Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

I needed a week to recover from this one. The Grandfather Trail along the summit ridge at Grandfather Mountain State Park is a crazy obstacle course of ladders, cable routes and 50-ton boulders. Strong hikers can do all the trails between the Mile-High Swinging Bridge and Calloway Peak in a day, I suppose, but the rest of us have to settle for saner outings like the one I did last Saturday.

This is my second try at these trails. The first took me to the Swinging Bridge and MacRae Peak; this time I decided to skip the bridge (mostly) and see if I could manage the Calloway Peak out-and-back in one outing. Not hardly. It was another of those four-miles-in-six-hours days. (See why I have to hike solo? Banana slugs make better time).

After revisiting MacRae Peak, I navigated a boulder zone and scrambled up The Chute to a cool cut between the rocks called Attic Window. From there I headed downhill, passing a fine campground called Alpine Meadow. I turned back about three hours in, when my GPS receiver informed me I’d covered a whopping 1.9 miles.

I guess I should not have waited till way down here to mention it was a perfect day for a hike and I brought home some of my best pictures in months. Read the rest of this entry »

I have as much fun finding these trails as I do hiking on them. They’re all tucked way, way back in the countryside, and while there are reasonably direct routes (like less than a half-dozen turns from a major highway), I much prefer the challenge of navigating a mad tangle of two-lane blacktops. The brain’s more hike-ready if I’ve gotten lost three times on the way to the trailhead.

I hiked Saturday in the upper half of Pilot Mountain’s River Section and Sunday in the lower. Had the trails mostly to myself, except for one group of people on horseback and a few folks out fishing. Frankly, despite crazy-hot weather and the risk of encountering the occasional copperhead or cotton-mouth, August might well be the best time to visit because nobody else is there.

You have your bugs buzzing, birds chirping, waterways burbling, all under thick, shady tree cover. The trails are easy by North Carolina standards, though there are a few streams to cross and hills to negotiate. A hiking pole is handy.

All in all, a great place to just get away from everybody without having to drive a hundred miles and deal with a bunch of crazy-complicated mountain trails (and even more complicated human beings). Read the rest of this entry »

You know how in the movies where the heroes are slogging through the jungle, then the camera shows subtle changes in scenery implying something big is about to happen, then they round a bend and see this vast civilization splayed out as far as the eye can see?

EveryTrail Guide for this hike

Something like that happens on the Stone Mountain Loop — cinematic in scale except the view is way bigger than a movie screen. You have to park at the Upper Trailhead and take the first left turn where the signs point toward the waterfalls. Once you’re past the falls, the trail flattens, passes a great big rock on the right, and the view ahead starts to brighten, like maybe there’s a big meadow up there.

I alluded to this after my first trip to Stone Mountain last year. Pretty soon an immense gray shadow forms on the right, and you realize it’s really, really big, because it fills the background in your field of vision.

Within moments there’s a break in the forest and the full, vertical-striped glory of Stone Mountain’s granite dome fills your mental frame. Even if you’ve seen it before, the effect is surprising. There must be a thousand more examples of scenic splendor in the Carolinas that I haven’t seen, yet I have a hard time believing many of them surpass the sheer visual impact of Stone Mountain. But only if you go the way I outlined. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m turning my attention to some of the trails I’ve hiked in the last year since moving to North Carolina. The first three:

• Summit Trails at Pilot Mountain State Park. Revisits the route of my first North Carolina hike. This area’s very popular and gets quite crowded on the weekends (in good weather anyway) but it’s still a fine place to hike — well-maintained, clearly-marked trails, lots of great views, even some wildlife if you watch closely.
• Waterfall Tour of Hanging Rock State Park. The Blue Ridge Mountains are awash with waterfalls, but they’re something of a surprise this far east. Not spectacular, but pretty fine for around here.
• Blue Ridge Parkway to the Grandfather Mountain Summit. This peak most reminds me of Mission Peak in the Bay Area. When I first started hiking I knew I’d never be satisfied till I scratched the itch to hike to the top of it. Luck is much more of a factor at Grandfather Mountain: on good days you might see 100-mile views from the summit; on bad ones you might get caught in an electrical storm.

