Our picks for best hikes in the Triangle, whether you’re a tenderfoot or a trail beast
Even with 2 million people in the Triangle, it’s possible to drive 30 minutes to a spot so isolated the only noise is the tap of a woodpecker.
You can hike 7 miles inside Raleigh’s city limits without seeing seven people, despite the construction cranes across the downtown skyline.
You could hike along the Eno River and find the stones of an abandoned cemetery, forgotten by the cars racing past on the nearby interstate.
The region’s hiking trails are among its best features — crossing tens of thousands of acres, providing protected wilderness in cities all busily cutting down their trees.
North Carolina’s state parks alone span more than 60,000 acres, enough to wear out a pair of boots. Inside them, without binoculars or a field guide to plants, a casual hiker can find company in barred owls, bald eagles, killdeer plover and a flower called jack-in-the-pulpit.
What follows is a guide to the best Triangle trails — dirt and rocks only, no asphalt need apply.
You know the cliche: Take only pictures, leave only footprints.
The easy strolls
These trails last for less than 2 miles and can be walked in a pair of old sneakers. All have parking.
▪ Seaforth Pond Trail, 1.4 mile loop
Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, Pittsboro
This loop starts out with a startling sign: Watch out for copperheads and poison ivy. But those hazards are rare on the trails, easy to spot and, honestly, just as risky in your back yard.
This loop trail hugs two different lake shores and passes three ponds, where you’ll definitely spook a family of mallards and — if you’re lucky — spot an eagle’s nest. The soft pine straw bed and wooden footbridges make for easy walking.
Bonus sighting: Eggs from the killdeer plover.
▪ Swift Creek Bluffs, about 1.5 miles out and back
Triangle Land Conservancy, Raleigh/Cary
This 23-acre preserve follows the swampy bed of Swift Creek, showing off a colorful collection of botanical names: hickory, mayapple, trout lily.
An anonymous poem appears on a plaque: “I am a raw human who wants to be free.” Later, a set of wooden steps nicknamed “Stairway to Heaven. The woods can be enjoyed without the short climb, but it leads to a 100-foot bluff where you can sit eye-level with the critter holes in century-old trees.
Hikers will hear the occasional racket from a nearby pump station, but it fades with a few hundred steps from the road. Imagine what this Raleigh-Cary borderland would look like without such a refuge.
Bonus sighting: Muskrat, river otter, salamanders.
▪ Swift Creek Loop Trail, .8 mile loop
Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve, Cary
The scenery here more or less matches Swift Creek Bluffs — just a bit farther downstream. But Cary, being Cary, has tidied up the wilderness.
This popular trail invites dogs and kids in strollers to hike on a wood-chip path where the creek beds have been replanted and cleared of logjams.
An elevated wood-plank walkway covers roughly half the trail, and a 100-step staircase with multiple landings makes the steep part easy. It also points out the galax growing on the hillside. If you’re fond of stepping on roots and rocks, pick a tougher trail.
Bonus sighting: Peeper frogs
▪ Buckquarter Creek Trail, 1.5 mile loop
Eno River State Park, Durham
This short but spectacular loop takes a hiker to some of the gnarliest rapids on the Eno River, cluttered with jagged rocks. On a warm day, it’s common to see people navigating the boulders and shallow water on foot, and you’ll be tempted.
This path is easily combined with the Holden Mill Trail for a longer jaunt, should anyone feel inspired.
Bonus sighting: Nervous canoeists.
▪ Company Mill Trail, a mile or two if you cut it way short
William B. Umstead State Park, Raleigh
In its entirety, Company Mill runs for a 5.8-mile loop that would place it far outside the easy stroll category. But it’s best enjoyed as a quickie — out and back to Crabtree Creek.
There’s some rough terrain and a few steep hills on the way to the bridge over the creek, but even trail novices will grant that they’re worth the sweat considering the view waiting at the creek. The rapids on Crabtree always catch afternoon light, and it’s a safe bet whole families will have plopped down on a rock to watch them flicker.
Head onward if you’re feeling spry.
Bonus sighting: Someone painting the creek.
Longer views, muddier shoes
These trails aren’t any rougher on the knees — just a little more time-consuming. Maybe bring a snack.
▪ Waterfall Trail, 2.8 mile loop
De Hart Botanical Gardens, Louisburg
For much of the year, this trail’s namesake waterfall runs between a trickle to totally dry, but the real joy is walking in the steps of Allen de Hart — North Carolina’s sage of hiking.
De Hart taught history and psychology at Louisburg College and founded the annual, international whistling competition there. But his real passion lay in mapping out paths through the wild, particularly the state’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
His favorite trail wanders through his own 88-acre wood, which he willed to the public. As long as you sign the log inside the gazebo, promise not to smoke and leave your guns at home, you’re free to range over de Hart’s hand-made trails and the wild plants he imported.
