Sunday, for instance, I caught up with Howard for the first time since he’d returned from hiking  a section of the Camino de Santiago in June. I was especially interested because Howard’s plan was to average 15 miles a day for 7 days; Howard is in good shape and a strong hiker, but that’s the kind of mileage AT thru-hikers aspire to — after building up for a month on the trail.

“It was good,” he said, a bit subdued, I thought. In the ensuing mile of discussion it turned out that the hike itself was beyond good, but the daily mileage took its toll in the form of one injury I had heard of (planter facitiis) and one I hadn’t (something involving the big toe).

I hadn’t seen Phyllis for about the same amount of time, during which she had done two trips, one in the Swiss Alps, one in the Canadian Rockies. In the seven years I’ve hiked with Phyllis, it seems she’s been just about everywhere. In fact, having done 34 trips in 10 years she’s pretty much run through every trip Roads Scholars offers.

“There is the Inca Trail,” she said, “but my time for that may have passed.” Less a physical thing, explained Phyllis, who is in her late 70s, more to do with altitude. 

I spent a good deal of time hiking with Jennifer and quizzing her on her and hubby Dan’s October trip to Patagonia. 

“Are you looking at Patagonia as an excuse to get new gear?” I asked. “Like rain gear? Could be an issue that time of year down there.”

“Actually, we’ve got good rain gear, from our trips to Iceland.”

Ah, yes Iceland, plural. 

I will admit there’s a twinge of envy when I hear these tales. In large part because what I do is limited to the Southeast, especially North Carolina, my hiking is mostly in the region. Which certainly is nothing to complain about: if I have to be restricted to one area, this is it. In my mind, with the Appalachians, the Piedmont and even the coast, North Carolina is indeed the Great Trails State.

After Howard shared his injuries I asked if he would do it again. He’d done about 90 miles on the Camino, and there are many miles more to be done. “Oh, yeah,” he replied without a thought. “We’ll, maybe not the Camino. But another hiking trip.” He mentioned the famous Hadrian’s Wall hike across England, and Scotland as destinations.

That got me to thinking about motive, about whether I’d yet to find a hiking trip I really wanted to take, one that provided sufficient motivation. And that got me to thinking about WildBeare. 

Wild Beare is a YouTube adventure blogger, of which there are many: got a smartphone and like to hike? You’re an adventure blogger. Wild Beare is different. She uses quality video gear (including an efeectively-used drone), has a great eye, and with every video seems to visit the most inviting spots on the planet. And all are in her backyard of the Chiltern Hills of England.

Chiltern Hills? 

Of all the hiking tours I’ve scouted online, I don’t recall one mentioning the Chiltern Hills (her adventures also spill into neighboring Wales). Yet Wild Beare’s adventures up it’s 700-meter moonscape peaks, into it’s vigorous waterfalls, and beneath it’s starry moonless nights has catapulted the Chiltern Hills to the top of my must-visit list. 

Perhaps more importantly, the tales shared by the globetrotters I hike with makes me realize such a trip can be done. My friends do it all the time: they leave, they hike, they return. And they return with tales of great adventure.

Another thing I’ve learned from my globetrotting hikers: Now’s the time to start planning for next year. Hiking trips, by their nature, are limited in size and they fill up fast. Time to start doing research.

Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be the one returning with tales of great adventure. And possibly a well-earned injury.

* * *

Plan your big adventure

Motivated to plan your next — or first — hiking vacation? Here are 5 popular guide operations that popped up on a Google search. Note: These are not, obviously, recommendations.

• Roads Scholars Leads trips covering a wide range of adventures worldwide. Phyllis’s choice.
• REI Adventures Focuses on U.S. adventures.
• Backroads Offers a range of packages worldwide.
• Wildland Trekking Leads trips worldwide.
• Wilderness England Offers both guided and self-guided trips.

