GetHiking! Southeast

From her post at Pilot Mountain State Park near the Blue Ridge Escarpment, N.C. State Parks Ranger Maggie Miller talks about the coming fall color — specifically, when it's coming and the best places to catch it. For more information on the North Carolina State Parks she mentions — or for any other state park in the Tar Heel state — go hereFor information on the Hawk Watch program mentioned by Ranger Smith, check out the North Carolina State Parks Events and Programs page here.In t...

The National Park Service reports that 2 million people visit the Blue Ridge Parkway in October alone. That is a whole of traffic and a whole lot of potential company as you seek fall color and solitude. In this episode, the National Park Service offers 10 tips on how to make the most of October on the parkway — and we share some thoughts as well.Related resourcesRoad Status. To see about road closures and delays along the Blue Ridge Parkway, go here. Rocky Knob Recreation Area. To learn...

While our goal is to put foot to trail, the drive to the trailhead and back home can have its illuminating moments as well. On the drive out, we speculate about the adventure ahead, on the drive back, we reflect on the adventure had. Car time can be a rare time to be alone with our thoughts. And a scary time, too. Today, we let the recorder run as we make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to a backpack trip in South Mountains State Park.NewsWith bears feeding up to hunker down for the winter, and...

Busy time on the trail, fall. Something about temperatures in the 60s and trees ablaze in color brings out the hiker in darn near everyone. For the next couple of months, the trails will be packed. Well, some of the trails. In today's GetHiking! Southeast Podcast, taken from our first Lunch with GetHiking! Zoom session, we discuss how to find the trails less traveled during the fall hiking frenzy. As mentioned, the episode is taken from our new Lunch with GetHiking! series: every other T...

When you’re hiking a trail, you have questions. All kinds of questions, especially if you’re hiking in the nature- and history-rich southeastern United States. What kind of tree is that? Why is it growing in this particular spot? And how did this trail come to be, anyway. Last week I had a chance to get a lot of my questions answered on a hike with Patrick Boleman, Land Stewardship manager for the eastern properties of the Triangle Land Conservancy, based on Durham, North Carolina. Relat...

As hikers, we get excited whenever there's a changing of the seasonal guard. But we get especially excited when the season changes to fall. So little time — about three months — so many plans. Today, we offer some quick tips on how to take the best advantage of the fall hiking season.You can find additional tips, as well as more information on the tips we mention in the podcast, here.The NewsFor the latest on what's open and what's not in our regional National Forests in the wake of Tropical ...

I'll take a sign, any sign, that the heat of summer is waning, the brilliance of fall on the horizon. This year, that sign came in the form of Thursday.In the newsPisgah National Forest closures. Find the most up-to-date information on closures in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina at the USDA Forest Service website, here.Help! To help the Forest Service in its efforts to open trails in the Pisgah following Tropical Depression Fred, you may either email Natalie Lester, the Pisgah Di...

Every Monday and Friday, we invite GetHiking! and GetBackpacking! peeps to join us on a 20-minute-or-so hike to talk things hiking on Facebook Live at our GetGoingNC page. On today's podcast, we take you on a recent Morning Walk, along a stretch of the Eno River in the piedmont of central North Carolina. (Join us on our twice weekly Facebook Live hikes, on Monday and Friday mornings around 8 a.m., at our GetGoingNC Facebook page, here.In our news segment we discuss recovery efforts on p...

Yes, thru-hiking is a genre of backpacking. So is there a difference? Well, yes, there are some obvious differences — the time you're on the trail, how much stuff you can take. But we take issue with a fellow podcaster who compared thru-hiking to a marathon and backpacking — in this case, of the 1-, 2-, 3-night variety — to a "fun run." Those aren't exactly fightin' words, but they do require a response, a clarification of sorts, which we give in brief in today's podcast.Also, in our news seg...

This week we explore Basecamp Backpacking, which marries the best of backpacking — camping in a remote, primitive location — with the freedom of lightweight day hiking. How? That's in the podcast, silly.News linksFrom our News segment, find more information by clicking the appropriate link:For details on "Anna Ruby Falls Closed for Maintenance," go here.For details on the Benton MacKaye Trail opening at Thunder Rock in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest, go here.To follow Nimblewill Nomad a...