Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: Waiting for Diane.

Since May 10, Diane Van Deren has been experiencing North Carolina in a way few others have: On foot, on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. The Colorado ultrarunner set off from Clingman’s Dome with two goals: to get to know North Carolina and to cross the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in record time.

Here’s how she fared on the latter.

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Elite Colorado ultra runner Diane Van Deren enters day 22 of her MST Endurance Run, an attempt to set a new record for trekking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in less than 24 days. I’m on the Outer Banks covering her remaining 63 miles, and will be filing periodic reports throughout the day on the MST Endurance Run blog, which you can find here.

The post Diane Van Deren’s MST Endurance Run: The end is near appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

There are roughly 200,000 miles of trail in the United States, according to the American Hiking Society. Of those that came about over the past couple of decades, the vast majority were created largely by volunteers. And of those that existed beforehand, it’s a good bet they’ve been maintained by volunteers. Without volunteers we wouldn’t have the growing system of trails we now have.

Saturday is your chance to become part of the vast volunteer network that keeps us in trails. Since 1993, the first Saturday in June has been designated National Trails Day. It’s a day set aside to celebrate our trails. In some instances, that celebration is by riding or biking those trails. In most, though, that celebration comes through picking up a pickax or pulaski and clearing new trail or tidying up existing tread.

Last year, according to the sponsoring American Hiking Society, there were 2,063 registered National Trails Day events attracting 330,000 participants. Some 7,626 miles were hiked or biked, 799 trail projects were completed. A total of188,833 volunteer hours invested, worth $4 million in labor.

This year, in North Carolina alone there are 29 NTD events planned for Saturday. Eight are in the mountains, 21 in the Piedmont. Odds are there’s an NTD event near you. To help you find out, we’ve condensed this list from the American Hiking Society Web site. See something that interests you, click here and you’ll find everything you need to know.

As for me, I’ll be celebrating one trail in particular, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and Diane Van Deren’s epic expedition across it, at the Great Outdoor Provision Co. store in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. Live music, refreshments, and Van Deren on hand to discuss her journey, from 5-7 p.m. (More info here.)

Saturday, get out and celebrate a local trail.

National Trails Day Events in North Carolina

Mountains

• Black Mountain: Greenway walk. Black Mountain Greenway Commission
• Boone: Trail maintenance, construction.  Boone United Methodist Church
• Boone (vicinity): Cascade Falls Recreation Area clean-up and hike. KAMPN Inc.
• Brevard: Trail workday. Bracken Mountain Trail Project
• Burnsville: Hike to 6,189-foot Grassy Ridge on the Appalachian Trail. North Carolina High Peaks Trail Association
• Chimney Rock: Rumbling Bald hike. Chimney Rock State Park
• Lake Toxaway: Panthertown Valley Work & Fun Day. Friends of Panthertown
• Nebo: Trail maintenance and hike, Lake James State Park. Overmountain Victory Trail Association

Piedmont

• Cary: Trail workday at Hemlock Bluffs. Friends of Hemlock Bluffs
• Cary: Swift Creek Greenway and bridge dedication. Town of Cary
• Columbus: Hike, other activities. Polk Fit, Fresh and Friendly
• Danbury: Trail maintenance, construction.  Hanging Rock State Park
• Durham: Trail maintenance on Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail
• Greensboro: National Trails Day Festival. City of Greensboro
• Holly Springs: Trail dedication, greenway ride and hike. Bass Lake Park
• Huntersville: Trail maintenance. Latta Plantation Nature Center
• Lillington: Art in the Park Hike. Raven Rock State Park
• Mt. Pleasant: Trail construction, Carolina Thread Trail, at Buffalo Creek.Carolina Thread Trail
• Orrum: Hike at Lumber River State Park. Lumber River State Park
• Raleigh: Trail workday at Blue Jay Point County Park. Blue Jay Point County Park
• Raleigh: Workday on Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Friends of the Mountains to Sea Trail
• Raleigh: Walnut Creek Greenway Walk. Triangle Greenways Council
• Raleigh: Triangle Greenways Council Bike Ride. Triangle Greenways Council
• Raleigh-Durham: Triangle bike ride & clean-up. East Coast Greenway Alliance
• Rougemont: Ranger-led interpretive hike at Little River Regional Park. Little River Regional Park and Natural Area
• Southern Pines: Old-growth tree-hike at Weymouth Woods State Natural Area. Cub Scout Pack 82
• Troutman: Trail workday. REI and Tarheel Trailblazers
• Uwharrie: Canebrake Horse Camp Cleanup. Uwharrie Trail Riders Association
• Wake Forest: Trail dedication and hike. Town of Wake Forest Greenways Advisory Board

For details on any of the above events, go here.

