Hiking year around has its ups and downs. For every beautiful day with an alpine meadow decorated with colorful wildflowers, there is a rainy day with concrete skies.

In late January I was reminded of this truism again. Torrents of rain fell from the sky while I hiked a muddy and slushy five-mile loop in Tryon Creek Park.

It is a very verdant area with ferns and small cedar trees covering the forest floor, large-leaf maple trees climbing to the heavens, a few second-growth Douglas firs and hemlocks beginning to establish their dominance and small streams tumbling near the trails.

But, this day it was an obstacle course of climbing over, under and around fallen trees.

I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

One of many fallen trees across the trail

A Hemlock tree that began its life growing on a stump

A very muddy trail

The remains of last week’s snow storm

Another fallen tree over the trail