Hiking Uwharrie Trail

Friday evening set a good mood for Saturday's adventure. Passing Lake Crabtree on my bike ride home the water was almost as smooth as glass.

Saturday morning clouds in the distance would extend all the way from Raleigh down to Uwharrie.

The day's adventure began in earnest in advance of the trailhead. I made final preparations as Jason drove. GPS on, SPOT on and tracking, final gear check, pack assembly, and some gut check. GPS directions led down increasingly sketchy roads. When we turned left onto a gravel road clearly marred from recent logging activity we pulled executive override. We needed to find the trailhead fast so Jason could navigate the circuitous backroads in time to meet the rest of the jeeping club. We quickly found an alternate route which avoided crawling along in 4 Low.

We met the "trailhead" with skepticism. There was a reassuring large brown sign. That was the end of assurances. Neither Jason nor I could immediately spot a trail. I verbally assured him, and echoed to myself, that it was okay and there was a trail. I jumped out of the safety of the Jeep, applied last second anti-chafe, shouldered my pack, and changed mental gears for five hours of trail solitude. Jason drove out from the trail head. The throaty V8 faded into the distance.

I found the trail covered in rocks and heading up what appeared to be the steepest slope around. Time to get down to business.   

I needed an estimated time to finish the trail to prepare myself mentally and to arrange pickup details. The weekend before I hiked nine miles on Saturday at Pilot Mountain with fully loaded pack and then ran 17 trail miles on Sunday in Umstead. The nine mile leisure hike with friends took 5 hours. The 17 mile run took 3 hours. I heard at least one report from the good folks at Bull City Running that the Uwharrie trail cold be rough. My gut picked five hours. I can't point to any real mathematical proof of this estimate. Starting out on the trail five hours felt something between right and possibly a bit optimistic. I had a goal. Time to chase it.

I saw two people within a mile of the start. Then it turned desolate. The trail was sparse. There were occasional signs of old camp sites. There were several stream crossings. These crossings were of the "good luck finding a way across" nature. At least the streams were small and rocks plentiful. I covered 4.3 miles in the first hour. That gave me just a few minutes of cushion. I needed to maintain 4 miles per hour to cover 20 miles in five hours. Around 1:18 in, or 5+ miles, I came to a bit of civilization in the form of a bridge.

This roadbed of the bridge sloped down to the right. The planks were slick as snot. I slid to the right just trying to walk across the bridge. Sliding must have been fun based on my smile.

Shortly thereafter the trail went back to more typical stream crossings.

I liked this trail marker for the "More Difficult" designation. Apparently ATVs are allowed on this section. I was happy to find no obvious ATV activity.

For the duration of the trail I thought "Appalachia".

There was some environmental variation in the 20 miles. There were rocky sections, very few flat sections, some clear evidence of burning, and in a few places the trail shrunk to "pig trail". My after impressions of the trail are keep your feet up and head down. Feet up because of rocks, roots, stumps, fallen trees, streams, and the "walk lightly" mentality that is required for rough terrain. Head down because of low branches, saplings, fallen trees, spider webs, fallen limbs, and a constant vigilance for a head/neck/shoulder/chest/gut check. Watch where your feet and your torso are going. Enjoy the open spaces but don't get lulled into complacency.

This is also where I got the heaviest rain of the day. Generally the canopy protected me from rain. I had a rain coat with me but never felt enough direct rain to stop and put it on.

A welcome rare sign of civilization.

This peak stood out among the other terrain. There were very few grassy open areas.

The subtle rocks in the picture above are a subtle hint at the trick trail footing in this area. The trail bed cut through a thin level of top soil onto something like a huge solid piece of rock. Some combination of moss and clay collected in a thin membrane atop the slab foundation. The resulting surface was like walking on greasy glass. These patches weren't really visually discernible. I recognized them only when I started sliding along for no apparent reason. This adds another item to the watch list - a fall zone. I managed to stay on my feet. For every step I was choosing my footing, checking the trajectory of my torso, and then thinking of a safe path to slide and fall. The trail isn't obviously difficult. It just subtly grinds away in a variety of ways.

I came through an adhoc camping area and was delighted to find the trail after casing the perimeter of the area. I was eight minutes ahead of schedule with one hour remaining. Note the white blaze on the tree in the left background. That was the route. Climbs never come through in pictures. The base of that tree was at least 6' up. The trail turned very noticeably up and hilly.

And Garmin gave up on routing. I've had this happen on 100+ mile bike routes before. This was a piddly little 20 mile trail. Come on Garmin.

The trail was very rough for a while. The terrain was difficult and then the underbrush complicated things further. For good portions of the trail I alternated swimming through neck high saplings and ducking under very low canopy. Gamin gave up on routing and the flora obscured trail markers. Eventually I popped out at a campground. This one bordered a forest service road and was clearly more heavily used.

I headed out of that campground on the forest service road. I was ~2.6 miles from the southern trailhead. If the last 2 miles were as bad as what I had been on then there was a chance I would miss Jason and my extraction. While double timing it down the forest service road Garmin came back to life just a little bit. This map rendering is wrong for many reasons. The most glaring problem is that I was ~2 miles from the southern trail head and heading south. The trial line should be continuous beside me, or ideally, under me. I have no idea where the trail is. I was on a forest service road that I remembered seeing on the map. The map and trail ended at the same location. With sketchy trail, bad navigation tool, and limited time I went with the forest service road.

This is the southern trail head on 24/27. I arrived at 2:40 a good 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I was glad to have time cushion. The trail was tough.

I fished the radio out of my pack, turned it on, and set out running down the highway in the agreed upon direction. I made it to River Road and started North. A couple miles up River Road Jason found me and my adventure came to an end. I was particularly glad to see Jason as I'd been out of water for 20 minutes. I drained 3L of water from my pack in 5 hours. It was nice to run lighter. It wasn't so no nice to consider being thirsty. There were a few houses along the road should it come to that.

We drove back to Raleigh in pouring rain. Mother nature decided to extend the adventure just a little bit longer.


Out of the forest I learned my SPOT had stopped updating. The lights were still flashing. It still showed to be in tracking mode. It just wasn't updating. I can appreciate it might not update in heavy cloud cover and pouring rain. I can't fathom why it wouldn't work while I was running down the road with clear view of the sky. I powered the SPOT off and back on and it did start updating. Then I forgot to power it off for the drive home. Here is what SPOT recorded:

 Spots 7 and 8 were while I was running on the road after rebooting the SPOT.

Garmin recorded the route even if it couldn't show the trail:

Technology is still marginal off the beaten path. If you're going to do these types of activities do plan on multiple levels of redundancy and most importantly plan to be self sufficient.

These 20 miles are challenging. Doing it in one direction gives much better perspective for considering the 40 mile Uwharrie Mountain Run.