It’s happening, people! Starting this Sunday, that dwindling daylight will sharply ratchet back an hour. So, while you might be able to sneak in a quick hike after work this evening before the sun sets at 6:19 p.m., next week you’ll be hard pressed to hike before the 5:12 p.m. sunset.
Tag Archives: night hike
Sunday we fall back; here’s how to cope
On Sunday, we turn our clocks back one hour as we leave Daylight Saving Time. That means we will no longer have the extra hour of end-of-day sunlight we’ve enjoyed since March 12. On Saturday, sunset in the Raleigh area is at 6:17:55 p.m.; on Sunday, when we switch back to Standard Time, it’s at 5:16:59 p.m. Poof! Just like that.
Enjoy the solitude of a night hike
The following first ran in October 2018. It appears here with tweaks and updates.
It was a late November night in the late 1990s and Alan and I were hiking a stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake. Though we’d been mountain biking at night for two or three years, the notion of hiking in the dark had only recently occurred to us. Making our way through the woods in the quiet of night made us a bit giddy; instead of two guys in their late 40s, we were like a couple of 10-year-olds who’d snuck out of our bedroom windows on a clandestine adventure.
Fall on the trail is even better with a night hike
The following is a version of a piece we run every year at this time, a time when our spirits are buoyed by day by cloudless skies and cooling temperatures, but bummed when those days of sun end earlier and earlier.
October is almost upon us, which for hikers is good in oh-so-many ways. With one possible exception.
Tips for an evening saunter/night hike
Editor’s note: We run this piece every year around this time. The extra hour of afternoon daylight that Daylight Saving Time grants us means we can hit the trail after work. But that comes with a caveat — and some advice, which follows.
For much of the winter, the sun set long before we had a chance to enjoy it after getting off work. Now, it stays out later and later, and so do we. Sometimes later than we anticipated.