Most hikes are geared toward beginners and those looking to turn over a new leaf in the year ahead. North Carolina’s Carolina Beach State Park, for example, offers a two-mile hike to the Sugarloaf Dune at 10 a.m., while Virginia’s Lake Anna State Park plans a 1.5-mile hike at 2 p.m. Both are relatively flat, both will go at leisurely pace. Don’t mind a little company? The Eno River First Day Hike, led in conjunction with the Eno River Association, has drawn close to a thousand hikers in the past.

That’s 104 First Day Hikes in our state parks alone. It doesn’t include hikes such as the Triangle Land Conservancy’s New Year’s Day Hike at White Pines, or the Piedmont Land Conservancy’s First Day Outdoors on the Stuart & Emma Thomas Memorial Trail. You’ll find people hiking everywhere on New Year’s Day.

What makes this year’s First Day Hikes a little more special is that five of the hikes in North Carolina are in state parks that were closed for a time by Hurricane Helene. 

The adjoining Stone Mountain State Park and Rendezvous Mountain, both located on the Blue Ridge escarpment, are sponsoring hikes. Stone Mountain starts the day at 9 a.m. with a moderate 2.5-mile hike on the Cedar Rock and Wolf Rock trails (with great views), while Rendezvous Mountain will hold a mile-long hike at 2 p.m. through a mixed hardwood forest. A bit more rugged is the 2.4-mile scavenger hunt hike planned at Grandfather Mountain on the Nuwati Trail (from the Boone Fork Parking area off the Blue Ridge Parkway). This self-guided event runs from 9 a.m. to noon. Meanwhile, Gorges State Park will have a 30-minute hike to Bearwallow Falls at 10 a.m., and a 60-minute hike on the Raymond Fisher Pond Trail at 2 p.m.

Lake James, Elk Knob, Mount Jefferson and New River all have reopened, and may post First Day Hikes as well.

Welcoming the new year on the trail is always a great idea. With 104 to chose from you’re sure to find one to match your interests. 

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First Day Hikes

Check out the First Day Hike offerings in North Carolina and Virginia by clicking the links below:

• North Carolina
• Virginia

The post 104 New Year’s Day Hikes (and that’s just in state parks)  appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

On Sunday in North Carolina we enter Year of the Trail, as deemed by the State Legislature. All year, we will celebrate trails of every stripe: natural surface, paved surface, equestrian, hiker, mountain biker, trails of blue. Even our cultural trails. We’ll get into all this in January, but for now we focus on Sunday. And first, those Outings.

Because trails come in various stripes, they are celebrated in various ways this Sunday. For in addition to our decade-long tradition of First Day Hikes, we now have First Day Outings. Outings that include:

• Chimney Rock State Park’s First Day Hike or Bike, which commences at 8 a.m. from the park entrance near the Old Rock Cafe in Chimney Rock. Hike or bike the 3.2 miles up to the park, an especially alluring prospect for cyclists since no motor traffic will be allowed. Shuttles will be available to get you back down. More info here.
• Carolina Godiva Track Club New Year’s Day 8K Run, 1 p.m., Hillsborough. Run in the new? Sure, why not, for this nearly 5-mile race that begins in the town’s Gold Park, heads down the Riverwalk along the Eno River, does a lap around the Historic Occoneechee Speedway, then heads back. More info here.
• Birding and a Hike, 9 a.m., Wilkesboro. Our choice for the day because we’re helping to run it! Join us at 9 a.m. along the Yadkin River for two hours of birding in conjunction with the NC. Wildlife Resources Commission’s NC Bird Atlas project. Use loaner binoculars and hang our with experienced birders to help with the Bird Atlas, a citizen science project intended to give an overview of North Carolina’s bird population. Then, in the afternoon we relocate to nearby Rendezvous Mountain State Park for a ranger-led hike. Learn more and sign up here.

These events and more can be found at the Great Trails State Coalition website, here. 

You might want to bookmark this page, btw, for it is the go-to source for all Year of the Trail events scheduled for 2023. For instance, if you’ve wondered whether local municipalities and counties conduct First Day events, the answer is yes, and you can find several of them at this site.