Plenty more where those came from (let’s hope anyway). I’ll post updates as I finish more.

It was so hot this past weekend I couldn’t muster the ambition for an ambitious hike; best I could do was 4.6 miles on the mountain-biking single-track at the park across the road.

Tanglewood Park has a raft of amenities, among them an antebellum mansion/B&B, arboretum, horse stables, championship golf course, several ponds and a path along a lazy river.

And then it has these three mountain-bike single-tracks. Two of them are fairly mild, but Track No. 3 is an impressive 4.6-mile tangle — more labyrinth than trail in many parts. It’s built expressly to give mountain bikers a place to practice their moves, a bad-ass bunny slope compared to MTB tracks in the real M’s. It has obstacles, a few jumps, countless hairpin turns and the very real prospect of getting hopelessly lost.

Normally I avoid mountain-bike tracks because I think the paucity of bike-specific trails obliges generosity from those of us with far more options. I certainly stay off Tanglewood’s MTB tracks when they get the most use on weekends or evenings after work. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m warming to this idea: at least one sweltering outing a year at the top of Pilot Mountain, just to test the principle that there’s no bad time to hike up there. I finished a sweat-drenched wretch on Sunday just as I did 11 months ago, when I made my inaugural North Carolina hike at the Great Stone Teat of the Triad. Now I’m all for trying it again — in another 11 months.

EveryTrail Guide for this hike

There’s barely more than 3.5 miles of trail atop Pilot Mountain, and you can’t even go to the true summit, aka Big Pinnacle — it’s essentially a bird sanctuary. None of the trails are exactly easy; even the shortest is steep and jagged enough for a “moderate” rating. Then there’s the Ledge Spring Loop, a cliff-hugging, stair-stepping trail that introduced me to the concept of a 2.2-mile “strenuous” hike, as abundant in North Carolina as it is non-existent in the Bay Area. You hear your heartbeat on this one.

I went out Sunday thinking I’d give the summit a once-over before devoting an EveryTrail Guide to it. As much as the Guides create the theoretical possibility of being paid to hike, the reality is there are chores involved: reading interpretive panels, remembering key turns, etc. Just ask my wife: I hike to avoid chores. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the Big Moment for those of us in the Everytrail Guides Authors Guild (created right here as of this moment, I suppose): Guides are now available on the iPhone (via Everytrail Free and Everytrail Pro).

I wish I could brag that I was the most prolific Guide author, but that honor goes to Stuart at Trailspotting, who has left the rest of us in the dust with guides for Hawaii, Lassen Volcanic National Park and a host of High Sierra locales.

This feels very much like the day back in about 1996 when I realized I could learn to create Web pages. Not like being present at the Creation or any such hype — just a sense of being part of something that was going to be huge.

I felt the same thing the first time I noodled around with my iPhone just two summers ago. When the founder of Everytrail dropped me a note last summer asking if I’d like to be a part of this plan to create location-aware, GPS-enabled travel guides, it took about a half-second to say “when do I start?” (didn’t hurt that my so-called newspaper career perished practically the same day).

In 10 years every amusement park, shopping mall and museum will be using this kind of technology to help people find their way (to the bathroom, mainly); it’ll be as second-nature as GPS guidance systems in cars.

Everytrail hopes people will pony up $1.99 for the privilege of using Guides on their iPhones. I can’t imagine outrageous fortunes flowing from that trickle of a revenue stream, but the technology is so new that nobody really knows where it’s going.

I have no illusions about the hurdles Everytrail has to overcome: I hiked every weekend for half a decade without once using a GPS unit, much less a GPS travel guide. Furthermore, the very idea of taking an iPhone into the wilderness is a huge conceptual leap: after all, it’s a cell phone. Why would you take it where there’s no cell service? Legions of inventors have seen their brilliant, world-shattering ideas wallow in obscurity — just because people can do something does not mean they will.

For now, though, it just feels good to be there at the start of something really cool.

