View on Map The Pisgah is a Forest near and dear to my heart. I used to live right beside it and have spent many days and nights wandering it’s hills and valleys. This is an ancient range and it feels that way. Most of the forest is second of third growth, but the intense moisture and riotous greenery give little indication of that. My goal is Balsam Cone, one of the 6000ers, the highest peaks on the East Coast….
View on Map The low slung hills of the Uwharrie Mountains are remnants of a once great coastal range, eroded by time and humbled by geology in the form of the rising Piedmont plains. Now barely clearing a thousand feet, man further reduced their grandeur by completely deforesting the entire range until large swaths received federal protection in the 1960s. The forest came back in some fashion and recreation took over from farming and grazing. This is mostly a local’s…
I’ve started a journey to visit, and try to genuinely partake in the dream of, all 154 National Forests and 62 National Parks in the United States. This is a long and loose goal, one designed, a little counterintuitively, to promote quality over quantity. Read on to discover why I’m doing this and how I came to choose this particular trail. I’ve been visiting public lands for many, many years. I’ve camped, hiked, climbed, biked, canoed, kayaked, snowboarded, skied, run,…