motivation Archives - GetGoing NC!

Don’t let the cold make you SAD

JoeMiller — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:47:21 +0000

Here’s our annual note for when the temperature seems too cold to hike.

Tomorrow morning the forecast calls for a temperature in the upper teens, rising to maybe 40. But it will be sunny, and a little sun can make up for a lot of cold.

North Carolina has, on average, 28 clear days every winter; only seven states see more cloudless days, according to data compiled from two climate agencies. Virginia averages 25 clear days. In short, you could live in much worse places to avoid feeling SAD

SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, is a type of depression that can set in when the days are short and the sun sets early in the day. Once this mood-altering disorder takes hold, according to the Mayo Clinic, it can be hard to shake; it’s best to fight it off before it has a chance to make itself at home, leaving you hibernating in a stupor of despair.

One way to combat SAD, says the Mayo Clinic, is to go outside and move—the more regularly, the better. Even when it’s cold, a brisk walk in outdoor light can help. Another way to lift your mood is to be with other people; socializing with a dose of laughter helps you connect with others, an opportunity in short supply these days. Hiking regularly also can reduce levels of stress, which can contribute to SAD symptoms. According to psychiatry.org, 5 percent of Americans experience SAD, with the most severe bouts occurring in January and February.

Frankly, all of us could stand to reduce our stress levels. So even if SAD doesn’t get you down, brisk movement and being with others is a great way to keep stress at bay by releasing endorphins and elevating mood.

So while the benefits of being out in the sun are beneficial year round, they are even more so in the short days of winter. But because of the cold, you sometimes need a little extra motivation to drag yourself outside and make it happen. And the best motivation? you ask.

Hike with a group.

It’s one time when peer pressure is a good thing. You wake up, you see it’s 28 degrees, you pull the covers back over your head and reach blindly for the snooze button. But then you remember the group waiting for you at the trailhead. You remember that Sue was supposed to hear about that promotion this week, that Jack was on the verge of adopting a shelter dog, that last week when Elliot failed to show he was the topic of discussion. You also remember that, once you’re 5 minutes down the trail and starting to warm up, you really love hiking this time of year.

The obvious current caveat about hiking in a group: while being outdoors is still considered safe, you want to make doubly sure the group you’re hiking with is safe. With any group you join, be it a hiking-related Meetup or a group from work, find out what their policy is and see if it’s one you’re comfortable with.

It may take a hike or two to find the group that’s right for you. That’s fine. Because once you do find a group that works, you’ll find yourself spending a lot more time on the trail at a time of year when it will do you the most good.

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Speaking of groups …

As of Monday, GetHiking! has nearly 25,000 members in its six hiking groups in Virginia and North Carolina. At least one, Charlottesville, has multiple hikes every week. And if your local group doesn’t have a hike scheduled, lead one yourself! Here are links to our six groups:

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Welcome your year of adventure with a hike

JoeMiller — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:49:31 +0000

Here’s hoping you’re out hiking today, welcoming 2025 in a way far more appropriate than reading a blog.

And if you aren’t?

If lethargy has you bound to the couch, think about this: Today sets the tone for the next 364 days. Which isn’t to say that if you’re sick you should drag your butt outside anyway. Rather, if you’re simply suffering from a touch of malaise, a year-starting hike — even a walk through the neighborhood — could be just the thing to snap you out of your funk. No need to make a big deal of it, to go 10 miles or set a 4-mile-per-hour pace. Just get out and enjoy.

Need a little more inspiration? Then consider today’s hike a down payment on an adventure you’d like have this year, an adventure that would best be served by moving today, rather than not moving.

To that end, we share a trip GetBackpacking! did three years ago, Virginia’s Triple Crown, that we plan to do again this year. A 37-mile, 4-day trip that offers all the motivation we need to get in some trail time on this, the first day of the new year.

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Why I hike: the great outdoors

JoeMiller — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 10:00:34 +0000

There are things you do that you just don’t think about — you just do. Hiking is one of those things for me. Hitting the trail is just a part of life, as natural, nearly, as eating and drinking, sleeping and breathing. But every once in a while it’s good to pause and think about our motivation, to look at why we do the things we do. For the next three days, I will, quickly (in about 500 words) look at what it is that makes me hike.

Today: The Great Outdoors
Tomorrow: The People
Thursday: The Challenge

* * *

There are a handful of views that I live for. You’re looking at one of them.

It’s from Ivestor Gap, at the doorstep of the Shining Rock Wilderness, looking northwest to the Smokies, possibly into Tennessee. The Shining Rock area is perhaps the most openly wild place in North Carolina, with vast heath balds interspersed with balsam-covered peaks topping 6,000 feet. Surprisingly, it is also one of the state’s most accessible areas.
The Shining Rock Wilderness itself is just 18,483 acres, but the area popularly thought of as Shining Rock is perhaps twice that. The wilderness is bordered by U.S. 276 to the east and NC 215 to the west in an area north of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Honorary Shining Rock status is granted to the area between the wilderness and the Blue Ridge Parkway, and west of NC 215 into the Middle Prong Wilderness.

