True, the shortest day of the year, in terms of actual daylight, is Dec. 21, when we’re down to just 9 hours, 42 minutes and 59 seconds of daylight. However, this Saturday (Dec. 6), the sun sets at 5:04:52 p.m. (in north central North Carolina). But on Sunday, it goes down a full two-hundredths of a second later, at 5:04:54 p.m. Yup, on Sunday we start seeing more afternoon daylight. OK, maybe you won’t actually see it, but it will be there. You’ll have slightly more luck noticing the difference by Saturday, Dec. 13, when the sun will set at 5:05:49, more than a full second later than this Sunday. 

Granted, you can’t do much with that second — maybe get in an extra step of daylight on the trail. But you can rejoice in the psychological boost of simply knowing the sun is setting later. (For you morning people the sun won’t start rising later until Jan. 7!)

When will we start noticing a later-setting sun? On Jan. 7 it will set at 5:21 p.m. (about 16 minutes later than on Dec. 7), On Feb. 7 it sets at 5:52:47 (about 47 minutes later), and on March 7 at 6:20:27 p.m. (an hour and 15 minutes later). FYI, Daylight Saving Time kicks in on Sunday, March 8: sunset that day will be at 7:21:22). You’ll really notice the difference then.

Need another milestone to get you through winter? Imbolc, the midpoint of winter and a day of celebration in many cultures, is Feb. 1.

For the time being, though, take solace in the fact we will have more afternoon sunlight starting Sunday. Make the most of it.

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Count the seconds

Follow the return of sunlight at sunrise-sunset.org.

The post Dec. 7, and other dates to get you through winter appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Today, we offer some of our favorite resources and explain why. Links to these resources are included.  

Scouting, planning, execution

alltrails.com — Where we start when looking at a new trail or area to explore. Of all the crowd-sourced trail sites, we’ve found this one to be the most extensive and most accurate (though not 100 percent so). The free version provides access to the database of trails, including maps and elevation profiles. Go Pro and you can print out maps and download them to your mobile device for GPS tracking in the field. It also lets you map your own route.

Trail status, road conditions

Especially this time of year, when venturing into the high country it’s important to check ahead and make sure the trails, and the roads leading to them, are open. Here are some of the more prominent locations where you may find yourself seeking such information.

• North Carolina State Parks
• Croatan, Nantahala, Pisgah and Uwharrie National Forests
• Virginia State Parks
• Appalachian Trail
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• N.C. Department of Transportation
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• North Carolina State Parks
• North Carolina National Forests (Croatan, Pisgah, Nantahala, Uwharrie)
• Virginia Department of Transportation
• Shenandoah National Park
• Virginia National Forests (George Washington and Jefferson)
• Virginia State Parks  

sunrise-sunset.org  — Plug your location into the site and you can find, by date, the start of twilight, sunrise, sunset, end of twilight, day length, solar noon, and the start and end of both nautical twilight and astronomical twilight.

Leave No Trace — Most of us know the basic seven principles of Leave No Trace: 1. Plan Ahead and Prepare; 2. Travel & Camp on Durable Surfaces; 3. Dispose of Waste Properly; 4. Leave What You Find; 5. Minimize Campfire Impacts; 6. Respect Wildlife; 7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors. But do you know what these seven principles entail? Be a better outdoorsy type by becoming better versed in the specifics of Leave No Trace, at the Center for Outdoor Ethics’s Leave No Trace website.

Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail — Looking to hike a portion of the 1,175-mile MST, which runs the length of North Carolina from Clingmans Dome on the Tennessee line to Jockey’s Ridge at the coast? The Friends site includes online guides to the entire trail, guides that tell you, mile by mile, where you can get on and off the trail, where there’s water, what the terrain is like and more. Some recommended day hikes are included.

Fire Weather Intelligence Portal —Developed by the State Climate Office of North Carolina, the Fire Weather Intelligence Portal provides current fire danger ratings throughout North Carolina for 13 states in the Southeast. It assesses fire danger by looking at relative humidity, air temperature, and wind speed and direction.

Campsite Assist — Finding a campsite at the last minute can be a tedious task, especially considering that campsites can be reserved up to a year an advance. But a lot of those reservations get canceled at the last minute, and when they are you can find them on Campsite Assist, a part of CampsitePhotos.com. In fact, they’ll even send you an alert for campsites you express an interest in.

A Virtual Wildflower Garden Across Time — Right about now’s the time spring wildflowers start popping up in the Piedmont. And if you don’t know a trout lily from a trillium, you need to bookmark this site. It helps you identify wildflowers by color, location and by when you’re most likely to see them. Invaluable for any lover of spring.

Skywatching — Is there anything more enthralling than the night sky? You gaze to the heavens on a clear, moonless night and realize — you have no idea what you’re looking at. Unless you have access to space.com‘s Skywatching page. What planets are visible, the constellations, the space station’s path — it’s all here.

General hiking information

Volunteer Vacations — Intrigued by the notion of a “vacation” where you work your behind off to improve the outdoor experience? If so, here’s good news: there are lots of opportunities out there and you can find them on the American Hiking Society’s Volunteer Vacations page.