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I first became aware of Us and Them as a sophomore in high school. Our baseball team was playing a team from outside the league whose pitcher was a top pro prospect (he later was drafted by the New York Yankees). There was silence in the dugout as we watched the guy warm up. “Can you even see the ball?” someone finally asked. As the game wore on and no one could touch him, Coach Thomas began substituting. Those of us on the bench tried to be as invisible as possible. Finally, in the top of the 9th, coach turned, scrutinized the bench and yelled, “Stamm! Grab a bat.”

Fortunately, I wasn’t Stamm. When the aforementioned Stamm returned to the bench after three quick pitches he was white as a ghost. I asked what it was like, but Stamm was speechless. He didn’t say a word on the long bus ride home. For many of Us, it was our first exposure to Them.

US athletes persist on the notion that if you work hard enough you can do anything. You can do a lot, true, but only Them can do anything. The latter have a gift that no matter how hard the rest of Us work, we cannot compensate for. Some of Us like to disparage Them by pointing out their physical gifts. Lance Armstrong, for instance, has an off-the-charts lung capacity. True, but his lung capacity is exceeded only by his work ethic. Lungs + work ethic = Seven Tour de France titles.

As a golfer some 30 years ago I would have the perfect hole — meaning my drive would go straight and far, my approach shot would hit the green and stick, I’d sink a long putt. Once a season that would happen. One hole out of maybe 25 rounds, or 450 holes. A PGA touring pro, I realized, had to have that perfect hole on nearly every hole. If he didn’t, he wasn’t a pro for long. Us with one perfect hole that would make for a boast-worthy season, Them with 450 perfect holes to survive.

In 2001, Willow Springs cyclist David LeDuc won the World Masters Road Racing Championship. An outdoor adventure columnist for The News & Observer in Raleigh at the time, I wanted to write about “The Ol’ Man’s” accomplishment. And wouldn’t it be fun and insightful, I thought, to interview him during a bike ride!

Sure, LeDuc said. I’ve got a 45-mile recovery ride on Monday. You can ride with me then. “Recovery” to a world class master champion and former pro racer, I discovered, means something altogether different to a rec rider like me. I should add that on this recovery ride LeDuc fielded several cell phone calls and took notes from customers of his roofing business. All while maintaining a 20 mph “recovery” pace.

Monday was another Us and Them revelation. I’ve been covering Diane Van Deren’s MST Endurance Run, an effort to cross the statewide Mountains-to-Sea Trail in a record-breaking 21 days. Van Deren began her professional athletic life on the women’s pro tennis tour in the late 1970s. For the past decade she’s been an elite ultra runner sponsored by The North Face. Her race resume abounds: she’s done the Hardrock 100 in southwestern Colorado, said to the the hardest 100-mile race around, seven times. She did the 300-mile version of the Yukon Arctic Ultra, won, had so much fun that she returned to do the 430-mile version.

Monday was Day 12 of her MST quest. Already, she’d covered 388 miles of rocky, rooty, sloppy wet terrain in the rugged Southern Appalachians. Say, I thought, wouldn’t it be fun and insightful to spend a day with her on the trail! After all, I reasoned, she’s been running 11 days straight and her feet are mush. Besides, I’ve got a little trail running experience under my belt, including the 20-mile version of February’s Uwharrie Mountain Run. She was targeted to run 50 miles on the day, from about 20 miles northwest of Pilot Mountain to downtown Danbury, just outside Hanging Rock State Park. A challenge, but I could manage it, right?

Well, I did (you can get an account of the day here). I managed to hang with Van Deren and trail guide Jill Miller, also an accomplished trail runner, and I don’t think I held them back. We started at 5 a.m., finished at 10:24 p.m., ran, with a handful of breaks, for more than 17 hours. But here’s the “Them” part. As we popped out of Hanging Rock State Park in the dark for the last three miles or so into Danbury, Van Deren and Miller began discussing “options.” Maybe another five miles beyond Danbury? Miller suggested. Or maybe grab a catnap and put in another 10, Van Deren said.

“What do you think, Joe?”

I was pretty dang happy that I’d been able to hang with these two remarkable athletes for 17 1/2 hours but I knew my limits and I had only one “option.” “This has been a great day, but I’m done at Danbury,” I declared with Us-like conviction. I’d eclipsed my personal record of trekking 31 miles in a day by nearly 20 miles. I was still moving. I was still coherent. It had been one small step for Them, but one giant leap for Us.

When we got to Danbury at 10:24 p.m., the decision had already been made by Van Deren’s support crew. “Here’s the plan,” support chief Joel Fleming told Van Deren. “I’m going to take you to the hotel and get a good night’s rest. We’ll get back on the trail early in the morning.”

“Early in the morning,” I later learned, would be 4:30. “We’ve got a big day planned for her tomorrow,” John Millsaps, also with the support team, told me. “We’re hoping for 70 miles.” I got up the next morning at 9:10 a.m. My feet were burning, my legs ached in ways new and unimaginable. I made it down the hall to the kitchen, maybe 70 feet. That would be my workout for the day. By the time I’d made coffee, Diane Van Deren had already been back on the trail for five hours.