The post Maybe it’s time for the Chiltern Hills appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

It’s been cool most of the week throughout our blogging area, and it will be cool again at least on Saturday, making this the perfect summer weekend to get in a hike.

Mount Jefferson Downhill Skateboarding Event, Saturday and Sunday, starts at 9 a.m. both days, Mount Jefferson State Natural Area, West Jefferson. Scratching your head, are you? Here’s the deal: The 1.6-mile road to the summit of 4,683-foot Mount Jefferson will be closed to vehicles both days to accommodate the mountain’s annual downhill skateboard race. Yup, youngsters on skateboards — more than 100 of ‘em — will skateboard down the mountain, dropping more than 700 vertical feet along the way. However, there will be shuttle service to the top of the mountain: park at the Lowe’s in West Jefferson and take a shuttle to the top, where you can hike the park’s 5 miles of trail. And you can check out the race as well. (FYI, one of the sponsors for the race, the Ian Tilmann Foundation, will be giving helmets to the first 100 kids who sign a pledge to wear a helmet while skateboarding.) Learn more about the race here and hiking at Mount Jefferson here.

Ranger-led Hike on the Profile Trail, Sunday, 10 a.m., Grandfather Mountain State Park,  Banner Elk. Think of Grandfather Mountain and you think of winging bridges and wild weather. That’s all on top of the mountain. At the base, on the massif’s northwest flank, lies the start of the Profile Trail, which revels in stately Southern Appalachian hardwoods and tranquil hiking. Join a ranger to explore this softer side of old Grandad on a 2-mile, 2-hour hike. Learn more and sign up here.

Sunday Morning Birdwalk, Sunday, 8 a.m., Eno River State Park, Durham. Ever walk through the woods in the early morning, hear the avian chatter and wonder who’s talking — and what they’re saying. Eavesdrop with a ranger on this leisurely 2-mile hike. Learn more and sign up here.

GetHiking! this weekend

What are our GetHiking! groups in North Carolina and Virginia up to this weekend? Plenty, thanks for asking …

Live the video

The Joyce Kilmer/Slickrock Wilderness in the Nantahala National Forest, coupled with the adjoining Citico Creek Wilderness in adjoining Tennessee, make up more than 35,000 acres of some of the wildest terrain on the East Coast. GetBackpacking! spent four days exploring the wilderness this past weekend, and will return next year. Until then, learn more about the area’s trails here.

More options

Looking for more options for weekend adventure? Check out our GetOut! Find An Adventure resource page here.

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

The wildest place we know of in the Southeast is Linville Gorge. Most of the 11,651 acres is wilderness. The gorge is just three-quarters of a mile across, from rim to rim, and is as deep as 1,500 feet in spots. On its 13-mile run through the gorge, the Linville River drops 2,000 vertical feet. So inaccessible is much of the gorge that it contains virgin timber, a rarity in this part of the world. Trail descriptions are peppered with such phrases as “very strenuous,” “very primitive,” and “notoriously steep.” There is no “easy” in Linville Gorge. 

That makes its spectacular scenery all the more desirable.

One of my most memorable views of the past couple years was from a spot along the Linville River not far from Pinch-In Trail. I glanced across the river and up, up about 1,900 vertical feet to The Chimneys, a prominent rock outcrop that loomed like the prow of an ocean liner over a row boat. To earn this view, I had descended, in full pack, the ridiculously steep, roughly defined Leadmine Trail, then hiked up the boulder-choked Linville Gorge Trail. It was laughingly slow going. But then this view.

Explore, don’t expire

Not every backpacker, I realized as the eight in my group wrestled with the trail, is ready for this level of adventure—at least in full pack.

