What kind of Top 10 list would you have if it didn’t evolve over time? You’d either have a Top 10 list that wasn’t honest, or you’d have evidence that you need to get out more and experience new trails.
Fortunately, neither is the case with this year’s running of our Top 10 Cool Hikes with Water, because it includes some new entries from the last time we ran it. To keep the list at 10 — arbitrary, perhaps, but it keeps things manageable — we’ve had to drop a couple hikes from last year’s list, which you can read here. But that doesn’t diminish those hikes; after all, these lists are subjective anyway, so be content with 10.read more
As we look ahead to the upcoming summer camping season, we look with special attention to certain campgrounds. Here are some of our favorites.
Davidson River
With 160 sites you’d think scoring one would be a given. Not the case at this popular campground which takes advantage of both its proximity to the cultural offerings of nearby Brevard and its perch at the base of the recreation-rich Pisgah National Forest.read more
This morning I set out with a couple of buddies on one of their regular adventures and was reminded of a column I wrote a couple years back about free soloist Alex Honnold. Honnold is known as the climber who eschews ropes and other protection — “free soloing,” it’s called in climbing circles.read more
Something about cool, fall weather makes you want to hike farther. Now that that weather has finally arrived, we’ve got some of those longer trails we think you might like. Here are 11, including nine in the Piedmont and two along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. (We’ll talk long trails at the coast in coming weeks, once the weather turns from cool to cold.)read more
If fall is nature at its showiest, winter is nature at its most honest. Minus her canopy, her understory, her ground cover, she has little to hide. Stone foundations from homesteads long abandoned lie exposed. Distant mountaintops are revealed. Critters have nowhere to hide. It’s the perfect time to be in the woods, a time when you can peer deep into nature’s soul. Especially if you seek a more true form of adventure — the type of adventure that doesn’t exist on a blazed trail marked on a map. That’s why we go wild over winter.read more
