Explore these waterfalls and mountain summits in Georgia’s mild climate. From the chilly altitudes of Georgia’s southern Appalachian mountains to its more temperate southern coastline, all are beautiful year-round, but they’re arguably better in wintery landscapes and cooler temperatures.
Don’t ditch your hiking boots when temperatures plummet and leaves fall: you’ll miss out on one of Georgia’s best hiking seasons.
Autumn’s deciduous leaf drop opens wide winter vistas on mountain summits otherwise cloaked in leaf cover. Icicles drip from the crest of waterfalls, creating light-reflecting prisms. And wintery fog and snow dustings turn familiar, favorite landscapes into new sensory experiences. Welcome to winter hiking in Georgia’s cool climate.
As the popular Appalachian Trail continues to morph and grow and attract more users and admirers, protecting the land that hugs the footpath and winds into its view is more important than ever, conservationists say.
And now one of the more popular access points to the trail in Mitchell County, North Carolina has a little more elbow room in permanent preservation.
The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, a land trust based in Asheville, recently purchased 76 acres a half-mile from Carvers Gap, a popular spot for hikers accessing the Appalachian Trail and grassy balds of the Highlands of Roan. SAHC acquired the tract to preserve it and protect scenic views from multiple vantage points along the AT.
“It’s very important. As you cross Round Bald on the AT, you see the tract, and it’s something that’s been on our priority list for many years,” said Morgan Sommerville, southern regional director of the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “The AT crosses a grassy bald there that with a ‘Sound of Music’-like environment, with very little vegetation to obscure your view into eastern Tennessee and as far as Grandfather Mountain and Mount Mitchell. We’re hoping the U.S. Forest Service will purchase the tract from the SAHC using Land and Water Conservation funds.”
Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials announced that the next full-scale, Trails Forever restoration will begin on Alum Cave Trail in 2015. The Trails Forever crew will focus restoration efforts on several targeted locations along the 5-mile trail to improve visitor safety and stabilize eroding trail sections. The restoration work will require temporary trail closures throughout the 2-year process.
Alum Cave Trail is one of the most popular trails in the park, leading hikers to iconic areas including Arch Rock, Inspiration Point, Alum Cave Bluffs, Mt. Le Conte, and LeConte Lodge.
Park rangers respond to numerous accidents along the trail each year, especially along the upper, narrow corridors. The planned work will improve overall trail safety and protect natural resources by repairing historic cable and handrail systems, reinforcing hanging trail sections, reducing trail braiding, and improving drainage to prevent further erosion.
There are also several narrow areas where erosion and small landslides have damaged significant sections of the trail, making it difficult to safely travel through the areas during inclement weather or to pass hikers coming from the opposite direction. By restoring these fragile trail sections, the park can best ensure long-term sustainability and protect trailside natural communities from degradation.
Over the last several decades the sport of hiking has become increasingly more popular. According to the latest Outdoor Recreation Participation Report, 11.4% of all adults in the United States participated in hiking in 2013.
But the burning question to a modern-day trekker is when did people take to the trail for pleasure?
Ever since our predecessors began walking on two feet humans have used bipedal mobility to hunt, explore, migrate to another territory, or trade goods with another community. At some point we as humans figured out that there doesn’t have to be a utilitarian reason for walking.
We discovered that joy can be found by simply traipsing through the woods, seeing wildlife in their natural habitat, admiring the beauty of a wildflower, marveling at the roar of a waterfall, or soaking-in the awe-inspiring views from a mountain top. Is this a recent phenomenon, or was this something that humans always had a natural urging for?
Here are a few of the key milestones in the history of hiking that’s led to its popularity today:
The Red Desert in Wyoming is huge. It encompasses 9,320 square miles and is the largest unfenced area in the continental U.S. I-80 cuts across its southern quarter. Highway 287 runs up its eastern side and then angles across its northern edge, following the route of the historic Oregon Trail whose 350,000 travelers between the 1840s and 1860s wanted no part of the arid Red Desert. The Green River creates the boundary to the west.
A map shows only two dirt roads dissecting this massive, nearly treeless wilderness larger than some states. Just imagine that, two rough and nearly unused dirt roads in 9,320 square miles.
