Outer Banks Golf

Bald Head Island: Another way to get there

FORT FISHER - To reach Bald Head Island, the far-flung sanctuary of golf-cart-drivers and lighthouse-lovers, you've got to drive to North Carolina's remote southeast corner and take a 20-minute ferry ride across the Cape Fear River - 23 bucks a pop, for adults.

But there's a secret back door that practically nobody takes - a route that costs zero if you're willing to hike, and demonstrates that Bald Head isn't really an island so much as the knuckle at the end of a long finger of sand.

If you start walking south from the ranger station at Fort Fisher, sticking to the hard-packed sand along the ocean, you can reach the first of the million-dollar beach houses on Bald Head after about six miles. With a four-wheel drive truck and a $12 permit, you can cut the trip in half by driving smack up to the island border, where a pair of lighthouses poke up from the dunes.

"I tell you what," said Vance Meanor, a Wilmington retiree walking shirtless through the surf. "They don't like people to know that. They don't like people to know you can walk all the way there and not get your feet wet."

If you look on older maps, or even those provided by Google, Bald Head floats unconnected to the rest of the state, separated by an inlet 1,000 feet wide.

But in 1999, Hurricane Floyd dumped enough sand over that inlet to smooth it over completely, wiping it so totally off the map that after 12 years, a local like Meanor can't even point to where it was.

So when you're walking down the shore, stepping over beached jellyfish the size of half-inflated volleyballs, stooping to pick up whole conch shells, you're on a continuous strip of land as wide as any point on the Outer Banks, just about all of it empty. And this is true at high tide.

"I rode my bike all the way down," Meanor said, waves pounding behind him. "We try to keep all this a secret."

Back in civilization, this walk on the beach gets described like a voyage to the New World from 15th century Portugal - a perilous and seldom-taken path beset by dragons.

"I'll be honest with you," said Mike Gautier, a volunteer at the Fort Fisher historic site. "There may be alligators and snakes. If they don't get you, the mosquitoes will."

You'll start at the ranger station at the state recreation area, where you can either park and start walking south, or pay $12 a truck to drive past a barrier arm and directly onto the beach.

Rangers at the starting point describe 5- and 6-foot gators crawling out of the swamps to sun themselves on the ocean sand. In a month, they say, maybe five or six people will try the Fort Fisher-Bald Head walk.

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Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Outer Banks

Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Outer Banks

Insiders' Guide to Golf in the Carolinas, 4th

Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Outer Banks

Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Outer Banks