The opportunity for a night hike under the full moon is always tempting, especially when it's traversing trails that are new to me. One of the local hiking groups offered just such a hike along Blankets Creek, which feeds into Allatoona Creek. After meeting the group around 8:00 PM in the parking lot, we do a quick round of introductions, an overview of the plan, and then we hit the trail running . . . or almost running. This park is very popular among mountain bikers and the trails are maintained by one of the local mountain biking clubs. As such, we were warned to be on the lookout for night riders.
I always love a brisk hike and tonight, it looks like we're going to be doing just that. As I note on my GPS tracking app, we are hiking around 4.5 mph over the first couple of miles, which is fantastic. As the sun drops below the horizon and the darkness of night settles in, we do encounter a few mountain bikers, but only a handful. Turning on our headlamps, we see eyes in the trees around us glowing in the distance just before a pair of young deer run off.
The trails here are designed for mountain bike thrills, with lots of steep inclines and descents, and areas that I refer to as a "bike flume", for they are designed to allow the bikes quick downhills with exciting turns and twists. The ample amount of roots and cut off tree trunks in the trail must also add a bit of danger to these trails at high speed. Perhaps that is reason number 16,247 that I'm not a fan of mountain biking.
After recrossing Blankets Creek, which we only had fleeting views of in the darkness, we head back towards the parking lot and say our goodbyes. I think some of the group intend to tailgate a bit and I would love to join them, but it's well past my bedtime and with a decent drive back home, I need to hit the road. We covered 6.1 miles at a very brisk pace and it felt great to be out here in the night.
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