The dark-red earth is an endless array of interconnected cracks that stretches to the horizon. Every few steps leads to another collection of bleached white bones; sometimes belonging to a horse, sometimes an antelope, sometimes just a jaw bone or skull and occasionally an entire skeleton still positioned just as it had fallen. It all feels so prehistoric, so empty, so lonely.
To the west, the ground turns from red cracked dirt to white, hard-packed sand and the sagebrush and clump grass gives way to the black rock spires, white cliffs and painted dry layers of the Jack Morrow Hills. Mountains are visible in the distance to the east and north. To the northwest, sand dunes stand out against the backdrop of distant mountains. Not just any dunes. Like everything in the Red Desert, they have an impressive resume. These dunes are, in fact, the largest living dune system in the United States.
There aren’t many marriage proposals that can be seen from space, but for this traveller, an epic journey through Japan was also a unique marriage proposal.
Japanese artist Yasushi Takahashi left his job to travel through Japan, covering more than 4,349 miles in six months, mostly on foot and sometimes by car, ferry or bicycle. GPS technology tracked his every step as he journeyed from Hokkaido island to Hyodo Cliff on Kyushu island where the trek ended.
At the end of his journey, the GPS records of his travels around the country spelled out the phrase ‘Marry Me’ – with an arrow through the heart sign added afterwards for good measure.
Each location was carefully planned so that the GPS tracking would spell out his romantic chosen phrase clearly. ‘I wanted to write the world’s biggest proposal, and I found GPS drawing was the way to do it,’ Yassan said of his feat.
Hikers take note: miles and miles of new trails on Long Island’s East End are now open. It’s all part of an effort to get people to enjoy the natural treasures in their own backyard.
Every week members of the Southampton Trails Preservation Society walk the public trails dotting the landscape from Southampton to Bridgehampton, but until now, you had to know the way. “If you’re a newcomer, but you see the green blazes you will not get lost,” said Susan Colledge, with the society.
The Green Blazes Trail Club markers now mark the way along the winding trails that connect many of the East End’s hamlets. The hiking club put up the markers along with several maps to show where you are along the trail.
The preservation group encountered some initial resistance to marking the trails that border homes, but it evaporated when residents realized most trail visitors only come to enjoy the natural surroundings. “It’s a completely different view than from you car,” said Colledge. “I’ve lived here a while but it wasn’t until I entered the woods that I realized what we had.”
Writers, photographers, storytellers — gather your lenses, unsheathe your pens — today Maptia 2.0 is launching.
Come and join this global community of creative individuals who love to explore new cultures and new places, who care about the environment, and who believe that thoughtful storytelling can make a tangible, positive impact in the world.
Maptia is a place to publish our most thoughtful and inspiring stories about the world around us. Stories about the places we call home, stories about the places closest to our hearts, stories about the places we have travelled. Stories about lives utterly different from our own, and stories about the people and places who need our help and support to thrive.
Together with our community, we are on a mission to gather an ever-growing, shared record of our diverse lives and experiences from every single place on the planet — one that inspires us to get out there and to make the most of our time on Earth.
Meanderthals is a Maptia founding storyteller, participating in the development of the original Maptia over the previous years. The Meanderthals storytelling page can be found here. With this launch of Maptia 2.0 all the capabilities and opportunities to share are now available to you as well. Why not join this group of passionate storytellers for a quest to gather tales from far-flung corners of the globe?
In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first people to summit Mt. Everest. Their expedition started in Kathmandu, and led them to the village of Jiri; from there they trekked across 100 miles of mountains and jungle
Each year, tens of thousands of people journey into Nepal’s Sagarmāthā National Park to witness Everest Base Camp firsthand. Most fly into the tiny airport of Lukla to begin their journey, but an adventurous few retrace Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic steps from the beginning.
Most people who travel to Everest Base Camp today begin their journey by flying into “the world’s most dangerous airport” in the town of Lukla. From Lukla, it’s just a few days’ hike into the Himalayas along a path that has been neatly cultivated to facilitate thousands of tourists.
Of the tens of thousands of people that travel into Sagarmāthā National Park every year, mere hundreds do so by entering from the adjoining Gaurishankar Conservation Area, where Hillary’s journey began. The 65 miles from Jiri to Lukla constantly change with the elevation. The area down low is like the Costa Rican rain forest — vegetation is lush and green; turquoise rivers rage through every valley. Up high reminded is like areas in California — massive rock faces littered with pine trees; ridgeline after ridgeline filling the sky.
