In the past, the day was marked by hundreds of events nationwide at which people would gather to build trail, maintain trail or simply to hike. It was an opportunity to gather with others and celebrate the trails we love. It was as much about enjoying the company of fellow hikers as it was about the trail itself.

While our love for the trail has never been stronger, our ability to gather and celebrate them has been put on hold. What would the AHS do in lieu of the traditional Trails Day gatherings that could draw 100 hikers or more?

Take the opportunity to make sure everyone has access to trails.

Trail access for all

“During the COVID-19 quarantines, more and more people have been discovering the mental and physical benefits of getting outside in their neighborhoods, to the point of a 200 percent increase in trail usage in cities across the country,” says Kate Van Waes, Executive Director of American Hiking Society.

That’s hardly news to hikers in this region. When only 12 state parks had trail open in North Carolina, for instance, those trails and other local trails were overwhelmed with hikers. And since the North Carolina State Park system reopened nearly all its parks and trails on May 22, some of the more popular parks that had been closed have had to shut their gates after reaching capacity early in the day.

A bummer, but most of us had one big advantage: we were able to hop in our cars and drive to some of the more off-the-beaten path trails and hike in relative seclusion. That’s not an option for everyone, says Van Waes, who adds, “many cannot easily get to recreation areas, partially because of systemic racism.” One attention-getting fact, according to the AHS: 1 in 4 people don’t live within walking distance of a park or other outdoor recreation space.

Even a simple neighborhood park, which most of us take for granted, isn’t available to many.

“As the millions-strong hiking community that American Hiking represents grows even bigger, so does its advocacy power,” says Van Waes, “and we need that now more than ever.”

As part of this year’s National Trails Day celebration, AHS is asking that you take the #NationalTrailsDay Pledge:

Join me and take the #NationalTrailsDay Pledge. We’ve temporarily experienced life with limited access to trails and public lands and, now more than ever, realize how much we need them. Together we can take action to preserve trails and fight for equitable access to quality green space, even while social-distancing.

A six-step Pledge

How can I follow through on the pledge? you ask. Agree to the NTD Pledge and you’ll be sent six suggestions for how to protect existing trails and how to make trails more accessible to more people. They are:

1. #VotePublicLands: Register to vote or check your registration status, and request an absentee ballot.  Before November 3, get educated on the public lands and access issues you care most about.

2. Speak up: Tell your Member of Congress why preserving trails is important and ask them to pass bipartisan legislation that supports trails, public lands, and access for all.

3. Recreate responsibly. Checkout the info on the #RecreateResponsibly website for tips on how to get outside safely and protect the environment at the same time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. Leave a trail or park better than you found it: Once it’s safe to do so without fear of COVID-19 transmission, commit to taking a trash bag with you whenever you hike or go for a walk.

5. Commit to a trail work project in 2020: National Public Lands Day on September 26 is a great way to assist with various projects designed to restore and enhance public parks, forests, waterways, and more.

6. Give a gift: You can make a gift to a local trail nonprofit and join American Hiking Society to help build an inclusive hiking community, to preserve your favorite trails, and fight for access for all. See “Make a difference” below for a list of regional nonprofits that could use your help. 

National Trails Day may look different this year, but the impact of this year’s observance could be the biggest yet. 

“As the millions-strong hiking community that American Hiking represents grows even bigger, so does its advocacy power,” says AHS’s Van Waes, “and we need that now more than ever.”

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Make a difference

Here are some of our favorite nonprofits dedicated to saving land and supporting the outdoors. Click the link to learn more about their mission and to support their work.

• Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Although technically a North Carolina State Park, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail is a nearly all-volunteer effort led by the Friends group to build a state-spanning 1,175-mile trail across North Carolina. Learn more and support them here.
• Triangle Land Conservancy. The TLC has been protecting land in the Triangle since the 1980s, and has seven preserves currently open for exploring, including a GetHiking! favorite, Horton Grove Nature Preserve in northern Durham County. Learn more and support them here.
• Catawba Lands Conservancy. Among their efforts, the CLC is the driving force behind the Carolina Thread Trail, an ongoing effort to link 16 counties in the Charlotte area (including in South Carolina) with trail. Learn more and support them here.
• Piedmont Land Conservancy. The PLC has protected more than 24,000 acres in a nine-county region, mostly in the Triad, including one of our favorite spots to hike, the Knight Brown Nature Preserve near Greensboro. Learn more and support them here.
• Piedmont Environmental Council. Has worked with landowners to protect more than 420,000 acres of rural and natural land in the piedmont area around Charlottesville. Learn more and support them here.
• Conservation Trust for North Carolina. Based in Raleigh, this nonprofit has saved most of its land along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but is active elsewhere. We’re particularly intrigued by their Princeville Collaborative project, where they’re working to help instill land conservation principals in a coastal plain community recovering from two 100-year floods in a 17-year span. Learn more and support them here.

