local, one was from Vermont, one was a 13-year-old cancer victim from Georgia, who was a “rush wish,” meaning she only had a short time to live. The artist entertained the girls for 45 minutes before the concert. Then the girls went to their seats to watch the show.
“The 13-year-old was wearing a wig because she’d lost all her hair to treatments and was in a wheelchair,” Amy told the gathering. “They were all having a great time, and at one point the 13-year-old ripped off her wig, got out of her chair and starting dancing.
“That,” Amy added, “is the memory her parents will have of her.”
Granting the average wish costs about $6,000. That’s where the Trailblaze Challenge comes in.
Sign up, agree to raise $2,500 and you get a 12-week training program culminating in the June 1, 24.1-mile hike on the Bartram Trail. The training program includes weekly hikes led by a hike leader and a suggested mid-week training program. Participation includes all costs associated with hike weekend, including two nights at the Hampton Inn in Franklin, transportation and food.

The $2,500 fundraising goal can be daunting. After eight weeks if you don’t think you can do it, you can opt out. If you stay, you’re on the hook for the entire amount. (Personal note: From my two years of Ultimate Hike experience, out of roughly 90 hikers I only know of one who had trouble meeting his goal by the hike date, and you typically have a month after the hike to fulfill your commitment.)
The Trailblaze Challenge kicks off Feb. 23 with a 3-mile hike at Bur-Mil Park in Greensboro. It culminates June 1 with the 24.1-mile hike on the Bartram Trail. The section they’ll be doing is from the Appletree Group Campground along the Nantahala River west over Wayah Bald to Wallace Branch. I backpacked that stretch a little over a year ago; it is gorgeous. Find out more about that adventure here.
The timing of last night’s Trailblaze Challenge recruitment meeting was fortuitous. Many in the crowd stuck around to hear Diane talk about her adventures as an ultra athlete sponsored by The North Face. She spoke of the 430-mile Yukon Arctic Ultra, she spoke of her next event, next week’s Rovaniemi 150 Arctic Winter Race in Finland, which only one person has finished on foot (other ambulatory race options are mountain bike and kicksled) and last year’s romp across North Carolina on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
Talking about the challenges of a 1,000-mile race she suggested they weren’t that different than what her audience faced in what to many must have seemed an equally insurmountable goal in hiking 24.1 miles in the rugged Nantahala National Forest.
“You have highs and you have lows,” she said. “You have to greet them, especially the lows. Understand them. Learn from them.” That, she indicated, is key toward the ultimate and overriding goal.
“You gotta keep it fun.”

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Trailblaze Challenge

Upcoming recruitment meetings:

• Tonight, 6:30 p.m., Great Outdoor Provision Co., Charlotte
• Thursday, 6:30 p.m., Great Outdoor Provision Co., Winston-Salem
• Saturday, 10 a.m., REI, Huntersville
• Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., Omega Sports, High Point
• Feb. 13, 6:30 p.m., Great Outdoor Provision Co., Greensboro
• Feb. 16, 9 a.m., Reedy Creek Park, Charlotte
• Feb. 16, 10 a.m., Great Outdoor Provision Co., Winston-Salem
• Feb. 23, 9 a.m., Bur-Mil Park, Greensboro

Check out the Trailblaze Challenge Web site here.

Also on June 1, Ultimate Hike will hold its Spring Foothills Hike. That program is aimed at residents of Charlotte and Asheville. Learn more about that hike here. If you live in the Triangle, the Fall Foothills Hike has just been scheduled for Nov. 6. Keep an eye on this blog and the Ultimate Hike site for details.

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