One of the longest hiking routes along the coast of Maine can be found within the densely populated boundaries of Bath. There the Whiskeag Trail traverses three conservation preserves and several municipally owned properties on its five-mile journey through the wooded outskirts of town, much of it along Whiskeag Creek.
The trail is a project of Bath Trails, itself a collaboration of the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, the city of Bath, Healthy Maine Partnerships, local schools, mountain bikers, landowners and citizens.
Bath Trails worked for four years to establish a formal trail corridor and create continuous trail connections with adequate signage. Using 200 acres of Kennebec Estuary Land Trust holdings at Thorne Head, Sewall Woods and Whiskeag Creek, plus 450 acres of city land, the Whiskeag Trail was finally opened to the public in 2010.
Close to downtown yet with a backcountry feel along much of its length, the Whiskeag Trail not only offers fine hiking but opportunities for running, mountain biking, birding and other low-impact outdoor recreation, all the while protecting important wetland wildlife habitat that is home to several threatened species of plants and fish. Cross country skiing and snowshoeing are popular on the trail in winter.
The crew at LeConte Lodge are connoisseurs of sky gazing. Whether it’s an orange sunset blazing across the horizon, an August meteor shower, or the International Space Station orbiting at night, they’ve seen it all.
Two weeks ago, the crew and lodge guests were treated to a rare occurrence when a dense layer of clouds settled over the valley at sunset, leaving the skies over Mount LeConte, elevation 6,594 feet, crystal clear.
With Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg buried beneath a sea of clouds, the stars that night twinkled at full strength, unblemished by city lights. Nobody was more thrilled by the nocturnal pageantry than Chris and Allyson Virden, a married couple who have been the site managers of LeConte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park since 2003.
Their last day as managers at LeConte was Tuesday, November 25th when the lodge closed for the winter. They say that after 12 years it’s time to leave the highest overnight lodge east of the Mississippi River for a world with electric lights, indoor plumbing and washing machines.
When LeConte Lodge reopens on March 23 for the 2015 season, the new site manager will be Ruthie Puckett of Decatur, Ala., who worked this past season as a crew member.
Throw a few supplies in a day pack, rendezvous with your nature-loving friends and get yourself to a trailhead for an outdoor adventure everyone will enjoy.
Here are 12 hikes a short distance from 12 major cities that offer excellent trail conditions, diverse landscapes and spectacular views.
Griffith Park, Los Angeles’s largest and most-visited green space, has 53 miles of trails snaking through it, but a proposed new project would increase that number considerably. The plan is to take about 180 acres of untouched, LADWP-owned land near Universal City (known as the Upper Hollywood Reservoir) and open it up to the public with hiking trails on about 11 miles, plus a parking lot.
Opening paths on the land would increase connectivity to Cahuenga Peak, in addition to giving Angelenos more land to hike. Cahuenga is that peak next to the Hollywood Sign that the city bought at great expense a few years ago.
The project’s well on its way—the LA Department of Recreation and Parks gave the go-ahead to a license agreement that will allow it to lease the land from LADWP for 20 years.
But all the enthusiasm does not mean this is an unequivocally good plan—the organization Friends of Griffith Park says that opening the land to the public may have some unintended effects on the area’s wildlife, possibly driving out animals like deer and mountain lions.
“We were hiking over mountain ranges to get away from all the war,” Pol says. “We were running over mountain ranges while we were being shot at. Landmines were everywhere. We were hiking for our lives, pretty much.”
His family had managed to survive the late 1970s under the Khmer Rouge, the brutal Communist regime that killed more than a quarter of Cambodia’s population. But when war broke out between Cambodia and Vietnam, the Pol family fled on foot to Thailand. Hiking was something you did out of fear and desperation, not for fun.
After nearly a decade shuttling between refugee camps near the Thai border, the family was finally sponsored to come to the United States. They resettled as refugees in Lowell, Massachusetts, which has one of the largest populations of Cambodians outside of Cambodia.
As soon as he finished high school and got his driver’s license, he had the “freedom to go hiking every weekend.” He got his routine down to a science so he could spend every minute of his weekends on Mt. Monadnock and other peaks in New Hampshire and Maine.
“After work on a Friday, I would drive up to the trailhead of the mountain that night,” he says. “I would either sleep in my car at the trailhead, or I would park the car and pitch my tent by the trailhead, so when I woke up that Saturday morning I was just ready to climb that mountain, first thing.”
