We are a few days away from the official start of winter on December 21, so I’m still posting about my fall hike during the fall season. 😏 Technically.
Gosh, it took me a while to put this short video together. Mostly because the fall season has held much warmer weather than usual. I believe that we had snow already by this time last year and this year we’ve enjoyed many days in the 60’s in Kentucky. For which, I am very grateful.
On this hike to the Auxier Ridge, I was really hoping to catch the leaves right at the perfect time for their big color change. I was a little bit early, but it was still a beautiful hike. I’ll always be a fan of lots of green leaves.
This hike has lots of options to make it anywhere from pretty short, maybe 2 miles, to as long as you could possibly want, and still be able to see a great view overlooking the valley below. Same with the difficulty, if you stay on the ridge, it is a fairly easy hike. I saw lots of families with dogs making the trip and only a few people seemed truly miserable at having overdone it lol.
My favorite part of the hike was this little pass-through between two giant boulders. There were what I think were roots that had just kept growing and searching for more water, or soil, or both and were over 30 feet long. I admit that I didn’t trace them to their start or finish, but you can see them in the video.
I did manage to bang my ankle into a rock at a weird angle. Imagine that- I’m never at a weird angle doing silly shenanigans. 😎 I hiked out a few miles with my pack and it didn’t feel great, but it wasn’t terrible. But by the time I had gotten home it had stiffened up and the pain sent me through the roof when I tried to stand on it. So I went and got an X-ray, and got the all-clear that nothing was broken. It did derail my plans for another big hike, and if I push it too much it is still telling me to take it easy. But I’m grateful that if I had to get an injury this year, at least it was at the end of hiking season and not the beginning. 😳 And despite hurting my pride and walking with a granny cane out in public for a week, I’ve been able to go on another short hike since and done yoga and weighted workouts. So it is most definitely on the mend and hopefully with some work will be better than ever by spring.
This is definitely a hike worth repeating. I will recommend trying to go on a weekday though. The parking lots were all filled for miles and cars were parked along the sides of the roads for a decent hike before you got to the trail. I encountered quite a few people. Several of whom caught me in the act of doing yoga lol. You may hear them in the video. But they were all very nice, which helps with my public display of asana anxiety. 😅 Do you have a list of places that you want to hike in 2022? I’d love to hear where!
MoveMint Yoga 