On a fine spring day 38 TrailBlazers crawled out of the woodwork and headed up to Fayetteville to scale the heights of scenic Mt. Kessler. The reasons for the great turnout were probably threefold: a new hike for us, a short drive, and the scent of pizza wafting down to the River Valley – to be explained.

This lovely mountain is escaping massive overdevelopment and consists of a city park with more amenities to be added, some land donated by Chambers Bank for hikers and bikers, and currently the use of much private land, graciously made available by residents, to reach the trails.

We started the hike on land owned by Frank Sharp who gave us access to the trails from his property. We started out on the neat Rock City Trail that winds upward with views through the trees and has a pathway through some huge boulders. Due to a heavy rain last night, there were parts of the trail that featured some chocolate pudding mud with a very high squish factor requiring some careful foot placement! After about 2 miles, we reached an intersection that offered such interesting trail options as Eggbeater, Crazy Mary, and Serpentine. Six hikers turned back at this point, 13 led by Eloise did a shorter hike including Eggbeater, and 19 of us led by Sam, who knows these trails, hiked Serpentine, part of Crazy Mary (she was a no-show), and then made our way back.

At the end Frank had laid out all the fixings to make our own pizzas and fired 2 at a time in his very hot oven for less than one minute! In addition we had cole slaw, lemonade, and oatmeal raisin cookies. What a treat – we could get spoiled! What will we do for an encore next week?

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