Bonus sighting: Abandoned homesite.
▪ Vista Point — Red, 3 mile loop
Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, Pittsboro
This easy loop works its way through a flat pine forest to the edge of one of Jordan Lake’s many inlets, where the land narrows to a point thin enough to see water on both sides.
At a bench on the shore, you can see herons fly past, looking prehistoric. And empty mussel shells on the beach remind you this is some other critter’s dinner table.
Bonus sighting: Dogs digging for moles.
▪ Raven Rock Loop, 2.6 mile loop
Raven Rock State Park, Lillington
Raven Rock is probably the most impressive geologic feature in the Triangle region, though technically it stands a bit south in Harnett County.
At 150 feet, this wall of metamorphic gneiss has hosted countless thousands of field trips and day care outings because the massive rock outcropping forms a playland along the shore of the Cape Fear River. A caution: reaching the bottom requires many stairs.
The trail is easy and otherwise unexceptional except for the overlook, which shows the river carving its way along the fall line, where the rocky Piedmont turns to sandy coastal plain.
Bonus sighting: Icicles.
▪ Occoneechee Speedway Trail, 4 miles of various trails
Hillsborough
This easy trek through pine forests can be walked in various ways, but the real reason to visit lies in its history as a racetrack — the only dirt oval remaining from NASCAR’s first season in 1949.
The highlight, of course, is the 1-mile oval that saw stock cars race past thousands, and the ghostly grandstands that still remain with weeds growing on the seats. The Eno River provides some distraction, but the fun is imagining the crowds roar as the cars skidded around turn one.
Bonus sighting: Hulk of a 1938 Ford coupe.
A good, hard slog
Topping out at 867 feet, the Triangle doesn’t have a hike that qualifies as a true leg-breaker. Still, these trails will eat up half a day and get you good and sweaty —good practice for the real thing.
▪ New Hope Trail, 5.4 mile loop
Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, New Hill
For the full trudge experience, combine the blue and red loops — red first, to my taste. It doesn’t take long before you reach the total quiet zone, where phone coverage gets spotty and even a falling leaf makes noise.
Some of the Triangle’s steepest hills make up the red loop — again, nothing like the Blue Ridge — and the middle section follows the finger-shaped shorelines along the lake.
Near the end, when you’re good and tired, take the small jaunt to a bench overlooking what is probably the most sweeping view of the lake.
Bonus sighting: Kingfishers.
▪ Sycamore Trail, 7.2 miles
William B. Umstead State Park, Raleigh
Raleigh’s longest trail starts near the visitor center off Glenwood Avenue, but it’s easily cut short to a more manageable and more scenic 5-ish miles by parking at the multi-use lot and walking the short spur. Grab a trail map at the visitor’s center and this will be clearer.
Parts of Umstead suffer from planes landing nearby, but Sycamore takes you into the park’s guts, much of it along the trail’s eponymous creek.
Sycamore offers more non-woods-related highlights than most trails, including a cemetery dating to the park’s farmland days and a stone bridge built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Bonus sighting: A “log art” sculpture built from a fallen tree.
▪ Falls Lake Trail, potentially 50 miles, but up to you.
Falls Lake State Park, Wake Forest
This gem of a trail represents the Triangle’s slice of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which, if you were so inclined, would lead you clear to the Outer Banks. For a more modest stroll, head for Falls Lake’s Shinleaf access and march east.
Hikers here have noted that if you squint a little, you might believe you were in the Blue Ridge. The rambling path guides you over stream beds and wooden bridges, offering a lake view for much of the way. Kids will want to wander under the many attractive bluffs and onto logs leaning out in the water. There’s no loop, so just turn around whenever you’re halfway tired.
My favorite spot is the memorial to James “Jim” Emmett Stewart Jr., shown posing with a cat in the photo tacked to a tree.
Bonus sighting: Someone you know.
▪ Campbell Creek Loop Trail, 5-mile loop
Raven Rock State Park, Lillington
The signs here advise hikers to allow three to four hours, but a brisk walker will finish in just under two. Briskness is by no means necessary or advisable here, though, especially at the 100-foot bluff overlooking Lanier Falls — one of the roughest spots on the Cape Fear River.
This trail offers less flashy highlights along its namesake creek, which alternates between deep pools and rapids that actually burble. There’s a wilderness campsite halfway around the loop — and an outhouse — for those who feel like staying extra long. A boulder where the trail meets the creek presents a perfect sunny spot if you don’t mind anoles as company.
Bonus sighting: Park bench dedicated to “valentines” Grant and Bingo.
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 6:00 AM.