So we came up with a trip, scheduled the weekend of Oct. 5-7, that includes the best of backpacking—spending the night in the wild—and the best of day-hiking—exploring with a light daypack that keeps you nimble enough to climb over downed hemlocks and hills of house-size boulders. The trip works like this:

Friday afternoon, we’ll hike in from the Wolf Pit Road access at the southeast end of the gorge. It’s a steady climb, but at just 1.7 miles, it’s doable even for a backpacking novice. We establish basecamp on Shortoff Mountain, in the vicinity of “Camp Shortoff,” where a run of rock outcrops affords some of the best views of the gorge and some of the best sunsets imaginable.

Saturday, we don our day packs and hike about 3 miles north on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the flattest 3 miles of trail in Linville, brushing the rim, with more great views of the gorge. 

At the 3-mile mark we descend on the Cambric Ridge Trail, which drops, quickly, a little more than a mile down to the river. You won’t see this trail on most maps; it’s one of the primitive trails that are all but hidden in the gorge. We’ll take it down to the river; if the water level is low, we may cross and head downstream and loop back up to basecamp. If the river is up, we’ll hang out, have lunch, maybe take a dip, before heading back to camp. We’ll be in the heart of the gorge, in an area that’s infrequently visited.

Like taking a test drive

Saturday’s hike, about 9-10 miles in all, is a good way for a person to get a feel for experiencing challenging terrain before tackling it in full pack. Even for someone who’s day-hiked rugged areas, doing it as part of backpacking expedition helps put such terrain in a backpacking perspective and thus prepare better for venturing out in full pack. Downed hemlocks—and there are a goodly number of them—are fairly easy to scramble over in a day pack, but what about in a 60-liter pack carrying 30 pounds? Perhaps pare down the load. How about those steep descents? Maybe you don’t use trekking poles on day hikes, but think about all that weight and its impact on your knees dropping down a trail with a 45-degree descent.

We backpack so we can spend as much time as possible on the trail, not because we’re into being punished. A basecamp approach is the ideal marriage of backcountry camping and hiking, especially well-suited to our wildest places. 

See you on the trail!

Joe

Find out more

Learn more and sign up for our GetBackpacking! An introduction to Linville Gorge, here.

We also have a somewhat similar GetBackpacking! trip planned to the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock/Citico Creek Wilderness for Oct. 25-28. Learn more about it and sign up here.

The post Take a walk with us on the wild side appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

The weekend trip was an Intermediate Skills trip, meaning participants needed some backcountry experience, though not necessarily in a wilderness. It was targeted to people eager to expand their skills and push their comfort level. And that they did. 

Late Friday afternoon, within 20 minutes of heading south on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail from Table Rock, the rain started. By the time we neared Chimney Gap, an electrical storm passed overhead. We hunkered down in this low spot for 15 minutes before the electrical portion of the storm moved on. We continued in a pretty good rain out of the gap. The rain had us focused on the fluid trail in front of us, as we picked our way around puddles and mini-torrents. While we were looking down, and not around, we missed a crucial turn and started heading downhill. It didn’t feel entirely wrong, based on previous trips, but it didn’t feel right, either. After 20 minutes of descending, the low clouds lifted just enough to reveal, to the south, the ridge we should have been on. 

Forty minutes later we regained the MST and continued south. The rain was steady, and waves of unsteady air sparked and rumbled around us. It was 8:30 and almost dark. 

We reached an area called Rock Peak, where the trail is especially hard to keep. We lost it, found it, lost it. When we found it again, we headed in the direction from which we had come, which was the wrong direction. The first campsites we came to, at about 10:45 p.m., were where we had taken the wrong turn more than 3 hours earlier (though we didn’t realize that until morning). The rain lightened, the backpackers quickly pitched camp, ate, crawled into their tents.

The next morning: unfazed

When morning come and I explained what had happened, that we’d basically done three hours of extra credit hiking in full pack in a storm, it was more of a “Huh!” moment, rather than a “Let’s-get-the-hike-leader!” pitchforks-and-torches moment.

“The gorge is the gorge,” Bruce said with a smile and a shrug.

