Category Archives: Carolina Mountain Club

Hiking with CMC

Boomers on the Trail

Carolina Mountain Club, Hiking

It all started with a routine physical with my internist, a man I’ve been going to for years. He’s a runner, a fit baby boomer only a few years younger than me.

“As you age, your lung capacity decreases, even if you’ve never smoked. You should expect some changes.” He probably said something about heart function but I can’t recall now. I was mad. I plan to die with my hiking boots on.

On Heartbreak Ridge

I again told him about the older folks in Carolina Mountain Club, some much older than me, but I think he’s heard it all before from me.

Last Sunday’s hike on Heartbreak Ridge was in the Appalachian District of Pisgah National Forest near Old Fort, NC.

The trail is 11.5-mile with a 3,000 foot ascent, which is considered strenuous. Eighteen hikers showed up, a larger number than usual. Carroll K. was leading this hike and this was his fan club. Carroll, who’s 87 years old, is the “poster hiker” of the fit, serious, all-day hiker who just keeps on going.

Still thinking about my conversation with my doctor, I took a survey of ages and their genders. I know that 18 data points is a very small sample size but it was a start. No one hesitated to give me their age.

The average age of the hikers was 61.6 years old. The women averaged 59.3 years of age (46 the youngest, 70 the oldest). The average for men was 65.1 years old (51 years was the youngest, 87 the oldest).

Not surprisingly Carroll was the oldest man and I was the oldest woman. That’s been true for a long time on all day-hikes. We seem to accept the disparity in ages between the genders but Bruce questioned it. Why?

I don’t know is the quickest answer. After all, Grandma Gatewood did her first A.T. thru-hike when she was 67 years old and again seven years later. The oldest person, a man, completed a thru-hike when he was 81 years old. Historically only 15% of the completers (2000-milers) were women, though the numbers are rising. See the numbers on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website.

I do know that the professional advice is meant to scare older exercisers.

“See your doctor”.
“Don’t overdo it!”
“Carry a cell phone, a stick, a ….”

After all these dos and don’t, it’s easier to just stay on the couch.

Why do we see fewer women over 70 on the trail or in the gym? Ideas?

Asheville Greenways – present and future

Carolina Mountain Club
Sulphur Springs

Today’s Carolina Mountain Club hike was billed as an almost flat, almost seven-mile hike. It barely seemed worthwhile to put on your hiking boots. But it promised a walk through current and future greenways. I was curious, so I put on my boots – low boots.

Marcia Bromberg, former CMC president, is very active in Friends of Connect Buncombe, the Buncombe County Greenway movement. Unlike hiking trails, greenways connect people to places they might want to walk or bike to. In Buncombe County, at least, the goal is to pave greenways, allowing more people to use them. They have a long way to go.

We started our walk in front of the remains of Sulphur Springs. What was a tourist attraction in the 19th century is now just a concrete pavilion around the well. The pictures may look unexciting and brown but we’re in the January thaw.

Opposite there’s a right-of-way through a private tract owned by the Myrtle Vrabel Estate. Vrabel, who died in 2007, owned a tract of land which is still laying dormant through Canie Creek ten years later.

Brother Hug and Marcia

I learned all of this from Doug Barlow, known as Brother Hug, a community organizer in the Canie Creek area.

He and other activists are working to get Riverlink, a conservancy, to buy the land from the estate, so it can be preserved and saved from development. To my untrained eyes, the land in a floodplain can’t be worth very much.

We walked through the Hominy Creek Greenway, which is an official greenway with maps and plans. It even has a beach – see the photo above dubbed the West Asheville beach.

Then to Carrier park and the French Broad River Park. The Asheville Camino used some of the same route, though of course, the Camino hike is over sixteen miles.

But honestly, it was difficult to figure out where one greenway or proposed greenway started and another ended. Buncombe County has approved a master plan for greenways, so this is a big, big important step in the future of greenways in our area.

In the meantime, we can study the greenway map, support the Friends group and most importantly walk or bike the greenway.

Thanks to Marcia and Brother Hug for leading the hike and making the Buncombe Greenways come alive.

2016 – Positive Thoughts

Carolina Mountain Club, National Parks

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times – that was truer this year more than ever. And the worst certainly upstaged the best.

As a wise man said, “Nothing lasts forever except the earth and sky.”

But this, like most other blog posts, will stay positive. I managed to have some high notes in 2016.

Like the rest of the United States, I celebrated the National Park Service Centennial. After visiting over seventy national parks in the southeast over six years, I published
Forests, Alligators, Battlefields: My Journey through the National Parks of the South through Kimberly Crest Books.

Publishing is one thing; marketing is another. I visited bookstores, outdoor stores, hiking clubs, schools, churches, and national parks to introduce the world to the national parks of the South. And to my surprise, I’m not done. More invitations came for 2017.

In this, the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, I visited or revisited several parks including:

* Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. I’ve now been in all fifty states.

Yorktown Victory Monument

* Yorktown National Battlefield, the end of the American Revolution. Since the park in Virginia, it’s not in the NPS Southeast region. But I refer to it so much that I had to visit it.

* I gave a talk at Fort Moultrie in Charleston

* Bandelier National Monument and the Manhattan Project National Historical Park in Los Alamos when I went to Family Nature Summits in New Mexico.

Up to the cliff dwellings in BAND

That doesn’t include my four home parks: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, the Appalachian Trail, and Carl Sandburg Home.

A new section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail around Waterrock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway opened this year. We had a big, big celebration.

And of course, I had my day job: leading hikes for Friends of the Smokies and Carolina Mountain Club.

But wait – the year isn’t over.