While elevations dip to 3,200 feet, much of the wilderness is about 5,000 feet and five peaks are over 6,000 feet. What makes Shining Rock special isn’t so much the white quartz outcrop gracing the south end of Shining Rock ledge, but the unusual amount of open space found in the 5,000-foot range. The openness is largely the result of poor timber practices a century ago that helped fuel devastating forest fires in 1925 and 1942. Both fires burned so intense that they damaged the soil to the point that only shrubby, heath communities exist today. Panoramic views are plentiful: from 6,213-foot Black Balsam Knob, Tennent Mountain, Grassy Cove Top and Sam Knob. Yet the east side of the wilderness flanking off Shining Rock Ledge is known for steep, densely forested draws with rocky tributaries feeding the East Fork of the Pigeon River.

In summer, a popular stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway is Graveyard Fields at Milepost 419. A trail network gives quick access to a series of waterfalls and the wilderness beyond. Now, as the trail disappeared into more dense, stygian woods, I suddenly craved to get the upper parts for AR-15’s and go on a hunt, for it’d been long since I’ve been to any woods. Despite being above 5,000 feet, the Shining Rock summit is easily achieved from the Black Balsam Forest Service access just off Milepost 420. The Ivestor Gap Trail follows an old logging road and offers minimal elevation gain on its way to Shining Rock Gap and Shining Rock. It’s some of the top scenery in the state and you can only get to the best of it by hiking — though you needn’t be seasoned mountaineer to reach it.

That’s true for many of the state’s other scenic highlights. You can drive to the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of South Dakota’s Black Hills, but to enjoy the best of the rugged, sky-scrapping Black Mountains you need to hike. Park at Carver’s Gap just below Roan Mountain and you can, within a mile, top three of the most scenic balds in the state. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, paved roads will take you — and 8 million other park visitors a year — to some great landscapes. Park the car and hit the 800 miles of trail that penetrate the park and you’ll discover the Smokies that only a fraction of its visitors see.

I hike because a car can only show you so much.

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Igniting a spark

JoeMiller — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:26:50 +0000

A statistic I found interesting yesterday on my visit to the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte: of the 540,000 people who walked through the gates of this 400-acre outdoor playground last year, only 150,000 bought passes enabling them to play on/with the equipment.
So, I asked, the center’s marketing guy, Stephen Youngblade, what are the other 390,000 up to if they aren’t taking a whitewater raft trip, or climbing the 46-foot outdoor Spire, or standup paddleboarding? Do they come for the $6 cheeseburgers?
Youngblade explained that while they don’t keep numbers on this segment of the operation, many of those — 200,000, perhaps? — come for the Center’s 17-mile trail network. Mountain bikers, trail runners, hikers. As for the rest?
“There are people who like the outdoors,” he said, “and there are people who like the idea of the outdoors. Really, a lot of what we’re about is trying to make a connection with those people who like the idea of the outdoors. To create a spark.”
A spark.
Youngblade told me the story of a woman looking to get in better shape who signed up for 5K on the Center’s trails. She was taken by the experience, so she signed up for the next race in the four-race series, a 10K. Then she did the 15K and finally the half marathon.
A spark.
Or the 12-year-old boy who showed up a couple years ago for day camp. A typical 12-year-old in a lot of ways — until he was given a paddle and put in a kayak. This year, at age 14, he tried out for the Olympic kayak team. He didn’t make it, but he had found his passion.
A spark.
I wandered around the Center looking for sparks. For signs of people who might not consider themselves outdoorsy, but had tapped into something that registered. People who weren’t just having fun, but were challenging themselves in new and different ways while having fun. I found numerous examples of sparks flying on the Ridge Course, seven aerial challenges consisting of cargo netting, thin tightrope cable, unstable bridge planks and ziplines ranging from 20 to 40 feet off the ground. I watched a guy who probably wasn’t on the football team in high school bite his tongue as he navigated a cable tightwire — then beamed at the end. I watched a very focused 8-year-old girl and her equally focused mom successfully navigate a similar obstacle. And I watched a women not-at-all happy to being clipped into a zipline 40 feet up take a good ribbing from her less concerned sister on the adjoining zipline. I watched the sisters drop off their platform and speed to the ground, where upon the reluctant sister yelled, “I totally hate you!” — sporting one of the biggest smiles I’d seen all day.
They were perfectly safe, being clipped in to safety lines. But there was that perception of danger. And, at the end of the line, there was that impossible-to-miss look of satisfaction, of accomplishment, of overcoming a fear. And, perhaps more significantly, that look of, “What’s next?”
Sparks — they were flying at the National Whitewater Center yesterday.

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One man’s carrot …

JoeMiller — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:01:59 +0000

Last week I wrote about the need for carrots as incentive to work out.

Kate Dixon writes to agree — sorta.

“I ran a 5K in Raleigh on May 1st called Race of Grace,” writes Dixon, who when she’s not running is executive director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. “The prizes are cakes home baked by members of the churches that organize the race. Anyway, I have never been so motivated to run harder than I would have in hopes of winning a prize.”

Good point: A home-baked cake beats a carrot any day.

So? Did Kate run fast enough for cake?

“I did – a chocolate cherry cake to be exact,” she says. “It was absolutely delicious.”

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