American Hiking Society — A good resource for all things hiking, especially if you’re just starting out and find yourself full of questions. 

National Trails Day — The first Saturday in June — that would be June 4 this year — we give back to the trails we love, through hundreds of projects nationwide designed to celebrate and enhance our trails. Start checking this site in May for an NTD event near you.

Hiking the AT for $400 — Thinking about hiking the Appalachian Trail? Then you likely have a few questions, questions that likely can be answered on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s FAQ page.

Got a few minutes to kill?

fastestknowntimes.com — Until two years ago, FKTs — Fastest Known Times — were limited to the likes of the Appalachian Trail, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail … the big boys. Then the pandemic hit and people found themselves with a lot of free time and the only safe place to spend it outside. Outside, on the trail, going really fast, apparently, because now just about every trail you know has an FKT, which is likely documented here.

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GetHiking! enewsletter

Interested in subscribing to our free weekly enewsletter? In it, you’ll find a man story examining some aspect of trail life, what hikes are upcoming in our eight GetHiking! chapters in North Carolina and Virginia, as well as gear recommendations, media reviews, hiking tips, and even more resources. Sign up by emailing us at info@getgoingnc.com.

The post Our favorite resources appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

After paying weekly visits to Seven Mile Creek Natural Area west of Hillsborough for eight months, last week I finally had the chance to share this find with other hikers. They were equally impressed.

It was the first of our weekly GetHiking Sunrise, Sunset Summer Beat the Heat Hikes, and it lived up to the hype. Thunderstorms that had been threatening to flare throughout the afternoon vanished by hike time (7 p.m.) and we were treated to the late day light that’s special to the season. As the light faded, over rocky Seven Mile Creek and the surrounding low hills, we could feel it taking the temperature with it. We weren’t exactly chilled by hike’s end — the temperature was 89 less than an hour before the hike — but between the sheltering canopy above and a 7-degree drop by hikes end, we were no longer melting into our boots. You can see a video of that hike last Wednesday on Friday’s post.

Today, we offer a peak at this week’s Sunrise, Sunset hike, this one on the front end of the day, on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail at Falls Lake. We’ll greet the day at 6:30 a.m., with a hike on one of the curiously less-frequented sections of the MST along Falls Lake, the stretch between Red Mill Road and Old Oxford Road in Durham. We’ll hike a 3-mile stretch of the trail (6 miles total, out-and-back) that includes bottomland forest and climbing a bluff overlooking the Eno River. The temperature around hike time should be around 70. The temperature and the emerging light should be more than enough incentive to rouse ourselves awake before sunup.

Sunrise, sunset: the two best times of day to be on the trail in summer.

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Join us

While our Wednesday GetHiking! Sunrise, Sunset Summer Beat the Hear Hike Series is full, we still have a few slots remaining for our Tuesday edition, which begins this Tuesday with the aforementioned Seven Mile Creek sunset hike. The hikes are limited to 8 hikers, masks are required at the trailhead, social distancing is enforced on the trail. There are eight hikes in the series, six at sunset, two at sunrise. Hikes range in distance from 2 to 6 miles. Sunset hikes begin at 7 p.m., sunrise hikes at 6:30 a.m. Cost is $95, and includes a guide (including map and detailed route description) for each hike, a copy of “Explore Your Neighborhood: A Guide to Discovering the World Immediately Around You,” and loaner headlamps. Learn more and sign up to join us here.

The post Monday, Monday: A week of early and late hikes appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Ah, Fourth of July Weekend! The fireworks displays, the Festival for the Eno, the cookout gatherings … .

OK, so maybe we can’t celebrate our nation’s independence the way we usually do. But we can certainly celebrate our independence by getting out and exploring. And this year in particular by doing so in the true American spirit of being a maverick, a lone wolf. Someone who likes to get out and take an adventure of their own. Alone. Or at least six feet from anyone else.

That could be particularly tricky this holiday weekend, when getting out is what’s on just about everyone’s mind. That said, we’re going to build on our advice from back in May, tweaked to reflect the realities of July, about how to enjoy the trail in solitude:

• Avoid peak hours. Don’t go when everyone else is. Umstead State Park, for instance, recommends avoiding the peak hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. That said, most N.C. State Parks open at 8 a.m., a good time to go because the temperature is still relatively cool and, apparently, not that many people are there. At the state parks that have been closing when they reach capacity, most begin blocking the entrance around 10 a.m. Or, go late; again, with N.C. State Parks, most are now open until 9 p.m., some as late as 10. Take advantage of these later hours to get out. Remember to take a headlamp or flashlight.
• Avoid the main trailheads. Find the more remote trail access points to where you’re headed. In particular, look for trailheads that don’t have paved parking, are on gravel roads, don’t begin from a visitor center, don’t have restrooms. Study the map; you can find them. 
• Avoid the main trails. Start from a more remote trailhead and you’ll be on a trail that likely doesn’t get much foot traffic — initially, at least. A lot of these trails will hook up with more popular trails eventually.
• Avoid parks near urban areas. Twelve state parks kept their trails open while the other 29 had to close at the beginning of the pandemic. Why? Because they were in more remote locals. You might want to focus on trails in those outlying parks, which you can find here. Besides, you’ve got the time for a little drive, and there’s some good exploring to be done in these lesser-visited parks.
• Avoid water. If your primary goal is to hike, then avoid trailheads with access to popular watering holes: they will be overrun on what is traditionally the hottest weekend of summer. (The forecast calls for highs in the low to mid 90s.)