Land Trust Day

Another way to support local land preservation efforts? Buy some gear. Saturday is also Land Trust Day, and as it has for as long as we can remember, Great Outdoor Provision Co. will donate 5 percent of all sales this Saturday (June 6) to local land trusts. Great Outdoor has been reopening its stores in North Carolina and Virginia, and will be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Find the Great Outdoor Provision Co. store near you here.

The post This National Trails Day: Trails for All appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

On Saturday, September 9, the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail is celebrating the trail’s 40th anniversary with MST in a Day—an event that invites hikers to join together to cover every inch of the trail, from Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee line to Jockey’s Ridge on the coast.

This is an awesome goal. The 1,175 miles of the trail is divided into 20 segments, which are further divided into 300 legs which are between 3 and 5 miles long. Right now, 223 legs have hikers committed to hiking on September 9. But 77 legs of the trail still need your hiking boots on the ground!

Today, to celebrate the reopening of the Outer Banks, we’re focusing on the open legs on the easternmost reach of the trail, Segment 18.

Catherine Peele, the leader coordinating hikers for the 20 legs of Segment 18, reports that all but four of the legs have hikers. Here are her descriptions of the legs in need of legs:

Leg 4: Cape Hatteras Ferry Terminal to Parking on NC 12. – 4.0 miles. After you have watched the choreographed dance of ferries leaving and tourists making their way to Ocracoke, you can leave the parking lot and stop at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum to learn more about the history and culture of the area. Make your way to the beach and start enjoying the nice ocean view.

Leg 5: Frisco Bath House to the Frisco Campground. 2.7 miles. On this segment you end up passing under the Frisco Pier, which is now falling into the water but at one time was a busy spot! Many people still use the area for a good beach day. Coming into the campground you will get to see the Billy Mitchell Airport, the only airport in the area!

Leg 8: Haulover Day-Use Area to Avon Pier. 3.5 miles. The Haulover Day-Use Area is locally known as Canadian Hole (a lot of kiteboarders seem to be Canadian). (I actually had to look at a map to see what day use area they were referring to…I am just used to using the nickname!) On a nice windy day the sky can be filled with a hundred or more kiteboarders and it is a sight to be seen! The end point for this segment is the Avon Pier, where you can grab a fishing pole, walk onto the pier and see if you can catch anything or just ask some locals or tourists how their catch is going.

Leg 12: ORV Ramp #23 to Rodanthe Beach Access. 4.4 miles. A nice sandy beach walk where just like the others you can see all sorts of wildlife – crabs, turtles, maybe spot a whale out in the ocean! You will pass under the Rodanthe Pier, where again you can walk out and fish or just admire the view.

To learn more about these legs and link to the sign-up page on Meetup, go here. (Note that the signup on the Meetup site will indicate that the hike starts at 7 a.m. In fact, these hikes, which are self-led, can occur any time between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. So, it’s possible to do a day trip to the coast to hike your leg or you might choose to fit the hike into a beach getaway weekend.)

You can learn about any of the other remaining legs at the MST in a Day page of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail website. You’ll also find descriptions of other legs here.

Lots of hikers from the GetHiking! and GetBackpacking! programs will be hiking MST-in-a-Day. And we’ll be posting pictures to Facebook and Instagram pages with the hashtag #mstinaday. We’d sure be happy if you joined us.

Happy trails,

Joe

The post Calling All Hikers! Mark Your Calendars for Sept. 9! appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

So, you’ve been enjoying your walks in the woods and maybe you’re wondering what it might be like to stay a bit longer—overnight, even.

We can help you.

Ever since I wrote Backpacking North Carolina in 2011, I’ve been on a mission to dispel the myths of backpacking. Like the idea that you have to sleep on the cold, hard ground, eat beans out of a can, and hike 20 miles a day with 60-pound pack on your back.

The experience we teach with our GetBackpacking! Intro to Backpacking program introduces you to lighter equipment, advances in food-preparations, and reasonable mileage goals. This four-week program is designed to turn the backpacker-wanna-be into a confident, competent backcountry explorer. Here’s how the program works:

Class One: We discuss gear and how to properly pack a pack. We then strap on our properly packed pack and hike two miles to get a feel for hiking with weight (about half that 60 pounds!) on your back.

Class Two: In full pack, we hike two miles, scout good campsites, and set up camp. We discuss what to look for in a good campsite and what to avoid. Then, we break down camp and hike two miles out.

