The Elkin Valley Trails Association (EVTA) is bringing hiking — and much more — to Elkin, North Carolina and much of the surrounding area. Trial hikes along portions of the trail between Stone Mountain and Elkin have already taken place. The EVTA trail is part of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail that will stretch, when completed, from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks — more than 1,000 miles.
About 300 miles are complete — from Clingman’s Dome to Stone Mountain Park. There are other pieces of the trail completed adding another 200 miles to its length. The trail, from Stone Mountain Park to the Outer Banks, is now formed by those pieces and roadway.
Bob Hillyer is in charge of a task force handling a 23-mile piece connecting Stone Mountain Park to Elkin; and a 38-mile piece connecting Elkin to Pilot Mountain. It’s a chance to experience nature and Hillyer says it’s closer than you think.
Hillyer said part of the process for the trail between Elkin and Stone Mountain has been taking part of the trail off a paved road and onto a gravel road. When a three-mile section over Well’s Knob is complete, that will be taken off a gravel or paved road. When a bridge is completed along another stretch, two-and-a-half more miles will be taken off a gravel or paved road.
The “lost and forbidden” kingdom of Upper Mustang, tucked away in northern Nepal, is an arid and ancient land, like a flashback to the Tibet of the 1950s, when the Dalai Lama still reigned in Lhasa.
Virtually untouched by modern civilization and isolated by rugged mountain terrain, the old way of life of the Lobas (people of Mustang) still exists, while its ancient Buddhist monasteries are still intact. It was led by King Jigme Palbar Bista until 2007, when Nepal was declared a republic.
Trekking in the Upper Mustang is comparatively less known as the region was only opened to outsiders in 1991. The landscape is a visual feast for your eyes. The vivid backdrop of a weird and wonderful semi-desert features vast desolate mountain slopes where nomadic shepherds herd their flocks.
The eroded mesas are colored brown, blue, yellow and red by natural earth pigments and sculptured by the wind and snow, as if they were carved by men. Surrounding are some 35 mountains ranging from 2,800 to 3,800 meters, some with shining, snowy peaks. It is almost like the American Grand Canyon…but more mystifying, indeed, breathtaking.
It takes a certain masochism to experience Death Valley National Park as it’s meant to be seen. But torture yourself just a little, take a few extra steps, and you’ll be rewarded with a combination of natural and historical wonders that no place on Earth can match: gorgeous sand dunes sculpted by wind; a dried-up lakebed named the Racetrack for its power to move rocks; ghost towns from a failed mining rush; a medley of rock layers rising thousands of feet telling a visual history that goes back millions of years; and so much more.
Don’t be scared off by Goth-like names such as Devil’s Corn Field, Badwater Basin, and Hell’s Gate — for all the harshness, there is a hard-fought, fragile beauty here that will present itself if you look for it.
It’s not all desert; you need to prepare for the cold as much as the heat. And if you go in the cooler fall months, you won’t be risking your life outdoors — at least not that much.
From the end of October through the New Year and onto Valentine’s Day, it’s easy to forget that the holidays we celebrate are simply cultural constructs that we can choose to engage in — or not. The concepts and ideas we celebrate — like our spiritual beliefs and daily habits — are a choice, though sometimes it feels like we “have” to celebrate them, even if we don’t feel like it. Culture is ours to do with as we choose, and that means that we can add, subtract, or edit celebrations or holidays as we see fit.
If you want to add a new and different perspective to your life, there are plenty of other ways to recognize joy and beauty outside your own traditions. From Scandinavia to Japan, India and Germany, different concepts may strike a nerve with you and inspire your own personal or familial celebration or, sound like an acknowledgement of something you have long felt, but didn’t have a word for.
For example, in Norway friluftsliv translates directly as “free air life,” which doesn’t quite do it justice. Coined relatively recently, in 1859, it is the concept that being outside is good for human beings’ mind and spirit. “It is a term in Norway that is used often to describe a way of life that is spent exploring and appreciating nature,” says Anna Stoltenberg, culture coordinator for Sons of Norway, a U.S.-based Norwegian heritage group. Other than that, it’s not a strict definition: it can include sleeping outside, hiking, taking photographs or meditating, playing or dancing outside, for adults or kids. It doesn’t require any special equipment, includes all four seasons, and needn’t cost much money. Practicing friluftsliv could be as simple as making a commitment to walking in a natural area five days a week, or doing a day-long hike once a month.
