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       Introduction

      About This Book

      The 35 hiking routes in Five-Star Trails: Asheville are organized with the area’s geography in mind. From 5 trails in the central area, the guidebook moves north for 8 trails, east for 5 trails, south for 7 trails, and west for 10 trails. Following is a description of each of these breakouts.

       Central

      Hooray for so many trails close to the city of Asheville! Numerous folks who work and live in Asheville make use of these trails on a daily basis, primarily in the Bent Creek Experimental Forest and at the North Carolina Arboretum. And the forest bordering the city’s eastern and western flanks is widely accessible via the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

       North

      The Blue Ridge Parkway north of Asheville includes the 6,000-foot peaks along the Craggy Ridgeline and the historic ruins at Rattlesnake Lodge. Most of the hikes in this area take place on or near the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, but a day trip to Hot Springs, North Carolina, will also allow you to take the Appalachian Trail to a gorgeous vista at Lover’s Leap, as well as at the famed meadows of Max Patch. The trek atop Big Firescald Knob delivers another Appalachian Trail experience. Solitude seekers will enjoy remote Hickey Fork.

       East

      East of Asheville, the hikes in this guidebook typically are not as heavily traveled as their counterparts to the west. Mount Mitchell is an exception, although you can find relative peace and quiet on its trails until you get very close to the summit. Bearwallow Mountain and Florence Nature Preserve are privately owned hiking destinations open to the public, with views, waterfalls, and biodiversity. Catawba Falls offers a stunning waterfall at the end of a relatively gentle path.

      South

      Variety characterizes the routes in this section. Turkey Pen is a multi-use trailhead, hosting equestrians, mountain bikers, and hunters as well as hikers. Hikers, writers, and families all love to visit Carl Sandburg’s Connemara Farms in Flat Rock. And DuPont State Forest offers stunning waterfalls and plenty of trails that are worth exploring time and time again.

      West

      West of Asheville, this guidebook leads you primarily into Pisgah National Forest, including Shining Rock Wilderness and Middle Prong Wilderness. Here, you will find that the longest and most challenging routes in this guidebook lie west of Asheville, at Shining Rock and Cold Mountain. The west region also features Black Balsam, Graveyard Fields, and Mount Pisgah—some of the most popular hiking destinations in our area.

      How to Use This Guidebook

      The following information walks you through this guidebook’s organization to make it easy and convenient to plan great hikes.

      Overview Map and Map Key

      The overview map on the inside front cover depicts the location of the primary trailhead for all 35 of the hikes described in this book. The numbers shown on the overview map pair with the map key on the opposite page. Each hike’s number remains with that hike throughout the book. Thus, if you spot an appealing hiking area on the overview map, you can flip through the book and find those hikes easily by their numbers at the top of each profile page.

Trail Maps and Map Legend

      In addition to the overview map, a detailed map of each hike’s route appears with its profile. On this map, symbols indicate the trailhead, the complete route, significant features, facilities, and topographic landmarks such as creeks, overlooks, and peaks. A legend identifying the map symbols used throughout the book appears on the inside back cover.

      To produce the highly accurate maps in this book, I used a handheld GPS unit to gather data while hiking each route, and then sent that data to the publisher’s expert cartographers.

      Despite the high quality of the maps in this guidebook, the publisher and I strongly recommend that you always carry an additional map—or maps—such as the ones noted in each hike profile’s introductory, key-info “Maps” listing.

Elevation Profiles

      This graphic illustration represents the rises and falls of the trail as viewed from the side, over the complete mileage, of that trail. On the diagram’s vertical axis, or height scale, the number of feet indicated between each tick mark lets you visualize the ascent or descent. To avoid making flat hikes look steep and steep hikes appear flat, varying height scales provide an accurate image of each route’s hiking difficulty. For example, one hike’s scale might change 800 feet, as shown for the hike at Carl Sandburg’s Connemara Farms, while another stretches nearly 3,000 feet, as shown for Cold Mountain.

      If the profile does not include the diagram, that simply means that the elevation change is so insignificant that it would appear as a virtually flat path regardless of the cartographer’s height scales described above.

      However, as you will, in “The Hike Profile” section, the key-info list that introduces each route in this guidebook always includes a text line for “elevation,” which specifies the altitude at the trailhead. This item also notes the elevation at the route’s peak—or at the lowest point, if the trailhead elevation is the peak. (If the difference between the highest and lowest altitudes is negligible, that also is stated.)

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