Hiking

Terrain360: Cool new site for outdoors enthusiasts

By Andy Thompson | May 6, 2012

If you’re a local trail lover, you need — and I really do mean need — to check out Terrain360.com, the subject of my column in today’s T-D. The site was just launched on May 1st by three Richmonders — Ryan Abrahamsen, Ryan Emmons and Ross Milby. It’s unlike anything else out there for exploring trails (and soon waterways, too) on a computer. If you’ve used Google Street View, Terrain360.com will have a familiar feel — only the pictures are clearer.

The T360 team is an ambitious lot. Their goal is to have every major Virginia trail mapped by the end of the summer, so keep checking back for more updates. This first pic is a screenshot from the site. It and the others offer a sense of what the trail tours look like.

 

Entering Belle Isle from the south

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Buttermilk Trail

 

 

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Posted In: Greenways, Hiking, Mountain Biking, Trail Running

“Project Remote” features Virginia locale

By Andy Thompson | April 17, 2012

Credit: The Nature Conservancy

If you’ve ever picked up a copy of the free magazine Blue Ridge Outdoors, you know the Charlottesville-based outfit does a great job covering outdoors-related stories and featuring interesting outdoorsmen and women throughout the Southeast. The April 2012 edition includes the story of a couple whose adventures I thought worth sharing, mostly because they’ve embarked on a mission that’s long rattled around in the back of my brain — at least the Virginia portion of it.

Ryan and Rebecca Means are currently searching for the most remote places in each of the 50 states. Project Remote, as they call it, involves hiking to the spot farthest from a road. It’s a seems like a simple definition of remote, but it turns out to be a good one – and not always an easy one to accomplish. Take Virginia: Our remote spot, actually one of the most remote, by their standard, in the continental U.S., is 8.3 miles from the nearest road on a barrier island in The Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve. To get there the Means family (their three-year-old daughter Skyla accompanies them on every trip) had to take an 18-mile boat ride  before hiking four miles to the spot. Their Virginia adventure features tons of pictures and an insightful blog. It’s worth checking out.

 

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Posted In: Hiking

Come celebrate the Dogwood Dell Trails

By Andy Thompson | March 14, 2012

It’s all over but the riding, running, hiking, bird watching and dog walking. The city trails crew and weekend armies of volunteers have finished two new loops — each about a mile long, one for foot traffic only, the other for fat tires and feet — in the woods behind the Carillon in Dogwood Dell. The best way to access the new trail heads is on Pump House Drive just above the toll for the Nickel Bridge.

 

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Posted In: Hiking, Mountain Biking

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Exploring the Channels’ mountaintop slot canyons

By Andy Thompson | February 3, 2012

To follow up on Tuesday’s post, check out the link to my column in today’s Times-Dispatch on the Channels State Forest and Natural Area Preserve. And if you’re a hiker, outdoors lover or just general explorer of Virginia rarities, put this place on your list of must-dos.

 

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Posted In: Hiking

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Channels Preserve a stunning, rare Virginia locale

By Andy Thompson | January 31, 2012

The subject of this post isn’t exactly local — it’s five hours away, in fact — but I had to share because the place is just too amazing not to.

In December I wrote a column for The Times-Dispatch introducing a new monthly series for 2012. The goal is to travel the state highlighting rare or unique plants, animals, ecosystems, geologic formations, etc. – places and species that most Virginians don’t know exist or are only vaguely aware of. Yesterday, I traveled to Channels State Forest and Natural Area Preserve (the NAP is surrounded by the SF) in southwestern Virginia for the January entry.

 

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Posted In: Hiking, Travel