Umstead State Park in the Rain

The forecast for Saturday was light rain and cool (around 40-45).  So, I went hiking anyway.  I have to find out if my current equipment is up to snuff.

I decided to stick with the Sycamore Trail and I started from the bridle/bike trail-head.  That cuts off about a mile of lead in trail.  If the weather got real bad I could get back to my truck in about 40 minutes at worst.  The first hour was nice and peaceful.  I passed a few people and one large organized group.  As I had noticed at Medoc Mountain, poor weather thins out the crowd at a state park quickly.

About half way around the loop part of the trail I came across a small group of hikers and offered to take a group picture for them as they stood on one of the bridges.  Nice folks turned out to be from the Greenville, NC area.  Hope they didn’t get too wet.  Not long after I left them the rain increased to the point my wind shell wasn’t up to keeping my dry so I put on my poncho.  After fooling around with the hood and my baseball cap a couple of times I got good protection without messing up my vision too bad.

The rest of the loop went so well that I crossed over the bridle trail and headed to the picnic area (where the trail normally starts).  I used the small picnic shelter for my lunch stop.  The entire picnic area was empty.  I still had plenty of time so I walked back down the trail to where Pott’s Branch Trail crosses.  Walked around the Pott’s Branch Trail adding 1.25 mile onto my hike.  At the trail crossing I picked up Sycamore Trail again and headed back to my truck.  Hiking time just shy of 4 hours for 8.5 miles.  I took it slow in a lot of areas due to the weather, talked to a few people along the trail and had a real 15 minute lunch break.  All in all a nice day.  Lessons learned: (1) Put the poncho on earlier, (2) The poncho doesn’t protect my forearms, hands, or lower legs, (3) Store rain gear in an easier to access place. at least when rain or snow in forecast.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th 2010 at 01:05 and is filed under Hike Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.