There were only two hours of sun on Sunday, but man, did our GetHiking! Sunday hikers ever take advantage. We hiked about 5 miles on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail upstream along the Eno River from Penny’s Bend Nature Preserve in Durham, taking in one of the best spring unveilings we’ve seen in years. We saw vast carpets of spring beauties, their little satellite petals of white and pink scanning the sky for sun. We saw the slightly larger rue-anenome, then their less-common cousin, the Dutchman’s breeches, a small hillside of them looking like clusters of pulled teeth (only stunning). There were violets, there were bluets, there were mayapples about to do their thing, there were trout lilies that already had.

They were busy about getting their business done because the canopy overhead was ripe with buds. The pastel greens of oak and hickory, a smattering of pinkish red buds. All against a sky, for duration of our hike at least, of sparkling blue. It was the sort of spring day a hiker dreams of. And there are more to come.

We share 84 seconds of Sunday’s hike in the accompanying video. You can accompany us on our upcoming spring outings by checking out our lineup, including our weekly Sunday hike series and our Tuesday evening hikes, at GetGoingNC.com /then click on Explore with Us.

The post A Sunday awash in spring appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

It’s about this time of year that I begin getting distracted on the trail. I stumble over tree roots and rocks more, my attention diverted from the trail itself to three, five, 10 feet into the neighboring terrain. Scanning, constantly. I grow quieter on group hikes; my responses to fellow hikers limited to a delayed “right” or “sure,” wondering later if I offered to bring a main course to a pot luck.

It’s early, I know, not even mid-February. Still, you never know. It’s been relatively warm, sufficiently wet … down there somewhere may be that harbinger of spring that means so much more than a groundhog seeing its shadow. Down there, somewhere, the first budding wildflowers of spring, the season’s true first responder. (Well, first true visual responder; the spring peeper often weeks it out as the first aural hint of the season.)

Tiny, delicate, these early risers desperately need those first rays of the season for energy, to fuel their growth, to survive and prosper. The oaks, the elms, the hickories, the beech of the lofty reaches of a deciduous forest can afford to sleep in; dominators of the forest canopy, they have all summer to hog precious sunlight. Down here on the forest floor it’s a another matter. Spring wildflowers have a narrow window. They must work fast to meet their needs. They have a week, two tops, before the flora a level above leafs out and blocks the sun. Then the level above that an so on up the food chain until the understory — dogwoods, redbuds — begin the massive suck-up of sun, drawing the curtain on the spring wildflower show. But that’s a ways off.

Today, the focus is on the forest floor, in search of the first, delicate droopy mottled leaf that will, shortly, yield an equally delicate yellow petal with maroon pinstripes. That first trout lily is hard to spot, but once it presents itself, a dozen neighbors step forward, then, a little ways up the trail, a dozen more. Or, if you’re not on higher, drier, rocky trail, if you’re hiking a lowland prone to wetness, your first sighting may instead be a spring beauty, a lovely (and yes, tiny) white petaled bloom that is more apt to emerge en masse, as a carpet of white blanketing the forest.

So yes, maybe I am a little ahead of the game (though Dave Cook in his “Piedmont Almanac” writes of the third week in February: “On slopes with southern exposure the first trout lilies and spring beauties might adventurously appear.” But the temperature was in the 70s last week, it’s in the mid-60s as I write. And the sun is unfettered by clouds to do its life-giving thing.

Too early? Perhaps.

But close enough that I can’t take the chance of missing out.

The post Spring: the first sign appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Coast

Here’s a good reason to go to the coast this weekend: the US Open Fat Bike Championships.

First, we’re guessing a lot of you are wondering what an Open Fat Bike is. Actually, it’s just a Fat Bike, which is a mountain bike with bulbous tires, defined as wider than four inches. Typically, they’re used to bomb down mountains, rolling over whatever lies in wait. In this case, however, they will be used to race on the beach, in sand, which any cyclist will tell you is a challenge at best, a nightmare to the drive train at worst.

There’s competition in the Beginner, Sport and Expert categories; the latter will race 25 miles. Again, on sand. Sounds like good spectating.

Logistics: Saturday, March 14, Blockade Runner Beach Resort, Wrightsville Beach. $42. More info here.

Saturday forecast: High of 68, chance of thunderstorms.

Piedmont

If you’re like us, you’re wondering when the first spring wildflower will make its appearance. Typically, the first trout lily or spring beauty pokes through the last week of February. This, however, has not been a typical year, and while Dave Cook of “The Piedmont Almanac” fame says the trout lily should be in its “full glory” by now, we’ve yet to see a single, perky yellow petal.

After this week’s warm weather, however, expect spring’s early recruits to be on the march this weekend. One great place to catch the action is the Pump Station Access area of Eno River State Park, where an open floodplain provides good flowering habitat. Fortuitously, Pump Station is the location of a morning hike by Eno River State Park on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. “Wear good hiking shoes, bring drinking water and a snack,” advises the ranger.

Logistics: Saturday, March 14, 8:30 a.m., Pump Station Access, Eno River State Park, Durham.

Saturday forecast: High of 65, “periods of light rain likely,” says WRAL.com.

Mountains

The weather gods are smiling on Asheville’s Woodfin YMCA this week. Rather than schedule their hike on on a rainy Saturday, they had the good fortune to plan it for a sunny Sunday.

The hike in question is a 7.5-mile hike on the Laurel River Trail near Hot Springs, reason in itself to do the hike, with the chance for a post-hike visit to Bluff Mountain Outfitters, www.bluffmountain.com/ one of the truly great outfitters around. (Good coffee, too, as we recall.)

Logistics: Sunday, March 15, 8:45 a.m. at the Woodfin YMCA in Asheville. For more on the hike, check out this report in the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Sunday forecast: Sunny, high of 57.

* * *

Those are our thoughts on the weekend. Find more options at the sources listed below.

Like us on Facebook and get health, fitness and outdoors news throughout the day.

GetGoingNC.com

Promote Your Page Too

The post This weekend: Fat bikers, wildflower stalkers, Y hikers appeared first on GetGoing NC!.