{"id":3672,"date":"2009-10-08T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T00:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=3672"},"modified":"2009-10-08T16:25:30","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T00:25:30","slug":"first-impressions-on-hiking-in-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/10\/08\/first-impressions-on-hiking-in-north-carolina\/","title":{"rendered":"First impressions on hiking in North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve figured out a few things hiking in the hills near Winston Salem that I may have alluded to on my hike write-ups; today I felt like assembling them in one place for safekeeping. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Humidity is wind chill in reverse.<\/strong> Hot hikes seem even hotter, making a hike at 1,200 feet seem more like 12,000. <\/li>\n<li><strong>High-tech synthetic fibers are not your friend in high heat and humidity.<\/strong>  You want to preserve moisture, not wick it to the atmosphere to evaporate.  One week I hiked in my wicking polyester shirt and suffered; the next week I hiked in a cotton T-shirt and stayed notably cooler because my sweat didn&#8217;t dry out so quickly. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Blazes are good things. <\/strong> The parks I&#8217;ve hiked in have had little colored disks nailed to trees every 25 to 50 yards.  I realize the folks back in California consider tacking these little guides on trees about as bad as cutting them down, but I&#8217;ve liked them from the start. It&#8217;s easier to enjoy my walk in the woods if I&#8217;m less preoccupied with wondering if I&#8217;m on the right trail. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Trails here are very rocky.  <\/strong> Lots of stone has been laid in the trails &#8212; mainly, I suspect, to keep the forests from constantly reclaiming them.    <\/li>\n<li><strong>All forests are good.<\/strong> There&#8217;s no comparison between the redwoods of California and the leafy-green deciduous forests of the Southeast &#8212; the trees are just too different. But these woods are too fascinating to dwell on the differences. The green glow the leaves get under a direct sun is just one thing. Another is the way the forest seems to actively resent the fact that people carved a trail through it.  The forest encroaches on trails here in ways I never saw back in the Bay Area, creating a kind of intimacy with nature that&#8217;s borderline spooky till you get used to it. Single-track here might better described as quarter-track. <\/li>\n<li> <strong>Terrain is remarkably rocky just below the surface.<\/strong> I&#8217;d seen some of the pictures of  layered stone outcrops and such, but I wasn&#8217;t prepared for the remarkable range of rock forms. It&#8217;s not usual to be walking down a trail and come across a 50-foot slab of granite that looks like it might&#8217;ve fallen there from the sky.   <\/li>\n<li><strong>State park trails are well-marked and well-maintained. <\/strong> Granted, I&#8217;ve only hiked a few, but I&#8217;ve been impressed so far. Even in the heat (which is going away now), the trails were a pleasure to walk on.  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I guess those are the main ones. Any AT hikers in the house may want to add their perceptions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve figured out a few things hiking in the hills near Winston Salem that I may have alluded to on my hike write-ups; today I felt like assembling them in one place for safekeeping. Humidity is wind chill in reverse.&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/10\/08\/first-impressions-on-hiking-in-north-carolina\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3672"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3676,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions\/3676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}