According to the forecast, fall looks like it finally arrives late Saturday, with a wet cold front. Come Sunday, though, you’ll need the fleece: the temperature should be in the low 40s, rising only into the low 60s. Just what we’ve been waiting for.
Tag Archives: Hiking
GetOut! A Fall-like Weekend Awaits
Now’s the time our thoughts begin to turn toward catching some color on the trail, even in the Piedmont.
Though conditions haven’t been ideal for spotting early fall color — warm, sunny, dry days followed by cool nights — we are beginning to see some change. Last weekend, we saw sourwoods and dogwoods aflame at South Mountains State Park (a popular and close destination for Charlotte hikers), and even this week we’ve seen those first responders of fall start to light up the woods along the Eno River in Durham and Orange counties. With fall color in mind, we offer our thoughts on the weekend.
When, where to find fall color
Editor’s note: This is a piece we run annually around this time. It has been tweaked, updated and massaged.
When it comes to fall color, outdoors types take the changing of the leaves pretty seriously.
How seriously?
Virginia has a fall foliage hotline — 800.424.5683 — that you can call for the latest breaking fall color news. Operators standing by; in our book, that’s quite serious. And, curiously, quite practical.
Join us for Lunch!
This early run of fall-like weather has been both blessing and curse. After a summer of heat and humidity, the first half of September has been hiking-perfect: Sunny, dry days, coupled with clear, cool nights. The weather is inviting and the leaves are turning early. You can’t wait to get on the trail! Neither can the seasonal masses who discover hiking every year at this time. The trails are getting crowded.
5 Special Spots for hiking and backpacking
We’ve been thinking about some of our favorite mountain places to explore come fall, and realized that there are a variety of ways we love to explore them. There’s the day hike: spending a day to see as much as possible, then heading home. There’s the basecamp trip: Either establishing camp in a campground or hiking in a short distance in full pack and setting up camp, then doing day hikes from there. Or, there’s the point-to-point backpack trip. Since we all explore differently, we thought, why not look at all three options? So today, we do.