Last weekend was my second voyage to Crowder’s Mountain as part of this training cycle and this time we were scheduled to hike the other trails in the park for a total of 15 miles. Unfortunately with my previous commitment to the Elizabeth 8k, I wasn’t able to join the group hike, so I went on Sunday with one of my friends and we made the trek in 5 hours and 41 minutes for an average pace of 23:05 per mile. There were a couple of miles that we stopped to check out the scenery, so I think it was a good first attempt at a long distance with some pretty good climbs thrown in as well.
We started at the Park Office and followed Turnback Trail to Pinnacle Trail, then onto Ridgeline trail which goes all the way to Kings Mountain State Park in SC, but we stopped about .5 miles from the SC border at a picnic area to have lunch and then turned around to head back. For most of the trip, we didn’t really see anyone, except as we got closer to the bouldering area where more people were hiking, though we didn’t actually see anyone on the rocks.
Not a whole lot to see from the top of this trail, but we did pass some farmland and it was definitely a less traveled trail than the one I did previously where you can see the skyline of Charlotte.