You Are Here: Pisgah State Park

Usually the goal is to get up and out on the trails as early as possible. Today being the middle day of a long weekend, and Laura having had morning commitments, we went for an afternoon hike. No worries about getting home later, we still have tomorrow to sleep in! We headed for Pisgah State Park and the Kilburn Trailhead for my last hike in the park from this location. The Davis Hill trail starts literally on the road at the entrance to the parking area. The parking lot was not surprisingly almost full with some cars lining the street. We lucked out with a spot from one of those early risers who had already been and gone. The trail climbs gently right away and continues to do so with a little reprieve about half a mile in before gently climbing again to near the summit of Davis Hill. Just before the height of land, Old Davis Hill Trail branches off to the right. This would be our return trail. The trail was in great shape and nice and wide which made for great meandering on this sweltering hot day. The only negative were all the bugs, even with multiple bug spray applications and long pants, I ended up with 18 bites! Continuing over Davis Hill (no views) the trail descended before reaching a sharp right hand turn. We got a bit confused in this area, even with pre-downloaded tracks but managed to stay on trail. We took a left at the sign for the FOP Shelter and descended down passing several unmarked trails until we reached the shelter. We did pass a trail on the left with a handwritten sign saying Dort Vista, but seeing as that was not on the map and we weren't sure how long it was to reach the view (plus there was not much in the way of views today as it was very hazy) we skipped it. We stopped for a quick break at the shelter. It looked really nice and clean. From here we climbed a short but really steep ascent up to Hubbard Hill trail and the outlook vista bench then descended just under half a mile to the three way intersection with the end of Davis Hill Trail and Baker Pond Trail. We headed up Davis Hill Trail which was a bit rockier but still wide, passing by the intersection with Old Davis Hill Trail which we would come back to, and filled in the blank back to the shelter spur. Backtracking to Old Davis Hill Trail, this was the original trail before they established Davis Hill Trail up and over, whereas the original trail skooches around the side of Davis Hill. This trail was much narrower and seemingly hadn't been swept yet after this past Winter as we encountered more debris and a really large blowdown that we had to go around. It started out level and then climbed back up to meet Davis Hill Trail. We turned onto Davis Hill Trail and returned to the car. Surprisingly the parking lot was still quite full and we saw several people return with towels and floating apparatus. I hadn't realized Kilburn Pond was a swimming hole!

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