Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202100214
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HIKERS DISCOVER JOYS OF A WINTER TRAIL
The weatherman had predicted it would be a cold day, the kind best spent indoors by a fire, but it didn't turn out that way.The sun was bright, the ski high and blue, the temperature even a bit balmy under cap and mittens. Perfect for hiking.
And that's the way it has been all winter, hardly a day you couldn't lace up your boots, stuff an extra wool sweater into your day pack and take off down a trail.
Hikers have been doing just that in impressive numbers.
Last Sunday, Neil Fitzpatrick led a group of 20 along the four-mile Hoop Hole Trail in Craig County; Jimmy Whitney took another half-dozen down the Chessie Nature Trail in Rockbridge County; Mike Haynie and some companions hoofed it up ridge tops in the Great Smokey Mountains.
All these were outings organized by the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club. Other hikers, at McAfee Knob, Dragon's Tooth, Sharp Top and elsewhere, were savoring do-it-on-your-own affairs.
A string of mild winters has introduced record numbers of people to the joys of winter hiking.
"I don't even hike in the summer," said Haynie. "I don't even start hiking until the fall. I give it up by late spring. I think the winter is the best time. The leaves are down, so you get better views. And you don't get so hot."
Or so cold.
"As long as your are moving on the trail, you rarely get cold," Haynie said. "The only time you would get cold is nighttime around a camp. Then you just build a nice fire and dress up warmly. That is no problem."
In the Trail Blazer, the quarterly publication of the Roanoke AT Club, Haynie's weekend of hiking was rated as strenuous. It proved to be that when he and his group embarked on a 14-mile trek that ended up being 18 miles.
"That was a little too long," he said. But the reward was panoramic views of the rugged, snow-dusted Smokies from the old, stone lookout tower atop Mount Cammerer.
Cutting a rapid pace, Fitzpatrick led his group counter-clockwise along the Hoop Hole loop, climbing from the Craig Creek Valley toward Pine Mountain.
This Jefferson National Forest trail offers healthy doses of solitude amid changing natural beauty: carpets of moss, clumps of rhododendron, open woods, ice-box rills born on rocky ridges.
Pete Lissmann, a Salem semi driver, was in the group. A hiker for three years, he said the winters had been so mild that he had seen no need to purchase cold-weather boots. Now a regular on the AT weekend hikes, he reflected on his first outing with the trail club.
"I just saw the hike listed in the paper. I thought it would be something to do to kill a Sunday afternoon. I was a real couch potato. I remember I was going to have to do something to get into shape. I feel better now than I have in 20 years."
Trail leaders like Jimmy Whitney like to see new faces turn out for hikes, as they did for the Chessie Nature Trail trip. Table-top flat most of the way, the trail gives leisurely views of the Maury River as it flows along limestone cliffs and luxurious banks of ferns. Whitney and his group covered the seven miles swiftly.
"There is just a different kind of beauty in the winter," he said. "You can see more with the leaves off of the trees, and there aren't crowds."