First Day North Carolina

North Carolina State Parks once again welcomes the new year with 47 First Day events. A sampler:

• First Day Scavenger Hike, Umstead State Park, Raleigh, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Complete the challenge on the Old Rock Trail, win a sticker! Self-guided. More info here.
• First Day Hike: Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, 9:30 a.m. One of the more challenging First Day Hikes, this one is an out-and-back from the Visitor Center to Wolf Rock. About 3 miles total. Learn more here.
• First Day Hike: Eno River State Park, Durham, 2 p.m. Two hikes here, actually, a 4.5-mile outing and a 2-miler. Good thing, because this long-standing event has been known to draw more than 500 people on a sunny day. Held in conjunction with the Eno River Association, which serves post-hike hot chocolate. Learn more here.

Again, 47 First Day Hikes in North Carolina; find details on all of them here.

First Day Virginia

Some of Virginia’s 41 State Parks will hold more than one First Day event. To do so, you need to start early. Such is the case at Sky Meadows State Park, where the first of four First Day events begins at 5:30 a.m., with a sunrise celebration of the new year. Learn more about what’s happening at Sky Meadows here.

Lots of self-guided First Day hikes, lots of ranger-led activities. Check ‘em out here.

No excuses for not starting 2023 with some trail time. Kick off the year on a local trail.

The post First Day options abound appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Traditionally, nearly every North Carolina State Park has held a First Day Hike. This year, due to the ongoing pandemic, only 19 First Day Hikes are planned. The most notable omission, for the second year straight, is the First Day Hike at Eno River State Park. Until last year, this hike had been an annual tradition dating back to 1971. Held in partnership with the Eno River Association, there was usually a short hike and a long hike, both culminating with hot chocolate and cider at the picnic shelter. 

In years past when the weather has been nice, this hike has attracted more than 500 hikers. Even outdoors, that’s a lot of people to be hiking in close proximity. Another reason the hike is canceled is construction related to construction of a Visitor Center, which has caused a good deal of disruption near the trailhead.

In lieu of the New Year’s Day hike the park and end river association a 12-part series of self-guided challenges called the Superlative Eno Social Scavenger Hunt. Learn more about the challenge at enoriver.org/supereno

As for what first day hikes are happening in North Carolina, if we weren’t holding our own hike, we’d probably head down to the Charlotte area for the Boulders Overlook First Day Hike at Crowders Mountain State Park. That hike is about 2 miles, and is being held in conjunction with the Kings Mountain State Park First Day Hike in neighboring South Carolina. That hike is 5.6 miles and will head up to the Boulders Access. Shuttles are involved. 

If you don’t have hike plans for Saturday, here are links to the First Day Hikes being held throughout the Southeast:

• Georgia
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Virginia
• Tennessee
• West Virginia

Get 2022 off to the best start possible by spending some quality time on the trail. First Day Hikes couldn’t make it any easier.

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More info

You can find a rundown of First Day Hikes nationwide at the America’s State Parks website, here.

Not accustomed to cold weather hiking? The American Hiking Society offers tips for cold weather hiking here.

Explore with us!

We’re hitting the trail hard in 2022 with our GetHiking! and GetBackpacking! programs. Learn more about what we’re up to and sign up to join us by going here.

The post Start 2022 with a First Day Hike appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Unfortunately, there’s been nothing traditional about 2020, and there will be no First Day Hikes as we usher in 2021. 

“Parks are not hosting any guided First Day Hikes on January 1,” states a notice on ncparks.gov. “We encourage park visitors to conduct their own First Day Hikes with members of their household. Please note that parks may be busy on New Year’s Day, so please be prepared for parking delays and make backup plans.”

Backup plans indeed. If the parks are likely to be crowded anyway — and possibly be forced to close — why not direct folks to a trail that’s less likely to be crowded. Like the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

That’s not to suggest that the MST isn’t popular. It’s just that with 1,175 miles of trail, there’s bound to be a stretch or two where you can find solitude. And that thought led us to a conversation with Jim Grode, Trail Resource Manager for the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail who probably knows the trail better than anyone.

Among other things, Jim is in charge of all of the MST’s resources devoted to helping hikers get from Point A to Point B. That includes the MST’s online resources, its printed guides, and, most recently, “Great Day Hikes on North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail,” published earlier this year by UNC Press. 

Rather than ask Jim to identify 5 or 10 of what he views as the lesser-hiked stretches of the MST, we thought it better to let him empower you to find, on your own using the MST’s resources, the stretch of MST best-suited to your needs.

Let the planning begin

“The best place to start is with the interactive Google Map on our website,” Jim says. “You can find the section of trail near you and parking locations, and drill down from there.”

