First hike of 2025

Usually I start the year with a new year's day hike, but this year my day was spent on an airplane. My first real hike was a modest one, a restart after a few weeks of minimal hiking and walking. For this, I chose to travel well-worn trails at Black Hill Regional Park.

The weather was cold, high 20s, but it felt colder due to strong winds, and a light dusting of snow made it look more wintry. Few people were out.

The most interesting sight was this road, being built across the park entrance on Old Baltimore Road. The Field Crest Spur trail comes right out to the edge of OBR, but it is not a safe place to cross. There is only one pedestrian crossing of Old Baltimore, farther west, and the road in between does not consistently have walkable shoulders. West of that crossing there are sidewalks - but you can't get from the sidewalks to the trail. It would be nice if they found some way to link the park to the increasing number of homes built just to the north. 

(Okay - sure, there is one other crossing of OBR 2.5 miles west of Field Crest Spur - but you can't get there from those houses, either.)

Aside from this, the hike was a pleasant jaunt in the cold. It came in just shy of 6 miles, with the usual sub-100 feet per mile elevation gain of the area.

Last long hike of the year

My last long hike of the year was a loop starting at the Cool Spring trailhead. 10 miles, nowhere I hadn’t been before, but I finished my goal of at least one 10-mile hike a month for the year.

Hiking across Delaware

In November, I joined the Wilmington Trail Club's Hike Across Delaware, which crosses the entire width of Delaware along the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal trail. It does sound impressive to walk across an entire state in one day, but at 15 flat miles, it's the easiest state you'll ever hike across. 

The event is well organized, with a bus taking hikers to the starting point in Maryland. There are plenty of restrooms along the way, snacks at mile 10, and a souvenir bandana.

This is not a hike for the heat of summer, being very open, but it is scenic. Nearly all of it hugs the surprisingly wide canal, and for most of the hike, the canal is in view. 

I have now walked across two states; this was considerably easier than traversing Vermont on the Long Trail!

Rock Creek Greenway

Six months after hiking the upper portion of Rock Creek, I returned to where I left off to hike the middle portion of it. From the southern end of Lake Needwood to the DC border, a paved greeenway runs vaguely parallel to the creek for a little over 14 miles.

While it starts off unpromisingly in a grass field, the trail quickly plunges into the woods. This first section, ending when it emerges from Aspen Hill park, is quite pretty and has the fewest reminders of civilization (other than, you know, it being a paved path).

It then follows somewhat close to the road for a bit, and there is a short, depressing section absolutely overtaken by kudzu. After this, it wends through a series of local parks. There are plenty of athletic fields, views of houses, playgrounds, and short woods sections.

Beach Drive pops up, and for a while the creek and then Beach Drive run alongside it. Luckily, the road is closed to vehicles on weekends, making this another very pretty section, if more heavily used.

The trail then runs into the beltway and veers east. Here, the trail is sandwiched between Beach Drive on one side (open to cars), and the creek and the freeway on the other. Since it was a beautiful fall day, this section was pretty, but it could easily be depressing in other weather.

After passing under the beltway, the trail follows the road closely before entering more small parks. This section is mostly wooded, but there are surprisingly few views of the creek here. Eventually, it dead-ends at a parking lot at the DC line and Rock Creek Park. From there, natural surface trails lead onward.

As a practical note, there are plenty of restroom stops along the way. The biggest logistical difficulty was getting a ride at the end; my Uber driver somehow couldn't find his way there, and I had to cancel and get a Lyft. Public transit is not great in the area.

I did have an exceptionally nice fall day for my hike. I would avoid it on hot summer days, since parts of it are quite open and sunny, but it would also be fine in spring or winter.

Return to Sugarloaf

I returned to local mountain Sugarloaf on a weekday and enjoyed hiking it with fewer crowds. This time, I parked at the East View parking lot, hiked the white trail clockwise, and the then ascended and descended via the orange trail. The parking lots start halfway up the mountain, but the white trail takes you back to the base, allowing you to climb the entire thing. 

The map claims the white trail is 2.2 miles, but my tracker and Footpath both put it at 3.5 - and it certainly felt like the higher number. I don't mind the higher mileage, although it is frustrating when you have to be done by a certain time.

The orange trail is the hardest of the three summit trails, with lots of big boulders to climb. It made for a nice challenge.