Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170276
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Roanoker has hiked the Appalachian Trail three times. He covered the Allegheny Trail twice, before anyone else had done it once. He was among the first 20 to hike the Pacific Northwest Trail. He has walked the course of the Continental Divide Trail. All this, along with other hikes, adds up to about 15,000 miles, which has earned Adkins the trail name "Habitual Hiker."
So, naturally, people ask him to name a couple of his favorite hikes. We did.
"Chestnut Ridge Trail," is one he mentioned.
Chestnut Ridge Trail? Wait a minute! Isn't that's the one up there almost in the shadow of the Mill Mountain Star, which is hardly trackless wilderness?
That's the beauty of it, Adkins will tell you. Five or 10 minutes from home you can be on a scenic trail that will give you a feeling of backwoods escape.
Adkins is a hiker who's never gotten snooty over the location or the difficulty of a trail. They all have much to offer. If you only can spare an hour or so, take the half-mile hike. If you have four or five days, grab your backpack. If you have all summer, go for the long haul.
A jumping-off point for many of Adkins' hikes is the Blue Ridge Parkway. Most people visualize the parkway as a scenic route for automobiles and RVs, but Adkins will challenge you to look just beyond the grassy shoulder where a delightful bevy of trails awaits.
They range from five- to 10-minute leg-stretchers, where instant wilderness is a mere quarter-mile from your car, to four- to five-day jaunts into primitive pockets rugged enough to merit a strenuous rating.
Spreading rootlike from the parkway's 469 miles of hardtop are more than 100 such trails, one nearly every four miles on the average. There are about 75 other connecting trails on U.S. Forest Service, state park and private land. All are documented in a book, "Walking the Blue Ridge," written by Adkins and published by the University of North Carolina Press. It is in its second printing.
The idea for the book came while Adkins was exploring the modest, two-tenths of a mile Greenstone Trail on the northern end of the parkway not far from Waynesboro. He remembers how the bright sunshine filtered through the leafy canopy of oaks and hickory trees, to cast varying shadows on the mountain laurel and rhododendron. And how the air rising from the Shenandoah Valley created a cool breeze that wrapped around his skin like a welcomed shawl.
"If I could derive such pleasure from walking just one little trail, how much more would I enjoy and get to know these mountains if I walked all the trails on the parkway?" he wondered.
So he did, pulling a measuring wheel as he went, and finding time to marry his wife, Laurie, on the Abbot Lake Trail at the Peaks of Otter.
One morning last week, Adkins was sharing the Chestnut Ridge Trail with a couple of companions. Never mind the fact you could hear a lawn mower in the distance and there was an annoying beeping noise ever time a piece of construction equipment went into reverse in the lowlands. Adkins had his mind on other things.
"This is a great time of the year. The leaves are just like neon green, they are so fresh," he said.
A pink lady's slipper, growing on a tall, leafless stalk, illuminated the forest floor like a miniature lamp. Flame azalea added patches of scarlet here and there. Drops of moisture rolled down large, shiny rhododendron leaves, like tears on a baby's cheek.
Back near the trail head there was a clapping sound, as if someone were applauding the beauty of the morning, and it caused Adkins to pull up sharply. It was a pileated woodpecker excavating large, rectangular holes in a tree trunk, its red crest ablaze with motion.
Adkins had made his point. He had wrenched a couple of parkway visitors from their cocoon of steel and glass and shown them nature up close.
"The Park Service estimates that 85 percent of the people who come to a national park - any national park - never get out of their car except to go to the restroom," Adkins said. "What I am hoping to do with the book is to show people they don't have to do major, long-distance trails in order to get out and enjoy the parkway. Some of the two-tenths to three-tenths of a mile trails lead to the best overlooks and the best sights on the parkway."
A couple of examples are Indian Gap Trail (Mile 47.5), which twists and winds through a maze of rhododendron tunnels, and Onion Mountain Loop (Mile 79.7), which leads to an impressive overlook unseen by visitors whizzing by in their vehicles.
Adkins has a new book, "Fifty Hikes in Northern Virginia," ready for a late-summer publication date. He is the author of "A Walking Guide to the Caribbean" and "Seashore State Park: A Walking Guide."
"Walking the Blue Ridge" is available at most bookstores, or can be ordered from the University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27515-2288, 800-848-6224, for $10.95. Adkins will sign books at the Ram's Head Book Shop on Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
by CNB