There was more news to be delivered. Our plan going in was a 20-mile loop of the gorge that included two crossings of the Linville River. In backpacking circles, it’s a pretty big deal to loop Linville Gorge: most folks usually stick to either the east or west sides, avoiding a challenging river crossing. The crossings — the chance to pick up a new backcountry skill — was a big draw of the trip.

Before the group arrived, I’d hiked in and checked one of the crossings, at Spence Ridge Trail: the river was about six inches above where it needed to be for a safe crossing, and the six hours of rain overnight had added to that. It also ruled out the less-challenging crossing at the end of the gorge, where the river fans to 60 yards and is typically shin deep with a mellow current. Today, it would not be mellow. 

“New plan,” I announced. “We’ll hike to Shortoff Mountain, set up camp, dry out, catch some sun, enjoy the view.” Our trip had gone from rollicking wilderness adventure to an afternoon of catching rays. 

The group wasn’t fazed.

“Sounds good,” said Joe, who was backpacking with his two college-age sons. 

“That’s backpacking,” Brandon added.

Lessons learned

At dinner that evening, Alison noted what a learning experience the hike had been. 

“Maybe we didn’t do the river crossings,” said Alison, “but we got to hike at night, we got to hike in the rain, we got to navigate a wilderness area in the dark. That’s pretty good.”

“Maybe this should be an advanced skills trip,” suggested Sue.

Jason captured the essential lesson of the trip: “I learned not to panic.”

It would have been easy to lose it when we discovered we had descended nearly a mile on the wrong trail. It would have been easy to throw up our hands when the third electrical storm rolled overhead. And it would have been easy to yell “Why? Why!?” when, exhausted, we were three hours overdue at camp.

The most telling moment of the trip came at Rock Peak, at the peak of the storm, where the trail simply disappeared. Without needing a prompt, everyone began their own trail search. Everyone remained focused and calmly committed to finding a place to pitch camp for the night. No one panicked. No one came close. We had a problem to solve, and we were going to solve it.

Daily, we deal with situations that try our nerves and test our patience, from getting cut off in traffic to having technology fail us. We seem to spend some days doing nothing but solving one problem after another. 

For the nine backpackers I took into the gorge this past weekend, those daily problems won’t seem quite as daunting.

Happy Trails,

Joe

GetBackpacking! Start today

Backpacking won’t solve all your problems, but it can help you become a better problem solver! If you’re interested in backpacking, GetBackpacking! has options for you;

GetBackpacking! Overnight Sampler. This is for those who wish to find out if they want to be a backpacker, who would like to try a night on the trail before making the commitment. We provide the basic backpacking equipment — the backpacks, the tents, the sleeping pads, the food — and take you on an overnight trip. We hike two miles in, we set up camp, we cook, we spend the night, we have breakfast the next morning and hike out. Our next session is scheduled in Durham for Sept. 15-16. Learn more and sign up here.

GetBackpacking! Intro to Backpacking. This three-part program includes a gear session (get to know the basic backpacking gear and how to pack a pack); a six-hour training session at Morrow Mountain State Park that goes over setting up camp, tearing down camp, cooking and nutrition; and culminates with a weekend graduation backpack trip to South Mountains State Park. Some loaner gear is available, on a first-come basis. Next session is in September. Learn more and sign up here for the Triangle, here for Charlotte, here for the Triad.

GetBackpacking! Intermediate Skills: Introduction to Linville Gorge. This trip, the first weekend in October, will be a mellow introduction to Linville Gorge. Friday afternoon, we’ll hike in from the Wolf Pit access to Shortoff Mountain and camp. Saturday, we’ll do a day hike north on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, then take the little-used Cambric Ridge Trail down to the River. Sunday, we hike out. Learn more about this trip and sign up here.

For more on our GetBackpacking! program, go here.