In 1976, it looked like a good idea: to divert the waters of the Danube into a salt-water lagoon on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, and irrigate millions of hectares of arid steppe land. But the result has been human and environmental disaster on an epic scale.
Some environmental disasters happen in the blink of an eye, much too quickly for anyone to react: an oil spill, a nuclear explosion, the sudden collapse of a tailings dam. They are often the result of an operator’s error, or sloppy inspection, or adverse weather conditions no one could have foreseen.
But there is another group of eco disasters that are years, sometimes decades in the making. It is hard to trace them back to a single source because the gradual accumulation of bad judgments, blind ideology, indifference, greed, or plain stupidity is so enormous that it defies all logic.
Such an example is the massive diversion of rivers in the Soviet Union that, over a period of 50 years, has led to the demise of Central Asia’s Aral Sea. Another is the damming of the Colorado River.
If you’re like most people, all of your good intentions, inspired by the illusion of some cosmic do-over that comes with the new year, are already well on their way to oblivion. In one year and out the other, as the saying about resolutions goes.
The problem with many resolutions is that they’re simply too vague. So maybe you’ve made a resolution to hike more in 2015. That’s a perfectly noble goal but what does it actually mean?
Perhaps we always vow to hike more, both for body and spirit. So the following suggestions are less about helping you achieve your hiking resolution than finding incremental ways that may actually get you out on the trail more frequently.
Death Valley is an imposing place to go for a hike, though the staff at the national park is encouraging visitors to experience the park on a hiking trail through a new program that debuts in January.
The Hike Death Valley program offers a list of hikes for visitors to take. Each hike has a point value assigned to it. For instance, hike the half-mile to Scotty’s grave behind Scotty’s Castle and you’ll earn a point. Hiking to Wild Rose Peak, on the other hand, an 8-mile trek, will earn you four points. Some of the hiking trails on the list are ADA friendly. Some restrictions also will apply between April 16 and October 14 in light of how hot it gets in the park during the summer months.
Take photos along your hikes and bring them to a park visitor center and, if you’ve earned at least four points, you’ll receive a free water-resistant Hike Death Valley decal.
Park staff note that the decal and trails list will change every year. Start your collection now.
His job wasn’t difficult, but it wore on him all the same. He craved adventure. He had to do something. That something, it turned out, was hiking the venerable Appalachian Trail in an unbroken streak from Georgia to Maine and, that not being enough, paddling a green canoe from the headwaters of the Mississippi River all the way to Baton Rouge, La.
Jared McCallum hadn’t even backpacked before. The 28-year-old spent much of his high school life like any other kid in suburban America, hanging around with friends, whiling away the hours. Yet there he was, out in the wild, for 200 days.
“What I was looking for was to see who I was, and figure out what I wanted,” McCallum said recently, back in Florida after the long journey, sporting a wiry beard. “How else am I supposed to take care of other people if I don’t even know myself?”
After graduating from River Ridge High School in 2004, McCallum joined the Marine Corps and served two tours as a helicopter crew chief and door gunner in the Baghdad area of Iraq. Once home in 2009, he began to study horticulture science at the University of Tennessee.
There, a chance encounter planted a seed in his mind.
Heavy rains on the Hawaiian island of Kauai led to major rescue efforts by the Kauai Fire Department. Dozens of hikers are lucky to be alive on Christmas Eve. More than 60 of them had to be rescued from Kalalau Valley on Kauai that morning. But officials say some of them weren’t even supposed to be there.
A total of 62 stranded hikers were air lifted out of the valley after multiple streams became too dangerous to cross. Some were campers who had been there for days, but others had ignored warnings that the conditions were dangerous because of the bad weather and hiked in anyway.
Because of the recent rainy weather the Department of Land and Natural Resources posted park closure signs at the Kalalau trail head days before. While many of the hikers had already been in the area before the signs were posted some hikers ignored the warning signs.
Matt Vidaurri has hiked Kalalau Valley before and knows that it’s important to always be ready in case waters rise and you become stranded. “Whenever it rains and even when it drizzles just stay out,” said Vidaurri.
