My four-day final trip of the year brought my annual total to 28 nights out in the wilderness, with a total of 216 miles, and 20,500 ft of elevation hiked.

Not an overly impressive set of figures, but considering the year’s events, not too bad either. I exceeded my nights out goal of 24 nights, and I missed my mileage goal of 240 miles by just 24 miles.

I visited six wildernesses in fifteen trips and completed hiking all of the trails in four of them (Devil’s Backbone, Hercules Glades, Paddy Creek, Berryman Trail).

• Piney Creek (Three times)
• Paddy Creek (Twice)
• Bell Mountain (Once)
• Devil’s Backbone Wilderness (Once)
• Hercules Glades (Seven times! — I think I hiked over 94 miles here)
• BerrymanTrail (Once)

My first trip was January 5-7 and my last, December 26-29. To do this I drove some 2,116 miles. That’s over 40 hours of driving. No wonder Dance Monkey is stuck in my head.

Despite everything, it’s been a good year. I’ll take that.