The best thing about hiking on a cold winter’s day? You can hike forever.

This is why winter is made for the long hike. In summer, after an hour on the trail, you’re done. You’re soaked in sweat, your eyes sting of salt, you’re coated in spider webs. In winter after an hour you’re just getting warmed up.

The cold itself is good incentive to keep moving. And the more you move down the trail the more you realize what a magical time of year this is  in the woods. Winter’s sunlight knifes bright through a leafless canopy, illuminating a forest floor littered with coppery leaves. Somehow, those gray tree trunks manage to betray the drab and muster a twinkle. Winter’s dry air cranks up the volume of the season’s quiet. It’s an experience you don’t want ended prematurely after an hour.

Today we share 10 of our favorite long winter hikes and why they’re especially well-suited for the cold. You can find additional details on each of the hikes, starting with  how and where to find the trailhead, here.

Year of the Trail

Find more information on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Bailey Mountain Hike in Mars Hill here.

Find more Year of the Trail events at Great Trails NC here.

Learn more about North Carolina's Year of the Trail here.

Find news of Year of the Trail at GetGoingNC.com, here.

This week, the last week of 2022, we kick off 2023 and North Carolina's year of the Trail. We talk with Beth Heile with the Great Trails State Coalition, a nonprofit created to promote trails in North Carolina, and we talk a little about our work with the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources' Hometown Strong initiative to promote trails in North Carolina's 80 rural counties. This week, we have a special emphasis on the start of Year of the Trail with a plethora of First Day Outings and how you can find out about them.

Some helpful links related to this week's show:

• Great Trails State Coalition. Learn more about the Coalition and their work by clicking here.
• The Great Trails State Coalition is keeping a comprehensive calendar of all Year of the Trail events, including Sunday's First Day Outings. You can find it here.
• Interested in taking a First Day hike at one of North Carolina's State Parks? Check out the 47 First Day events at State Parks by going here. 
• Mention is made in the podcast of North Carolina's 12 State Trails. Learn more about those by going here.
• Finally, if you'd like to join us on New Year's Day, we'll be working with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission's NC Bird Atlas program and N.C. State Parks on a Birding and a Hike First Day adventure in Wilkesboro and at Rendezvous Mountain State Park. Learn more about this event and sign up to join us here.

Today on the GetHiking! Southeast Podcast we revisit North Carolina’s 12 State Trails. Revisit, because in March 2021 we spoke with State Trails Coordinator Smith Raynor about the trails. That discussion was a more broad-based chat about the State Trails program. Today, we take a closer look at each of the 12 trails, and later we will revisit these trails again to see how 2023, designated The Year of the Trail in North Carolina, will impact the development of these long trails. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. 

Today’s podcast is from one of our twice a month Lunch with GetHiking! Zoom sessions, this one from June 30. 

Learn more

About North Carolina's 12 State Trails at the State Parks website here.
About 2023 The Year of the Trail in North Carolina at the Great Trails State Coalition website here.

News

Learn more about Dr. Morgan Smith's free online presentation, “Exploring Tennessee’s Submerged Cultural Landscapes and Resources,” here.

Register to attend the aforementioned “Exploring Tennessee’s Submerged Cultural Landscapes and Resources" presentation here.

Interested in hiking the recently renovated and reopen Big Creek Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park? Find trail information, including a map, here.

Explore with Us!

Join us for an upcoming hike, trip or class by visiting our GetGoingNC.com site and clicking on Explore with Us!

The first 6 miles of trail in a project to eventually add 42 miles in the Old Fort area of North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest have opened. That and more national forest news, from Virginia and Tennessee, in this week's report.

For more information on the trail opening and the Old Fort project, start here.

For more information on the reopening of the High Knob Recreation Area in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest, go here.

Come summer, we head to the high country of the Southern Appalachians to escape the  sizzling heat at lower elevations. Today, we talk about 7 of our favorite high country hikes for summer, hikes that meet one of two criteria for summer exploring: they either need elevation to escape the heat, or they must have access to water. Better still, both.

You can find more information on these hikes and other great mountain hikes in this GetHiking! guide, 7 Mountain Hikes for a Sizzling Summer.

In the News

In our news report, we cover the closure of the Carden Bluffs Campground in the Watauga District of Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest due to campers being careless with food and trash. How can you keep from having your favorite campground shuttered by nutty bears? By following the advice offered by bearwise.org, which you can find here.

Explore with Us!

Join us for an upcoming hike, trip or class by visiting our GetGoingNC.com site and clicking on Explore with Us!

Today, we share 10 bits of advice primarily for folks 50 and older who are interested in getting into into hiking, as well as for established older hikers who want to continue hiking late into life. It’s taken from a Lunch with GetHiking! Zoom session on June 2. (Lunch with GetHiking! is an every other Thursday event done via Zoom, in which we discuss a variety of hiking topics.  Find out when our next event is by joining our GetHiking! Meetup page here.)

In the News

For more on the opening of the country's longest rubber-bearing multiuser trail, in Tennessee's T.O. Fuller State Park, go here.

For more on closures in Virginia's George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, including at Peters Mountain and Whitetop Mountain, go here.

Explore with Us!

Join us for an upcoming hike, trip or class by visiting our GetGoingNC.com site and clicking on Explore with Us!

Since 1993, the first Saturday of June has been observed as National Trails Day. Administered by the American Hiking Society, it's a day when we celebrate our trails, either by hiking (or, in the case of "blue" trails, paddling) them, or by rolling up our sleeves to do trail maintenance or blaze a new trail. Today, we talk a little about the history of National Trails Day as well as what's going on this year.

To learn more about National Trails Day, visit the American Hiking Society web site here.

In the news

For more information on the reopening of portions of the Occoee National Whitewater Center in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest, go here.

To find what facilities are now open along the Blue Ridge Parkway ion North Carolina and Virginia, go here.

Explore with Us!

To learn more about our GetHiking! and GetBackpacking! adventures, visit GetGoingNC.com, click on Explore with Us!

Camping has grown in popularity, especially over the past couple of years. Time was it wasn't hard to score a campsite at the last minute. That's changed, even at less popular campsites. Today we look at how to book a site during the camping boom.

In the news

Check on forest fire levels and on scheduled prescribed burns at these National Forest websites:

Georgia

North Carolina

Virginia

Tennessee

South Carolina

West Virginia

Explore with Us!

For information on our GetHiking! and GetBackpacking! trips, visit GetGoingNC.com and click on Explore with Us!