C’mon people! Don’t put our brave first responders at risk.
Start your New Year off on the right (or left) foot with a First Day Hike at a State Park.
Explore history, view winter wildlife, enjoy fresh air and connect with nature at these fun, family-friendly events. First Day Hikes are a healthy way to rejuvenate with family and friends after the long holiday rush.
These free, guided hikes are usually easy to moderate in difficulty and have a wide range of miles. Hikers should dress for winter weather, wear sturdy hiking shoes or boots appropriate to the conditions and bring water and snacks.
First Day Hikes is an annual, nationwide special event co-sponsored by America’s State Parks. Last year, the event saw record participation with more than 800 hikes and 28,000 participants across all 50 states. First Day Hikes originated more than 20 years ago at the Blue Hills Reservation, a state park in Milton, Mass.
Visit your state’s state park website for details on First Day Hikes near you…
National Park Service Chesapeake Bay was one of 37 national parks selected to receive a 2014 Active Trails grant from the National Park Foundation, the official charity of America’s national parks. Now in its sixth year, the Active Trails program supports healthy living by getting people out and active in national parks through projects that help restore, protect, and/or create land and water trails across the country. These projects include hands-on learning, hiking, kayaking, snowshoeing, volunteering, and more.
“Through the Active Trails program, people across the country are connecting with their parks, discovering more ways to lead active and healthy lives, and giving back to the places they love,” said Dan Wenk, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation. “These grants are critical to helping with ongoing efforts to maintain and enhance the 17,000 miles of land and water trails across the National Park System.”
With this funding, the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay worked with partners to create the All-Sensory Trail at Maryland’s Patapsco Valley State Park. The state park is a partner site along the Star Spangled Banner and Captain John Smith Chesapeake national historic trails.
The latest addition to Governor Jack Markell’s First State Trails and Pathways initiative opened in Dover December 18, 2014.
State officials cut the ribbon on the Capital City Trail, a 10-foot-wide multi-use path near Legislative Hall. The trail connects to the St. Jones Greenway on its southern end and the Silver Lake Trail system to the north.
Jeff Niezgoda, the program manager for the First State Trails and Pathways program, said the multi-use trail is accessible to Delawareans of all ages. “These types of facilities, being offroad, are low stress, where families can utilize them for recreational purposes as well as transportation,” he said. Niezgoda added the trail is also good for the environment. “From a transportation perspective we’re always looking at reducing emissions,” he said. “It improves air quality, and it’s also an overall good thing to do.”
The trail cost the state a total of $1.6 million. The General Assembly has approved $20 million since 2012 to expand Delaware’s trail network.
In celebration of 100 years of trails and recreation, Rocky Mountain National Park officials are encouraging people to get out and enjoy the vast park’s excursions in 2015.
Julie Nelson, of Loveland, CO advocates going further.
She and her father, Bill Perry, have made a goal to hike 100 miles next year in celebration of the park’s 100th anniversary.
She is encouraging the community to do so, as well. It’s called the Rocky Mountain National Park Centennial Challenge.
“It seemed cool that it’s the 100th anniversary. My dad and I do a lot of local hiking and hiking in the park anyway,” Nelson said. “I thought … I should ask more people to do it, too.”
She wants to remind herself and the public not to take for granted the beauty of the mountains nearby.
When it comes to getting great sunrise and sunset photos, perhaps the best time of year to find success is during winter. There are two reasons why the winter months offer up the greatest opportunities. The first reason is that the sun rises later and sets earlier so you don’t have to get up at a frighteningly early hour or stay out past dinner time to capture the beauty. The second reason is a bit more scientific.
The colors of a sunrise or sunset are based on how light is entering and traveling through the atmosphere. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells us that dust and pollution particles in the air scatter light and reduce how much makes it to the ground, and thus reduces the intensity of colors at sunrise and sunset. So, when it’s hazy out, the sunrise or sunset colors will be more muted. When the air is crisp and clear, these twilight hours will offer up more vibrant colors.
NOAA states, “Because air circulation is more sluggish during the summer, and because the photochemical reactions which result in the formation of smog and haze proceed most rapidly at that time of the year, late fall and winter are the most favored times for sunrise and sunset viewing over most of the United States.
Pollution climatology also largely explains why the deserts and tropics are noted for their twilight hues: air pollution in these regions is, by comparison, minimal.
