Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

The whole point of this hike was to stroll down the 6-mile Corridor Trail connecting the upper and lower sections of Pilot Mountain State Park and check out the Yadkin River at the far southern end. I knew I was in for 12 miles, but I never counted on hiking 15 and never getting a glimpse of the river.

The Corridor Trail near its southern end; it’s 5.5 miles from here but the whole thing is over 6.

Which is fitting, because my new hangout is less than a quarter mile from another bend in the slow-rolling Yadkin. I think the fates were punishing me for driving 30 miles and walking another 15 when I knew good and well what the river looks like. Wide, muddy, meandering, best seen from an innertube with a beer in one hand and a fishing pole in the other.

So about the trail: It starts out from the west end of the Sauratown Trail, which connects to Hanging Rock State Park 22 miles to the east. OK, so it’s 28 miles of dodging horse poop but it could be worse — at least it ain’t cows. The Corridor is a 100-yard-wide tree tunnel cutting through a countryside dominated by farms, timber and a few ranches. The trail has a decent gravel bed in most places and requires a bit of rock hopping over a few creeks (I suspect these run dry later in the year).

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Three weeks of gross lassitude and all-around laziness ended Sunday with a seven-mile hike at Pilot Mountain State Park (site of my first-ever North Carolina hike.)

Pilot Mountain two days after the Blizzard of ‘09 blew through. Most of the snow’s gone now.

I was so out of shape that I skipped Pilot Mountain’s main attraction — the Big Pinnacle, which from a distance looks uncannily similar to a Big Nipple — and concentrated on a moderate loop along the Grassy Ridge Trail, Mountain Trail and Grindstone Trail.

It’s mostly standard walking-in-the-woods fare without much eye candy, but when I’ve sat on my fanny for most of a month, my cranky bones need a gentle reintroduction. Hiking to be hiking, for sure, but hey, they’re my feet. I’ll punish ‘em as I choose.
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Pilot Mountain is the real name that inspired the town next door on The Andy Griffith Show (Andy’s hometown is Mount Airy, which got Hollywoodized to “Mayberry”; presumably Andy approved it to protect the identities of Otis the Town Drunk and Earnest T. Bass, the stone-throwing lunatic). Remember how somebody was always heading over to Mount Pilot?

There is a little town called Pilot Mountain, right at the foot of the peak of the same name, which looks conspicuously like the place where Zeus might have been weaned. The nipple is actually called the Big Pinnacle, which rises to over 2400 feet, a tall peak indeed for these parts. (The Appalachian Mountains start rising in earnest about 100 miles west of here).

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