60 New Hikes in 2017!

I have 2 more hikes to post from my Christmas break hiking trip to southeast Texas, but the turning of the calendar says it is time for my annual summary and reflection post.  2017 has been a bountiful year for me on the trail.  I did 60 new hikes totaling 185.6 miles, and I got most of the old picture-less hikes updated with photos.  Those high totals came as a result of a couple of extra hiking trips including two Christmas break trips in the same calendar year (necessitated by a quirk in my university's academic calendar).  The hikes came across 19 different states including two new states: Arkansas and Texas.  I also did my first Canada hike; more on that below.

Looking ahead to 2018, the upcoming year marks a milestone for me: I will be celebrating 20 years on the trail and therefore 20 years of writing trail descriptions, all of which are in this blog.  To mark the occasion, here are some memorable "firsts" from my first 20 years of hiking:

First trail description* (summer of 1998): Winton Woods County Park: Kingfisher Trail (Blog Hike #3)
First road trip dedicated to hiking (April 2001): Hocking Hills State Park: Grandma Gatewood Trail (Blog Hike #89)
First hike after moving to Georgia (to earn my PhD, August 2005): Georgia Botanical Garden: Orange Trail (Blog Hike #181)
First hike as a college professor (September 2009): Blue Ridge Parkway: Otter Creek Trail (Blog Hike #288)
First hike after moving to South Carolina (to take a different and better professor job, September 2011): Paris Mountain State Park: Sulpher Springs Loop (Blog Hike #359)
First hike with my students (on a trip where they presented their mathematical research at an undergraduate research conference, April 2014): Ijams Nature Center: South Cove/River/Discovery Loop (Blog Hike #463)
First hike outside the USA (July 2017): Pigeon River Provincial Park: Middle Falls (Blog Hike #647)

I will probably get fewer hikes in 2018 than I did in 2017, partly because of the extra trips in 2017 and partly because I have some (prayerfully minor) physical/health issues to address as the new year starts.  Nevertheless, I have some good hiking trips planned.  I hope to get to the Potomac River area in northeast Virginia/southeast Maryland, the Monongahela National Forest in eastern West Virginia, and Glacier National Park in Montana.  The Montana trip should also include another trip across the border to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, and I should be in Canada for 2 days as opposed to 2 hours last summer.  I also hope to reach 700 blog hikes next year, probably while on my Montana trip this coming summer.

See you on the trail in 2018,

David, aka the Mathprofhiker

*In the unlikely event you are as obsessed about numbers and order as I am and are wondering why my first trail description is Blog Hike #3, the hikes in this blog are presented in chronological order based on when I first hiked that trail.  I did Blog Hikes #001 and #002 during my teenage years, but I re-hiked them and wrote the trail descriptions in my early 20's after I got interested in writing about hikes.  I have updated those descriptions over the years for changing trail conditions, but I have kept the writing style intact rather than doing a complete re-write in my newer (and hopefully better) style.