Us and Them.

The post Us and Them appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Sunday, Day 4 of the MST Endurance Run, began on schedule for Diane Van Deren with a 3:45 a.m. wake up call. After getting off the trail the previous evening at 9:36 with Annette Bednosky, her trail guide for the weekend, she’d gotten her first good night’s sleep — 4 hours. She arrived where the Mountains-to-Sea Trail passes the Folk Arts Center in Asheville ready to rock a 43.8-mile day.

The mischievous Southern Appalachian Mountain gods had other plans.

On Thursday, Van Deren began her quest for a speed-record crossing of the 1,000(ish)-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, descending from the murky 4:30 a.m. dark of Clingman’s Dome en route to Jockey’s Ridge on the Atlantic, hopefully on May 30. By Sunday morning, she had covered 134.3 miles.

I tagged along with Van Deren and Bedonsky for the first five miles Sunday, a steady climb into the Craggy Mountains that began dry but evolved into a steady drizzle. No big deal to Van Deren, who once trekked 430 miles across Canada’s frozen tundra in the Yukon Arctic Ultra.

“The rain is meditative to me,” Van Deren said as she applied a fresh dose of moleskin at mile 5 Sunday morning. “It’s like music.”

That music was about to turn from Neil Diamond to Iron Maiden.

I peeled off at Craven Gap to perform my journalistic duty, with plans to reconnect early afternoon somewhere in the Mount Mitchell area. My journalistic duty took longer than expected, and by the time I was ready to reconnect, it was mid-afternoon. By then, the Craggy and Black mountains were enshrouded in thick (20-foot vis) clouds in a steady, drenching rain. As I drove up  the Blue Ridge Parkway from NC 80 at 15 miles an hour, hunched over the steering wheel, a thought occurred: This is ridiculous. There’s a much faster and safer way to get to the top of Mitchell.

So I turned around, drove to the Black Mountain Campground and began the 5.6-mile, 3,600-foot climb to the highest point east of South Dakota’s Black Hills, 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell.

Mount Mitchell Trail is in considerably better shape than the first time I hiked it in the mid-1990s. At the time, it took the National Forest Service trail philosophy that essentially denies the existence of switchbacks. It followed path-of-least-resistance drainages, for the most part, resulting in a rocky, steep climb that was typically wet, often flowing. The trail came to resemble more of a trail when it became part of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

Despite the MST upgrades, it remains a steep, rocky, rooty, wet trail. Saturday afternoon, in a steady rain, it was as bad as it gets in warm weather. (Warm? Make that non-freezing; it was a wet 44 degrees.) The closer I got to the summit, the more I realized this would be a dicey descent, especially in the dark.

When I reached the top of Mitchell at 6 p.m. the place was deserted. No cars in the lot, the concession stand bolted shut. The wind was blowing, the rain was picking up. The mountain-top thermometer read 42 degrees. I found a sheltered spot and called expedition leader Chuck Millsaps with the Great Outdoor Provision Co.

I learned that the weather was even worse on the Craggy Mountain end. Van Deren and Bednosky had been pulled off the trail an hour earlier at Walker Knob, about 10 miles from the summit. The plan was to get Van Deren rested, let her feet heal, then resume at 5 a.m. the next morning.

I looked at my watch: It was 6:16. Sunset was in a little over two hours; darkness would come sooner in a cloudy forest. I skedaddled down the mountain and made it to my tent as Sunday faded to black.

I mention my roll here mainly because of the accompanying photo. I only spent 31 miles on the trail this weekend, both with Van Deren and trying to track her down. Yet those 31 miles of wet, rocky, rooty Appalachian Mountain trail trashed my trail runners (look closely and you’ll see the seam at my big toe is busted open, on both shoes) and my feet. When I finished those 31 miles and went to take my shoes off, I thought my feet were just wet. They were bloody as well. And those dark toenails aren’t the result of Goth toenail polish; they’re a sign that we’ll be parting ways by week’s end. That’s the damage done by just a fifth of the miles Van Deren has logged.

Van Deren is an elite athlete with the mental and physical wherewithal to cruise into Jockey’s Ridge on May 30 — or earlier. Provided the cantankerous Southern Appalachian Mountain gods let her emerge from their 300-mile reign with her feet in tact.

I talked with expedition leader Millsaps early this morning. Van Deren and trail guide Doug Blackford made it to the Woodlawn Work Center off US 221 yesterday afternoon at 5:30. That was the good news. The bad news: the rain continues and today’s route through the Linville Gorge includes a rock-hop crossing of the Linville River just below the gorge. The rain-swollen river is running high according to the USGS, very high, at 600 cubic feet per second.

“A crossing is unadvisable,” Millsaps said.

Van Deren has made clear from the start that her MST Endurance Run isn’t a race, it’s an expedition.

The Southern App Mountain gods are seeing to that.

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