Two Wintery Hikes

February 1, 2009. Cascades Trail to the Falls; Nature Conservancy Trail to Barney's Wall and back. 8.0 miles.

This old favorite makes a great winter hike, when there's ice along Little Stoney Creek, and especially at the falls, where the spray and splash freezes in white-and-light patterns.

This was a warm day – temps into the low 50s, and the parking lot was close to full when we pulled in at about 1 p.m. And on the way up to the falls, we passed lots of people, not a few of whom had relatively young puppies along, prompting the new-puppy-momma Day Hiker to lament that we'd left four-month-old Cookie behind. Beyond the falls (where it begins to become clear that this is too long a walk for a pup), we were mostly alone, and we had the precipice of Barney's Wall to ourselves for most of lunch, until a pair of young men carrying ropes stopped by. They hadn't been on the main wall, they said, because they didn't have enough rope; but they had scaled a smaller wall back along the mountainside. If there's any hike other than this one that has more of a distinct difference in going up and going down, I sure don't know what it is. It is pretty purely all-down all the way, and the rocky spots and steps and stream-side wet spots of the lower two miles are all avoided as the route back takes the high road – a smooth, pleasant, forest-road-wide pathway where people walk shoulder to shoulder, hand-in-hand, looking down at the stream far below.



January 25, 2009. Appalachian Trail from Black Horse Gap on the Blue Ridge to Wilson Creek Shelter and back. 5.0 miles.

A short, easy walk on a cold day, on a relatively unremarkable piece of the trail, most attractive for its relatively gentle descent from the ridge line, making for pretty easy walk back as well. But the primary lure was the shelter and its fire pit, where we even found a little stash of cut wood covered with plastic. We left that for someone who'd earned its use with a longer walk and maybe an overnight stay, and instead found plenty of breakable, burnable dry wood for a good and warming lunchtime fire, and made our way back. The Day Hiker, who'd voted for small and brief due to not feeling 100 percent, was both grateful for the short walk and feeling just the slightest bit wanting-for-more.