Here’s a quick guide to making that happen:

1. 1. Start with the Interactive Map on the website. Trails in red are actual hiking trail (which includes paved greenway and unpaved forest roads); black is trail temporarily routed on roads.

      

   2. Click on “Trail Segments” in the box on the left to match segments to the correct guides, and click “Parking” to identify places to access the trail
   3. For distances, click on “Mile Markers” (miles are eastbound only; for westbound, subtract that mileage number from total segment length)

   4. 

      Click on individual Trail Segment, Parking or Mile Marker icons to get details helpful for when you …

   5. … transition to Hiking Guide segments (online PDFs or printed volumes)
   6. Once inside the Hiking Guide:
      1. Match a parking area with the trail descriptions, keeping in mind that there are separate marked descriptions for eastbound and westbound
      2. For a sense of what a stretch is like aesthetically:
         1. Check the overview descriptions at the beginning of each segment
         2. On the Interactive Google Map, switch to satellite view for a look from above that can reveal forest, rocky areas, water and more
      3. To figure out the distance and difficulty of a stretch
         1. Distances: on the Google Map, use the Mile Marker function; in the guides check the mileage breakdowns in the Hiking Directions.
         2. Difficulty: The guides for the Mountains and Piedmont both include elevation profiles for each segment (note: the scales for different segments are not the same: be sure to check the distance/elevation for each segment for a more accurate reading; also note that the Coastal Plain & Outer Banks guide does not include elevation profiles because the terrain is flat and the elevation changes aren’t significant). The elevation profiles are more helpful for getting a general idea of elevation differences. To help put elevation in context, a loose rule of thumb is that 1000 feet of climbing = 1 level mile.
   7. When checking out the Parking/Trailhead, keep in mind that extra amenities — restrooms, visitor centers — which will be indicated, are likely to draw more hikers.
   8. Have a Plan B and C in case you show up at Plan A and it’s crowded. This is relatively easy along much of the trail since access points often aren’t more than 3 to 5 miles apart.

It’s an easy, step-by-step process for not only finding your ideal First Day hike, but for finding great hikes on the MST for years to come.

The GetHiking! Southeast Podcast

You can find more of our discussion with Jim Grode, including more helpful tips on planning your own hike, on our GetHiking! Southeast podcast, which debuts today. Give a listen here. 

The post This year, plan your own First Day Hike on the MST appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

This week’s video is a salute to exploring in the rain, which is our way of saying there’s a lot of it in the forecast the next few days.

But not on Saturday! So, we have three options today: 1) if you want to stay dry, 2) if you don’t mind the rain, 3) if you’d rather wait until New Year’s Day (when there’s still a chance of rain).

• Small Steps, Saturday, 10 a.m., Eno River State Park, Durham. This is the no-rain option (in the words of the Eno River State Park poet laureate): If your 2019 goal is a fitter you, begin your journey with a river view. That is, a 1.5-mile hike on the Buckquarter Creek Trail at a “forgiving pace.” More info and sign up here.
• Junior Ranger Coach, Sunday 1 p.m., Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury. This is the “into-your-life-some-rain-may-fall” option: Help your aspiring Junior Ranger earn her/his Junior Ranger Patch on this ranger-led presentation and 0.8-mile activity hike. For ages 6-12. More info and sign up here.
• New Year’s Day Hike, Tuesday, Jan. 1, times and locations vary. If you can’t get out this weekend, you’ll definitely want to get out New Year’s Day. First, North Carolina State Parks is sponsoring a variety of First Day Hikes at each of it’s facilities; find a rundown of hikes and sign up here. Most of these hikes are on the short side, three miles or less. If you’re looking for something longer, join our GetHiking! Triangle crew on a 6-mile hike on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail at Falls Lake, starting at the mercifully decent time of 11 a.m. Learn more and sign up here.

As always, you can find more opportunities this weekend here:

• North Carolina State Parks have a variety of adventures planned for the weekend. Check those options here.
• North Carolina Environmental Education Centers has an extensive calendar of what’s happening at its affiliates; check it out here.
• You can also find more adventures right here, at GetGoingNC.com

Live the video

If you’re inspired by today’s video, learn more about exploring Haw River State Park’s Great Blue Heron Trail here.

The post GetOut! Your Friday Nudge for Weekend Adventure appeared first on GetGoing NC!.