A variation of this post originally ran Aug. 6, 2014, titled “SUMMER HIKING: BEAT THE HEAT.” Two years later, we played with it again and reran it on July 20, 2016, as “HIKING: WHERE TO BEAT THE HEAT.” It appeared under that heading again on July 6, 2021. On Aug. 11, 2023, it ran again, paired down from 10 hikes to 5, but with more detail on each hike. It runs again today, on the 11th anniversary of its initial appearance, with one caveat.
Tag Archives: summer
Now, a word about your drinking problem
We run this post when it gets hot, really hot. Like, as hot as it’s been lately. It’s part of our program to get you safely through the summer hiking season.
Now, with summer’s heat having set in, is a good time to talk about your drinking problem.
How to survive summer hiking (and smell swell, too)
I used to love hiking in summer heat. The past couple years, though, not so much. Coming into this summer I got me to wondering why.
With the recent spate of record-breaking temperatures, I decided to hit the trail and see if I could pinpoint my growing problem with summer.
A summer hike recalls summer vacation
Note: The following is a tweaked re-run of a post that originally appeared in July 2022. With the current heat it’s even more relevant today than it was when it originally appeared.
Tuesday afternoon I was driving back from a meeting in Oxford when I made a detour in Stem. Specifically, to the Tar River Land Conservancy’s Ledge Creek Forest Conservation Area. It was 98 degrees, with a Heat Index of 105, no one’s idea of ideal hiking conditions. Yet once I got under the canopy, the heat became less of an issue.
10 Summer Hikes with Cooling Water
What kind of Top 10 list would you have if it didn’t evolve over time? You’d either have a Top 10 list that wasn’t honest, or you’d have evidence that you need to get out more and experience new trails.
Fortunately, neither is the case with this year’s running of our Top 10 Cool Hikes with Water, because it includes some new entries from the last time we ran it. To keep the list at 10 — arbitrary, perhaps, but it keeps things manageable — we’ve had to drop a couple hikes from last year’s list, which you can read here. But that doesn’t diminish those hikes; after all, these lists are subjective anyway, so be content with 10.