This week’s hikes: Raven Rock, Umstead, a night in Grifton
- Raven Rock State Park: Saturday, it’s a road trip to Raven Rock State Park for more great spring wildflower viewing. We’ll start from the Visitor Center and hike the 5-mile Campbell Creek loop, a hike that includes mature upland forests for half the hike, a ramble along the rocky Campbell Creek for the other half. (There’s also a side trip visit to Lanier Falls on the Cape Fear River.) Back at the Visitor Center, you’ll have the option of continuing on. We’ll do the 2.6-mile Raven Rock Loop, which includes a visit to (and down) the park’s 100-foot namesake bluff above the river, and the 1.5-mile Little Creek Loop, a trail that’s green year-round. The hike starts at 9:30 a.m. Anne is your trail master.
Late afternoon light at Umstead. Umstead State Park: Sunday afternoon, we’ll beat those fading weekend blues with a 4-mile hike at Umstead State Park. This hike heads out on the singletrack Loblolly Trail (known for a stream crossing that’s only an adventure if it’s rained of late) and returns on the Reedy Creek Bike & Bridle Trail: the first mile a gradual downhill, the last mile not. This hike starts at 5, under the direction of Lori.
For more information and to sign up for both hikes, visit GetHiking! Triangle.- Night hike: Look at satellite imagery of the eastern United States taken at night and you’ll see something curious in eastern North Carolina: a big dark spot. The rest of the eastern seaboard is lit like Methuselah’s birthday cake; hereabouts, it’s fade to black. And that makes the area perfect for yet another kind of outdoor adventure. Night hiking! Thursday, for those of you new to the great unlit outdoors, we’ll hold an in-store clinic about what you’ll need to night hike and what to expect. Friday, with this newfound knowledge, we’ll venture to Grifton, to the A Time For Science learning center for a night hike. We’ll start at dusk, around 7:30 p.m., and hike into the night. A great introduction that we bet will leave you wondering why you hadn’t done it before. For details and to sign up, visit our GetExploring! Greenville Meetup page. And for the record, while we’ll relish our lack of light pollution, we’ll also be hiking with headlamps.
Last week’s adventures: Goose Creek, Horton Grove
Hiking Goose Creek: A hike at Goose Creek State Park rarely disappoints. If you wondered about this past Sunday afternoon’s hike, we’ll let the pictures stand for themselves.
Need more evidence?
You’ll find it, in the form of more photos, on our GetExploring! Greenville Meetup site.
High spring at Horton Grove: Spring wildflower season is peaking, and for the past two weeks we’ve had a front seat: two weekends ago on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Eno River, then this past Sunday at the Triangle Land Conservancy’s Horton Grove Nature Preserve.
Horton Grove is the TLC’s largest preserve, with 708 acres. There’s a fair amount of biodiversity on that acreage, and on our 5-mile hike (there’s about 8 miles overall), we saw a good deal of it, from restored prairie to piedmont hardwood forest, to bottomlands and surprisingly high ridge lines.
And did we mention the blue skies and 70-degree temperatures?
Gear We Like: MSR MiniWorks
Water treatment systems are mandatory for backpacking but a great asset for long day hikes as well: Do you want to carry six pounds of water or would you rather tote a pound and refill when the occasion presents? There’s never been a better time to have no excuse for not having water treatment on you, from the Aquamira Water Treatment Drops to the Steripen to the Sawyer MINI Water Filter to the Platypus GravityWorks. All new innovations that are easy to use and do the job of filtering out your harmful protozoa. Yet despite the innovation, we remain devoted to our MSR MiniWorks. Yes, we’ve complained that it can be tedious, sitting streamside for minutes on end pumping water through the ceramic filter. Yet over the years this has become something of a zen thing for us, a moment to sit on the bank and take notice of the pool from which we draw. Plus, it’s never let us down: clear, cool, clean water every time.
Tip of the Week: Clear, cool water
Time for our seasonal advisory to drink heavily. Water, that is. It’s finally spring, you’re finally starting to break a sweat on the trail. Regardless of the temperature you should be hydrating regularly during a hike; you lose body fluids during a hike regardless of the heat. But with temperatures climbing into the 70s and low 80s, it starts to become imperative. No longer is it OK to show up on a hike without some sort of hydration.
We could fill this space with numerous tips about hydrating, but we’re going to narrow it to one: You’re more likely to drink if what you’re drinking is cold. Hot water is fine for tea, but to slake a thirst you want to keep it cool. If you drink out of a water bottle, fill your bottle 3/4 full the night before a hike, stick it in the freezer. The next morning, top it off with cold water. Your water should stay cold most of the day. If you prefer a hydration pack, load your bladder with ice, then fill the remainder with cold water. You should experience similar effects. Plus, in really hot weather, it will help keep your back cool.
Resource of the Week: Advice from the masses
Perhaps you’ve noticed that some of the best advice you’ve received about hiking has come from the guy or gal next to you on the trail, not the guy or gal leading the hike. With so many rank-and-file hikers out there conducting field tests, that should come as no surprise. No surprise, either, then, that backpacker.com has a Readers Best Advice page, including nuggets from the likes of Jamie Scott Leslie of Mesa, Ariz., who suggests that to keep the water in your bottle cool, you stick it in a wet sock and tie it to the outside of your pack. Worked for him in Kuwait.
Find other such tips here.