An hour or so into the hike, the lightbulb went on for Alan. “Now this looks familiar.”

The problem up until now? We’d been hiking in the daylight.

Alan Nechemias and I had probably hiked this stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake — sections 10 and 9 — a couple dozen times over the past three years. But we could only recall hiking it once in daylight. The other times had been under conditions much like this: cool to cold late fall and winter nights once the sun had long since set. read more