So it’s a great time of year to get out for a hike, and to capture the sun.
An engineer with an eye for cost-effective design is winning fans in the third world with an affordable wheelchair made out of bike parts.
The original chair grew out of a project for disabled people in rural areas. Amos Winter, then a graduate student at MIT, designed a three-wheeled chair made from ordinary bike parts, with levers that riders pump to power it along unpaved rural roads, as well as around the house.
“There was not a product to meet that section of that market,” said Winter, who is now a professor at the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) lab at MIT, which creates cost-effective systems for the developing world.
Winter and a team set up a company — called Global Research Innovation and Technology, Cambridge — that would manufacture and sell the chairs, for about $200.
Parts that are likely to wear down can be replaced at a bike shop, Winter said. It also has a compact body with wheels that can be removed with one hand, so the chair can fit in the trunk of a sedan.
An overgrown trail with a link to the Mount Baker Marathon, a storied race that occurred a century ago, is being cleared out and rebuilt as part of a Bellingham ultra-runner’s dream of launching a new version of the competition.
Daniel Probst knows first-hand why the Ridley Creek Trail needs a makeover. He and other runners attempting an epic run, hike and climb from Bellingham Bay to Mount Baker and back had to crawl under logs and clamber over trees, more than 30 of them, that had fallen across the trail.
Also, about half of the trail had turned into a creek bed and was nearly unrecognizable, he said. No wonder, then, that it took the runners two hours to travel 2 1/2 miles.
Probst spent months planning the marathon attempt from the Bellingham, WA waterfront to Baker and back, which included the Ridley Creek Trail. The 3 1/2-mile route enters the Mt. Baker National Recreation Area and Mt. Baker Wilderness, and links up to Mazama Park.
The trail work, which started this year, is a combined effort of the U.S. Forest Service, Cascade Mountain Runners and the Washington Trails Association.
During his thirty years tracking lost souls through the Smokies and beyond McCarter rescued twenty-six people, many of them children. These days he’s still in the mountains, often thinking about those he found—and the few he didn’t.
The last lost boy he found was named Phillip Roman. Phillip, who was ten years old, had wandered away from his family while they were at Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smoky Mountains, and as happens more frequently and more suddenly than you could ever imagine, he simply seemed to disappear. This was in the summer of 1994, and Dwight McCarter, who had been a backcountry ranger for almost thirty years and was just about to retire, was called in to track him. Phillip had been lost for three days by then.
Listening to McCarter tell a story is to understand why stories are told: It’s a rush, the sound his sentences make, the voice his words come to me on. It’s better than a book.
McCarter is sixty-nine years old now. He has kind, intelligent eyes and a Lincolnesque beard, lightened by gray. He’s thin, sturdy, but not tall, and when he’s telling a story—which is what he does, really, from the moment you meet him until the moment you’re gone, he laughs a lot, the kind of laugh that begs for company and gets it. He is amused by people, history, and nature itself.
He was two years out of the army before becoming a ranger, in 1967. His first job was a seasonal position, manning fire towers. It was a job he loved. During fire season he’d sit in a cane chair on top of the tower and watch for lightning strikes, then he’d map the strike, “run a line out to it,” and they’d check the position out for smoke. But he wasn’t long for the tower. He had skills other rangers didn’t, and still don’t. McCarter can track a human being.
Ideas to be gathered from partners, stakeholders and the public will be a major component of a master planning process underway to guide completion of the Mountains-to-Sea State Trail, according to the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation.
The 1,000-mile trail corridor will ultimately link Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains to Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the coast. Nearly two thirds of the cross-state route has been completed as a continuous, off-road trail experience, offering opportunities for hiking, biking and horseback riding through some of North Carolina’s most scenic landscapes. Where the trail has not yet been completed, detours along secondary roads allow ambitious hikers to complete the trek.
A completed master plan will chart a path toward official designation of remaining portions by setting priorities for completing trail sub-sections. It will also unify regional planning efforts, identify potential new partners and funding strategies, and establish guidelines for signs and publicity. The state parks system has hired Planning Communities, LLC to prepare a detailed master plan by late 2015 at a contract price of $120,000 supported through the N.C. Parks and Recreation Trust Fund.
I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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