Incidentally, these are my most recent Guides:

• Best San Francisco Day Trips — a bundle including Angel Island, the city waterfront, Marin Headlands and Bay Area scenic drives.
• 
  Great East Bay Day Hikes. Sunol, Briones, Mission Peak, Mount Diablo, Murietta Falls.
• Best strenuous hikes in the Bay Area. Berry Creek Falls, Murietta Falls, Mount Sizer at Henry Coe, North Peak at Mount Diablo.

The Guides project also has a couple new partners of note: Fodors, creator of many tourism guides; and Trail Kilkenny, with Guides to the land of my ancestors in the Emerald Isle.

So when do I start penning Guides on trails a bit closer to home? Soon, but I’d like to have hiked a trail at least twice before committing it to Guide status. I’m having so much fun finding new trails that it’s hard to get charged up about returning to places I’ve already been. If you’ve put up with me this long, a little longer won’t hurt.

The road to Clingmans Dome — highest point in Great Smoky Mountains National Park — opened a few weeks back after a long closure for renovations, so it’s been high on my list of places to check out.

The Dome is more tourist destination than hiking destination: you can trek to it via the Appalachian Trail (a 14-mile out-and-back from the parking lot at Newfound Gap), but the parking lot a half-mile from the summit is an irresistible temptation. (Feeling more intrepid? Check out the 16-mile South Beyond 6,000 route bagging Clingmans Dome and Mount Collins. There’s also a four-mile out-and-back to Andrews Bald from the parking lot).

The path to the peak is wide and paved. It gains about 330 feet in a half-mile, roughly a 13 percent grade. Not ruinously steep, but far from flat, and all above 6,000 feet, so altitude will be an issue. Expect lots of people on the weekends, especially in the summer. The road to the top is closed in the winter from December through March, which makes it a prime cross-country skiing destination (as long as there’s snow). Read the rest of this entry »

Craggy Gardens, about 20 miles north of Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway, is a must visit in mid-June, when the peak bloom of the Catawba rhododendron lights up vast swaths of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

As you’ve no doubt noticed I’m writing three weeks later — I took my Fourth of July day off on Friday and headed down I-40 to the Craggies, where I was hoping a day of abundant sunshine and jagged stone would yield a harvest of photo ops. I left mostly disappointed: no blue sky, not many crags, and the annoying realization that it’s not called “Craggy Gardens” because of the crags, but because the rhodo bloom creates a high-country flower garden.

I went to bed last night convinced there’s no earthly reason to hike here outside the bloom season. This morning I trudged to the computer with the idea of throwing something on the blog to get it out of the way and get back to enjoying my three-day weekend.

Then I looked at my pictures again. Turns out there’s a lot going on in the Craggies that you’ll never notice while the Big Bloom is hogging the spotlight. And the bonus: no swarms of rhodo gawkers (presumably the area gets pretty crowded on peak-season weekends, since it’s so close to Asheville). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve proved beyond doubt that Grandfather Mountain is no place to hike if you’re in a hurry. I’ve established a firm 1.1 mph pace after five outings totaling about 25 miles.

Sign for the Profile Trail, seen heading north on Highway 105.

And half of that was downhill.

Profile Trail proves the point: It’s 3.5 miles to Calloway Peak with 1,900 feet of ascent — hardly formidable stats for experienced hikers. It even gets off to a very sane start: the first two miles are all uphill, but not grueling.

After that, though, it’s one boulder-hop after another for a mile and a half, culminating with three short ladder climbs at Calloway Peak. Not as hairy as the hike across the mountain’s spine I did a few weeks back, but there’s still no way to be quick about it (call me a coward but I prefer intact tibias.)

Grandfather Trail, the route across the mountain’s highest peaks, is the best in the park. Despite the intimidating ladder climbs and cable descents, it’s one of the most rewarding hikes I’ve ever done. Only downside: you pay $15 per person for the privilege of parking close to those trails (the fee preserves a priceless local treasure, but I’m a slave to anything free, hence my four visits to the free trailheads — Profile Trail off Highway 105 and the Boy Scout Trail route from the Blue Ridge Parkway).

Read the rest of this entry »