Our fifth hike of the year .. January 21, 2024
After an early morning meetup near Charlotte ... I decided to find somewhere to hike/explore for the day I was in the mood for something different instead of returning to Kings Mountain. So, after a quick google search .. I found Latte Nature Preserve. And as a bonus, there's no admission fee and plenty of trails to explore! We quickly found our way into the preserve and parked the car near the Quest facility (it's a nature learning facility that's free - so it'd be a great place for kids - ABOUT | Quest (thisisquest.org) ). We studied the map (along with downloading a copy - which I highly recommend) and quickly got a rough idea for a route. We started off on the Hill trail to connect up to the Forest Loop to the Cove Loop. At the intersection of the Cove Loop - there was some ruins and old farming stuff.
And it also came with a warning that the trails terrain got tougher - honestly it wasn't that bad ....I'd say moderate for most people. I will say though that once we got on these trails - we didn't see near as many people. We got some great views of Mountain Island Lake along this trail - we also got to hear a lot of birds in this area. We then reconnected to the Forest Loop to connect with the Split Rock trail - which I didn't spot the split rock. We then proceeded up the North Canoe Access Road to link up to the Beechwood trail ... which is a loop but we only did the northern half of it to connect to the Catawba trail then on to Laura's trail which lead us to Wash Rock (which apparently is a popular spot for bouldering) and a great view of the lake. We then continued along Laura's Trail to Buzzards Rock - which is another fantastic viewpoint (a deck with a nice little bench to enjoy the view). With what little daylight we had left-we made a beeline for the car using Buzzard Rock, Laura's Trail, Sample Trail, and Hill Loop to return to the car (though I think somewhere around the horse trailer parking - I lost the actual trail - but we still ended up where we needed to).
Overall, we had a fantastic time. It's very popular for people to bring their dogs here ... so this is one of the times I had Sally on leash for most of the time. There's several parking areas and trail maps at most all trail junctions (along with signage posts). The viewpoints are definitely worth visiting and there's even some that's not shown on their map. There's also a historic site and a Raptor center - which we didn't get to see this trip - but looks interesting enough that I'd like to return! Most of the trails I'd rate as easy to moderate.
For photos...
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