The mountains have become a cure-all for Pol: “To me, the mountain is my vacation, my doctor, my therapist,” he says. “When I’m happy I go hiking. When I’m sad I go hiking.”
One of the highest forts in the Maharashtra region of India is Salher. As per the common lore, Kalsubai boasts to be the highest peak in the Sahyadri mountains while Salher has the distinction of being the highest fort in the Sahyadris and the second highest peak. About 5,141 feet high, the trek is arduous and takes about three to five hours from the base to the top. As per the ancient scriptures, it is mentioned that this mountain was a place where Lord Parshuram did penance after winning back Earth.
This ancient fort is historically significant as well. Battles took place during the reign of Shivaji here. The fort of Salher was captured by Shivaji in 1671, during his campaign of the Baglan region. The Marathas defeated the Mughal generals Ikhlaas Khan and Bahlol Khan in a battle, which saw tremendous destruction all over. The 120,000 troops of Shivaji lost 10,000.
Once you reach the top, you can see a few temples around the fort. Just further ahead, are two water cisterns and a bit further the Gangasagar Lake comes into view. Next to the lake are the roofless temples of Renuka Devi and Ganesh.
Fjällräven, a Swedish company (the name means “Arctic Fox” in Swedish) started in 1960, was the first to make and distribute the original external frame backpack, along with revolutionizing expedition tent and sleeping bag design in the late 60s and 70s. By applying the now-famous Swedish combination of functionality with elegantly simple and beautiful design to outdoor equipment and apparel, Fjällräven has been the choice of in-the-know outdoor enthusiasts for decades.
The secret behind much of their success is a patented fabric called G-1000. The company uses this fabric on their Keb Gaiter Pant, which may be the best pair of hiking, trekking, camping, fishing, hunting, and general adventuring pants you ever own.
G-1000 is a tightly woven, fairly straightforward blend of cotton and polyester that provides excellent ventilation, durability, and plenty of wind and water resistance. Plus, it doesn’t feel or fit like a plastic garbage bag or stiff Gore-Tex. Another great feature of G-1000 is you can wax it to increase the wind resistance and make it water repellent.
They’re stretchy where they need to be and durable and water repellent everywhere else. The front thigh pockets helped keep our compasses, GPS, wallet, and phone organized — all protected from the elements and easy to access. The pant cuffs hook to your boots to keep scree and water out. They even have a zip-off feature that allows the pants to become shorts. The bottoms morph into great gaiters.
Join Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy on Saturday, December 13th at Weed Patch Mountain to hike the new trails at Town of Lake Lure’s Buffalo Creek Park. This hike is open to both members and non-members and is located just north of Lake Lure.
More than 1,500 acres of Weed Patch Mountain were saved from development when CMLC acquired the tract in 2009. The Town of Lake Lure has since purchased 200 acres for the creation of Buffalo Creek Park and is currently constructing a network of hiking and mountain biking trails.
Hiking distance is 4.0 miles round-trip with an elevation gain of 1,000 feet. The difficulty of this hike is rated as strenuous.
This is a CMLC Hiking Challenge 3 hike.
Space is limited; so sign-up today to reserve your spot.
Click here to sign-up for CMLC’s December hike at Buffalo Creek Park.
After a daylong slog through the suffocating Guatemalan jungle, you emerge before a soaring pyramid in the ghostly ruins of El Tintal, the first stop in the forested realm of the Serpent King.
A slight breeze stirs the air, offering a respite from the heat. You climb the pyramid and watch the forest swallow the sun. Earthen mounds entombing cities lost to time lay scattered below. You are heading for El Mirador, the grandest city of them all, only now beginning to reveal its secrets.
You set off before dawn from Flores (about 300 miles north of Guatemala City), driving four hours to Carmelita, a forlorn village on the edge of the rain forest. From there you would go on foot.
El Mirador, or the Lookout, is considered the cradle of Maya civilization, the birthplace of its language, art, mythology and architecture. It was ruled by the dynasty of Reino Kan, or the Serpent King, flourishing between 600 BC and AD 100.
But unlike the ruins of nearby Tikal, which gets up to 350,000 visitors a year, El Mirador is far more isolated. Many of the 3,000 or so who try the trip annually are defeated by fatigue, illness or weather. Anyone attempting the journey should be reasonably fit.
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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