Class Three: In full pack, we hike in about three miles and cook a meal, going over the different types of stove and food options. We pack up, discussing Leave No Trace ethics, and hike three miles out.

Graduation Weekend: The fourth week, we hold a Wednesday planning meeting to go over our graduation weekend — the route, logistics, the weather, special equipment we may need. Then, on Friday we leave for a two-night trip to South Mountains State Park, where you’ll get a chance to practice your newfound skills.

About the gear: If you don’t have everything, don’t worry. We have a limited number of loaner tents and backpacks. Not having a cookset isn’t a deal-breaker, either. The main gear you’ll need are a good pair of hiking shoes or boots and trail-friendly clothes — basically, what you wear to hike.

To ensure that everyone gets individual attention, each session is limited to 12 participants.

We have three sessions scheduled for fall, two in the Triangle and one in the Triad.

Triangle

Session 1: Training, Sept. 10, 17 and 24; graduation trip Oct. 6-8. Learn more and sign up here.

Session 2: Training, Oct. 15, 22 and 29; graduation trip Nov. 3-5. Learn more and sign up here.

Triad

Details to be posted soon. Keep an eye on GetHiking! Triad for details.

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Backpacking North Carolina

Backpacking North Carolina covers 43 backpack trips throughout the state, including the Piedmont and the coast. Most of the trips are beginner friendly, and many embrace the “base camp” concept: hike in a relatively short distance (usually less than 5 miles), set up base camp, do day hikes from there. Learn more about the book here.

The post Backpacking: Hiking with sleepovers appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Sometimes we listen to the tales of others for inspiration, sometimes for same flat-out vicarious living.

Thursday evening, you’ll get both at Peak Panel: a Night of Stories at the Great Outdoor Provision Co. in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. Four North Carolina climbers will share their individual stories of conquering four of the world’s most captivating peaks: Everest, Denali, Rainier and Patagonia.

On the panel are:

Chip Popoviciu – On May 22, 2008, at 4:40 a.m., Ciprian Popoviciu od Raleigh summited Mount Everest, the highest point on the planet at 29,029 feet. Chip got the idea to climb Everest growing up in Transylvania (the Eastern European country not the North Carolina county) — so when he grew up, he did it. Chip was kind enough to share his story with us prior to a previous appearance with Great Outdoor, in May 2009. You can read that interview here.

John Wade – John Wade was always into something: boxing, karate, mixed martial arts. Then he met his eventual wife, Anne, who was into cycling and running. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something we could do together?” they thought. So they set out to climb 14,411-foot Mount Rainier, the highest point in the continental U.S. Read more about their story, here.

Matthew Miller – Matthew came onto Great Outdoor Provision’s radar last year as he planned his training for Alaska’s 20,310-foot Denali and shared that adventure with mountaineering folks in the effort to promote a greater awareness of the sport among the outdoor community in North Carolina.

Reese Wells – In 2015, the Winston-Salem resident rode his bike 9,000 miles, from Key West, Fla., to Deadhorse, Ala’t ska, in a ride called Keys to Freeze. He decided to follow that adventure up with Greater Patagonia, a 1,500-mile adventure in the Patagonian wilderness. Learn more about Reese and his adventures, here.

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Details

What: Peak Panel: a Night of Stories, featuring North Carolina explorers Chip Popoviciu, John Wade, Matthew Miller and Reese Wells.

When: Thursday, Feb. 16, 9 p.m.

Where: Great Outdoor Provision Co., 2017 Cameron St. (Cameron Village Shopping Center), Raleigh

Past your bedtime? Catch the show on Facebook Live, at Facebook.com/TrustyGOPC

More info here.

The post An evening of Peak Experiences appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Years ago, I was in the market for a mountain bike. I went to the old Spin Cycle in Cary, picked out a bike, asked if I could take it for a test ride. Sure, they said. Plenty of residential streets behind the store: knock yourself out.
Trouble was, it was a mountain bike; riding it on asphalt wouldn’t give me much of a feel for how it handled rocky, rooty trail. Fortunately, I knew of some of the later weaving between the former. I returned a half hour later with a dirt covered bike — which I wound up buying.
The point: for a big-ticket item that’s performance-based, buying it sight-untested is silly. Yet we do it all the time with our outdoor gear. With kayaks, for instance.
The good news?
With a boat, that needn’t necessarily be the case. Great Outdoor Provision Co. sponsors boat demo days in its main markets in North Carolina and Virginia where you’re welcome to come and compare and contrast a variety of boats.
Intrigued? Learn more about demoing a kayak at this blog we wrote in partnership with Great Outdoor Provision.

The post Shopping for a kayak or canoe? Take a test paddle, first appeared first on GetGoing NC!.