Hiking Trails Blogs

Driving in the pitch-black predawn and arriving at the trailhead just at daylight starts to take over is the next best thing to camping in the wilderness. (Better, actually, if sleep eludes you in a tent on the ground).

The best days, of course, are when you can see the sky with its array of oranges, purples, reds, yellows, and clouds absorbing all these shades in one hue or another.

This is a nice example of the view over Lake Townsend in the Greensboro Watershed. I got there just in time for some perfect light on Sunday morning. My trail report of the hike is at Trail Sherpa.

It isn’t only about the colors. It’s also about the critters. I’ll never forget the time I was on a trail at the park across the road when I heard a hellacious commotion coming right toward me. First I saw a little red fox hauling ass through the woods, and about a second later I saw a full-size doe barreling down on him. Guess he got to cozy with her babies or something.

In a blink they were gone into the timber.

Got any great morning stories to relate? Please leave a comment.

(By the way if you missed the link above, I hiked 12.5 miles and brought home a few cool shots. See my foray to the Osprey Trail and Townsend Trail on the Greensboro Watershed.)

Reedy Fork Creek along the Laurel Bluff Trail.

I defied a rainy weather forecast yesterday and notched another hike on the Greensboro Watershed — this time in a seven-mile loop taking in the Laurel Bluff and Reedy Fork trails east of Lake Brandt.

At first glance this one pales in comparison to the meandering river of last week and the thundering waterfalls of the week before that. I headed over to Greensboro because I didn’t see the logic in investing much time, travail and gasoline in a long haul to the highlands when the weather gurus were predicting scattered showers from overcast, Confederate-gray skies across the Carolinas.

I wasn’t expecting much, which made the bamboo all the more surprising. Turns out the Eastern Seaboard has several species of bamboo; I have a sneaking suspicion the ones I saw yesterday (above right) were imported exotics that drive ecologists crazy, but in any case it was a jolt to happen upon this grove of them towering over the Laurel Bluff Trail not far from the western trailhead.

I love bamboo — either it’s feeding China’s pandas or it’s enabling dubious rescue schemes on Gilligan’s Island. Inherently cool.

The rest of the hike was more what you’d expect from a suburban stroll around the shore of a lake in the last weekend of March. Not a lot of elevation gain, but far from totally flat. A few buds starting to sprout; occasional waterfowl sightings; and another of my favorite nature things: tree stumps chewed to a pencil point by enterprising beavers.

On to the trails: I started out on the western end of the Laurel Bluff Trail, a segment of the Mountains to Sea Trail starting just south of the Lake Brandt dam. Laurel Bluff starts out along the Reedy Fork Creek, which empties into Lake Townsend. The trail ends at Church Street after just over three miles; your options are to come back the way you came, or hang a left, cross the bridge over Lake Townsend and take another left on the Reedy Fork Trail, a 3.5-mile track that returns you to Lake Brandt Road, where it’s a left turn and a short walk over a bridge back to the Laurel Bluff trailhead.

Let’s see more pictures:

Buds provide tiny sprinkles of color.

These broad-leaved plants formed a carpet on many sections of the forest floor.

The hike wasn’t very eventful till I ended up about a quarter-mile off course. The Reedy Fork Trail comes to a road, where you’re supposed to turn left, cross a causeway, and take another left at a small brown sign. There’s an unmarked trail on the far side of the road, which is where I turned and hiked in happy oblivion till I noticed a muddy patch on this supposed mountain-bike trail that had no mountain-bike tracks.

The half-mile detour offered a timely reminder that a GPS unit is no substitute for a map — it’s a companion. My unit told me where I’d gone, but could not say where I’d gone wrong. Only a map could show that.

This pond is along Plainfield Road along the way to the left turn where Reedy Fork Trail continues.

Tree rings in closeup, thanks to my camera’s macro mode.

The best part of Reedy Fork Trail is the mile or so along the Reedy Fork Creek. My pictures weren’t all that exciting, but the ample evidence of beaver activity makes this a must-see section of this loop. Beavers don’t have the strongest aesthetic sensibilities — it’s all function over form with these critters, judging from the messes they leave behind. Beavers also share humans’ uncanny knack for looking upon a stretch of unspoiled wilderness and concluding, “what this really needs is a dam.”

Eventually the trail ends at Lake Brandt road again, where you turn left and head back to the parking area.

Here’s the view along the way, looking east.

So that’s enough for this round. One thing to bear in mind about this loop: Greensboro’s water district often lowers the floodgates at the Lake Brandt Dam when a huge storm threatens to flood the lake — that can flood some of these trails, especially along the Reedy Fork Trail. If you find flooded trail, just go back the way you came. There’s no telling how deep it might be.

That’ll do it for this week.

Links for this hike:

• All my Greensboro Watershed hikes
• EveryTrail GPS tracks
• Laurel Bluff Trail page | map download (PDF)
• Reedy Fork Trail page | map download (PDF)
• LocalHikes review
• Overview of Greensboro Watershed

Google Map:

View 3-26-11 Greensboro Watershed in a larger map

Lake Brandt in the Greensboro Watershed

I won’t pretend this is a great hike. But it’s not too bad when you consider it’s entirely with the city limits of Greensboro, population 255,000.

Owl’s Roost Trail snakes along the shores of Lake Brandt, part of the Grennsboro Watershed system. This 4.3-mile single-track was once voted the best urban mountain-biking track in the country, so yeah, you’ve gotta share with the fat-tire crowd. It’s also an official section of the Mountains to Sea Trail.
The city of Greensboro publishes a 44-page pamphlet with maps for all of its trails and greenways, which are built primarily for joggers, bike riders and families on picnics. The Watershed section stands out because the trails track prime lakefront property that’s being kept wild to prevent the lakes (which supply the city’s drinking water) from filling up with mud.

Owl’s Roost Trail seems roughly representative of the Watershed section. It’s well marked and well-maintained.

Best way to hike Owl’s Roost is a five-mile loop starting from Bur-Mil Park (the trailhead is next to the large fishing/viewing deck looking over Lake Brandt). The trail has a lot more ups and downs than you might expect, so it’s a bit of a workout. I’d rate it moderate (vs. easy).

Let’s see the pictures:

Here’s the sign at the trailhead.

First buds of spring!

Decrepit structure of some kind.

Several shortcuts allow you to shave some distance off the hike.

Obligatory tree-canopy shot.

One of a dozen or so mountain-bikers I saw. Not too bad for a Saturday, but it’ll no doubt get busier as summer approaches.

When you get back to the Greenway, turn right at the McMansions and head back toward Bur-Mil Park.

Pretty pond in Bur-Mil Park.

Well, that’s enough for this one. Urban hikes will never be sexy as long as they contain all the people we hike to get away from, I suppose, but they do present a penny-pinching response to leap-frogging gas prices (I can drive to Greensboro four times for every trip to the Blue Ridge.)

Links for this hike;

• EveryTrail GPS track.
• Danny Bernstein hikes the Mountains to Sea Trail in the Greensboro Watershed.
• Greensboro trail system home page.
• Watershed map (PDF download)

Google map:

View 2-26-11 Greensboro Watershed in a larger map