NC Land Trust Challenge hikes

[Gqgeek81]

Over the last year I've come across a few sites offering something like a merit badge for completing a series of hikes (or paddles). For example here, here and finally here.

This last one is setup by the Central NC Land Trust which I think some of our members belong to.
The issue with these lists IMO is that if you don't know the area already its hard to plan anything just off the trail name . This list has information missing on many of the hikes or assumes you know where the park is that the trail is within. Since all of these hikes are a few hours drive for me, I was interested in figuring out how to cluster several together and knock a bunch out over a weekend.
This meant I needed a way to visualize the trail head locations.

It turns out Google Maps now lets you import lists of locations and its pretty fantastic for this sort of thing

So here is a map showing all the trail heads color coded by difficulty.

Disclaimer. The information I had to go off is a bit lacking here and there and I certainly haven't driven out and verified these locations. The upland pools hike for instance is only a vague description . The icons for anything within Morrow Mountain State Park I just tossed in the park boundary. Feel free to use and share the map but don't assume its perfectly accurate. I hope to do the challenges and if all works out, I'll come back with GPX traces I can add to the map.


Also coming soon is a huge map of all the road food, BBQ restaurants, famous hot dog/burger joints, milkshake shacks and any other place to eat you don't want to miss when traveling to a hike in and around NC. Or maybe just traveling to eat....

[Gqgeek81]

So I did the "Thornburg Trail & Camp Three Trail" with a friend last Fall and all went well except the weather.
This weekend at the Yates Place hang I got several more hikes in and want to provide some information to cover what is lacking on the Land Trust's website.

The Badin Upland Pools:
No trail head is given and the hiking directions (or lack there of) state "Hiking Directions: Starting from the".
Yea... looks like someone screwed up a cut and paste or something.
The Primary Route does contain this bit of info, "Primary Route: Hike south from Moccasin Creek Road to the Badin Upland Pools"
OK, but from where on Moccasin Creek road? It runs through the forest for miles and miles.
I finally came across mention of a specific trail head for Moccasin Creek rd in the description for The Nifty Rocks hike and made the assumption this must be the same trail head. Looking on the topo map you can see a cluster of hill tops to the south. You can use the horse trail from the trail head (I believe the name is Tony and/or the Troy Horse trail, it has green blazes) and get most of the way up there. The closest peak to the trail head is pretty interesting to explore on its own. Its almost like natural terraces that are close to perfectly flat and then a line of rocks lifts up the hill another ~5 feet and the next terrace begins. From here Keep heading more or less South and listen for the frogs. Round trip for this should be something like 1.25-1.5 miles.

The Nifty Rocks:
The Land Trust's website says the rocks are located at 35.4151 N, 80.03531 W.. If you look at the drawing they provide with this hike however you can see those coordinates are wayyyy off.
If you take their drawing and compare it to the satelite photo's you can easily figure out where the rocks should be and zoom in till you see them at 35.433696, -80.080862. These were pretty cool. The view down to Badin lake is a bit obscured by the trees even before the leaves have come out but you can see it regardless.
I tried assuming they had their GPS in NAD27 and converting but that didn't make much of a difference. It doesn't really look like they transposed a number. I don't know what happened but their coordinates are a good 3 miles off.
The hike is probably less than 10 minutes either way. There are what look like some trail splits on this trail but it turns out they are just re-routing parts of the trail.

Daniel’s Mountain Longleaf Hike:
I said above I didn't know where they got those coordinates. They may actually be for this hike.
The trail head was surprisingly crowded which is odd since the OHV trail was closed. This area had just gone through a controlled burn in the previous weeks. I actually saw a couple logs still smoking. The directions say to take the hiking trail and not the OHV trail (because its steeper) but with the burn I couldn't tell what was what. The OHV trail is very obvious but the only other thing I could see was where they had bulldozed recently which I assume was part of the burn work. After a few minutes I just headed off trail straight up the hill which was intense.
Lots of oaks and hickory. Very little pine. On top of Daniel I could see some short leaf pine and to the west a lot of skinny pines younger than I am. Nothing that could be 300+ years old. From the top I got on the OHV trail and kept heading South. I kept seeing bits of trails but with the burn so fresh I couldn't tell if they were hiking trails, old abandoned trails or something else. I ended up coming down the south side on what was clearly some sort of horse or hiking trail once upon a time and finally started to see long leaf pines although nothing of any great size. They were all charred now on the outside. I didn't see anything that looked like someone had been collecting turpentine. I think this was probably the very edge of pines though. I could see the bull dozed path further down the hill and headed over to it to make my way back. Somewhere in here looks to be about spot on with coordinates The Land Trust has for the "nifty rocks". In terms of sites, this was pretty boring but with the hike up the hill it was definitely a challenge.

Crow Creek Trail at Low Water Bridge:
This sounded easy enough. I should know better by now.
The description says the trial head is by 404 Low Water Bridge Rd. Google really doesn't like that address and plots it in the middle of the woods about half a mile east of where the bridge is. This is not the Land Trust's fault but the rest of my confusion might be. Or maybe its just me.
They say to "take the trail located directly across from the river access ramp".
Define Across. Across the river? I mean there IS the bridge right there so you can easily get to the other side. There's sort of two "ramps" there. One is concrete and runs into the water, the other is gravel and what everyone seemed actually be using to get their kayak's into the water. Both are on the same side of the river on opposite sides of the bridge.
You can see them in the satellite view if you pull up @ 35.488497, -80.005828.
In person it sure looks like the trail is right beside the concrete ramp and the crude map on the Land Trust's website seems to support that but their dotted yellow line also kinda meanders into the middle of the river as well. There's signs everywhere about not hunting but right there where it looks like the trail begins there are also signs that say no trespassing.
So I convinced myself they meant across the river and crossed the river and headed upstream for about half a mile before the rhodo got too thick. All the while I could see a nice trail across the river decorated in No Trespassing signs.
I went back and took what was obviously the trail. I'm a little confused still. Is there an easement beside the river? Many but not all of the signs seem to be facing onto the trail as if to say "stay right there on the trail on the river bank". There are logs that have been cut out of the way with a chainsaw and chain hand rails at some of the creek crossings. This is clearly "the trail". I hope I wasn't actually trespassing as well.

Jumping Off Rock View:
Easy, quick, hard to screw this one up. Probably more impressive in the fall with the color change.

Jumping Off Rock to Dark Mountain:
This probably SHOULD be just over a mile. It sounded like the Uwharrie trail goes up and over the top of Dark Mountain. It does not. It skirts the side and then follows the ridge line to the west. Almost immediately you come across some intersections in which every direction are blazed white but some also have yellow blazes. I ended up one one of these trails which quickly lost the blazes and it became apparent no one had used the trail at all in some time. I think maybe this WAS the Uwharrie previously? It went right up to the top of the mountain at which point I laid down on a boulder for a while and completely forgot to look for the painted rocks. The trail then goes down the other side and runs into a rather wide trail that's probably horse or ATV. It in turn split several times as I tried to figure out how to get it to take be back to main Uwharrie trail I had left before climbing. I ended up hiking off trail north to the gap between Dark Mountain and the ridge to the west. On top of the ridge line I found the Uwharrie and took it back around the mountain. My GPX trace for this hike ended up at 2.7 miles. Once I made the summit I should have doubled back the same way I came up but I felt sure I was ALREADY getting up there the hard way. This was right up there with Little Table Rock in Linville Gorge in terms of steepness.