Plan it right and you can have a great adventure and celebrate your independence to boot.

Have a great 4th!

The video: Sunrise, Sunset

Today’s video is from Wednesday evening’s Sunrise, Sunset Summer Series hike at Seven Mile Creek Nature Preserve in Orange County. The series celebrates the cooler temperatures of the day and the best light of the season on two sunrise hikes and six sunset hikes. While our Wednesday session, which began this week, is full, spots remain for our Tuesday session, which starts July 7. Learn more and sign up here.

The post GetOut! Your Friday Nudge for Weekend Adventure appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Shortly, we set off and within a couple minutes were spared the worst of sun by the thick canopy above. That coverage, combined with our breeze-generating movement, suddenly made it feel 10 degrees cooler. 

“Whew! That’s better,” one of the hikers said. And it would continue to get better over the next two hours as the temperature dropped into the 70s.

Summer hiking. To even some avid hikers, it doesn’t exist. Starting about mid-May, fair-weather hikers hang up the boots and begin counting the days until cooler weather returns in mid September. And it leaves us perplexed, frankly. Just because it’s a little (or a lot) warmer doesn’t mean you need to take a hiatus from hiking. Instead, you need to learn to manage the heat, to work with it. One of the best ways to do that is to hike at the two times of day when heat is less of an issue, sunrise and sunset. 

Sunrise

It’s commonly assumed that as soon as the sun pierces the horizon, the temperature begins to rise. Not so. In fact, the temperature continues to drop, for a half hour to 45 minutes (or longer), depending upon the conditions. Mike Alger, Chief Meteorologist with KTVN TV in Reno, Nevada, explains.

“Because of radiational cooling, on clear nights the ground gets much colder than the air just a few feet above it. Since thermometers are placed about five feet above the ground, it will show a warmer temperature than the air touching the ground.

“Once the sun comes up, the sunlight excites the cold air in the first foot or so above the ground (which can be 10 or more degrees colder), which causes it to move around and mix into the next several feet of air. That “mixing upward” drops the temperature of the air at thermometer level.”

Alger goes on to say he sees the temperature drop as much as 5 degrees within 45 minutes of official sunrise. From there, it can take a while for heat from the rising sun to pick up steam. The forecast for this Thursday, for instance, shows a temperature in Raleigh of 67 degrees at 6 a.m. (official sunrise: 6:00:16 a.m.), with the temperature only rising to 74 by 9 a.m. Pretty decent temperatures for hiking, in most people’s books. Fall-like, even.

Sunset

The effect of a setting sun on your hiker thermostat, while real, has more of an impact psychologically.

Let’s take the Wednesday hike mentioned above and pretend it’s happening today. The forecast temperature for today at 6 p.m.: 83 degrees. Already, that’s down two degrees from the forecast high of 85. By 7 p.m., the temperature is expected to drop another 2 degrees, and 2 more by 8 p.m., putting it at 79.

Now, 79 is still warm, but it’s already 6 degrees cooler than the day’s high, and 4 degrees down from the temperature when you started hiking. The day is cooling; coupled with the setting sun you’re likely to think it’s cooling more than it is. The fact that simply getting out of your car in the exposed parking lot and walking to the shaded trailhead trimmed about 10 degrees right there. 

And, because you likely worked up a bit of a sweat at the start, that sweat is now helping to cool your skin. (One reason we apply a summer asterisk to the admonition “cotton kills” when it comes to outdoor attire; come summer, cotton cools.)

Returning to the trailhead after a two-hour evening hike can leave you feeling refreshed, rather than drained, in the heat of summer.

But the real reason to hike at dawn or dusk? The light. Be it the emerging light ushering in a new day, or the fading sunlight signaling day’s end, the light that shoulders daytime illuminates the reason we hit the trail, spotlighting the best of the outdoor world. 

Sunrise? Sunset? The beauty: You don’t even need to choose.

Resources

Sunrise, Sunset Summer Hiking Series. Not crazy about hiking by yourself in the waxing or waning light of day? Join us for a series of eight “shoulder” hikes — two at dawn, six at dusk — on trails we find are especially well-suited for enjoying the best light of the day, Learn more and sign up here.

GetHiking! Guide to Summer Hiking. Hiking at dawn and dusk are two ways to beat the summer heat — and there are more. Learn more strategies for becoming a summer hiker in our Guide to Summer Hiking. Learn more and procure a guide, here.

The post Sunrise, sunset: the best times of day to embrace summer hiking appeared first on GetGoing NC!.