The post Lessons Learned Navigating Linville Gorge appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

It’s one of our favorite things to hear, because it means we’re meeting one of our key goals: leading you into the unknown. Sure, we hike a lot of trails more than once, and for good reason: they’re worth it. Our Charlotte group goes to South Mountains State Park regularly, our Charlottesville crew loves the Jones Run/Doyles River Circuit in the Shenandoah National Park. And with 120 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail running through the Triangle, I’ve lead a goodly number of hikes on the statewide path along the Eno River and the south shore of Falls Lake. 

But it’s the new discoveries most hikers really love.

“Show of hands,” I said at the beginning of a recent hike at the Shallow Ford Natural Area north of Burlington: “How many of you have hiked here before?” 

None of the eight hikers raised a hand.

Ditto a recent after-work hike at the two-year-old Brumley Nature Preserve in Chapel Hill, at Little River Regional Park on the Durham/Orange county line, and on the Great Blue Heron Loop Trail at Haw River State Park’s Iron Ore Belt Access area. Some of these gems are new, some simply off the beaten path. We’re constantly on the lookout for both.

This week, we thought we would highlight a few upcoming adventures to places that may be new to you.

• Confluence Natural Area, day hike, Hillsborough, July 22. The Eno River Association is one of those land trusts whose work frequently flies under the radar. If you’ve hiked in Eno River State Park, or at Little River Regional Park, you’ve likely hiked on land preserved by the ERA. They typically buy land in the Eno watershed, then, eventually, turn it over to North Carolina State Parks. This spring, though, the ERA opened the 200-acre Confluence Natural Area, its first preserve open to the public, where we’ll explore 2-miles of newly blazed trail.

• Standing Indian Recreation Area, hiking/camping weekend, Nantahala National Forest, Aug. 24-26. Standing Indian was new to me when I scouted it in 2009. I was finalizing which trips to include in my book “Backpacking North Carolina” and noticed this big network of trails west of Franklin. It seemed worth a chance — and it was. On this trip, the main hike is an 11-mile loop consisting of a mellow climb up Kimsey Creek to the Appalachian Trail at Deep Gap, then hiking north to 5,498-foot Standing Indian and back to camp on the Lower Ridge Trail. We’ll do a shorter hike Sunday.
• Curtis Creek, hiking/camping weekend, Pisgah National Forest, Sept. 28-30. The Curtis Creek area of the Pisgah outside Old Fort is hardly new: in fact, it’s the oldest tract in the Pisgah National Forest, dating back more than a century. It’s also not new in that it’s home to some of the oldest old growth in the Pisgah. We’ll explore here and in the nearby Montreat Wilderness area with a climb up 5,592-foot Graybeard Mountain.
• Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock/Citico Creek Wilderness, four-day backpack trip, Nantahala and Cherokee National Forests, Oct. 25-29. This is the mountain land that time forgot. Too rugged and remote to draw much interest from logging concerns, the area was a natural for inclusion as a designated Wilderness Area. The area may be popular with locals — what locals there are — but it’s largely untouched by us outsiders.
• Nags Head Woods Preserve, hiking/camping weekend, Outer Banks, Nov. 2-4. Usually, when you head to the Outer Banks, your thoughts are on the beach, not the trail. Yet there’s some stunning hiking to be done, none more so than through the maritime forest at The Nature Conservancy’s thousand-acre Nags Head Woods Preserve. Five miles of trail explores everything from dense woods to the sound. That’s Saturday; on Sunday, we’ll do another five miles amid some of the oldest trees in North Carolina, in Pettigrew State Park.

Interested in expanding your adventure horizons? Find more information on each adventure in the links below and join us.

Happy trails,

Joe

Explore!

Learn more about the new places we’ll be exploring by clicking on the links below.

• Confluence Natural Area
• Standing Indian
• Curtis Creek
• Joyce Kilmer-Slicrock/Citico Creek Wilderness
• Nags Head Woods

The post Finding new places for you to explore appeared first on GetGoing NC!.