This is the perfect time to convert your non-hiking friends to the wonders of the trails. Think about your friends who said this is the year they “exercise,” “lose weight,” or “will be healthier.” Do you really think they can keep those resolutions? Be a good friend and gain a new hiking buddy by touting the benefits of walking. Why is walking a good New Year’s...
Learn MoreHikers on the Appalachian Trail may never tell campfire stories about the renovation of all 15 backcountry shelters in the Smokies, but they benefit from some amazing partnerships after a hard day’s trek. Joint efforts of labor and funding from Friends of the Smokies, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club improved cooking and sleeping...
Learn MoreFor many area commuters, Stringer’s Ridge is the tunnel they pass through to and from work each day. But to Chattanooga area preservationists, it’s a feature unique to the city—a 100 acre forest minutes from 50,000 people. “(Chattanooga) has something unique, I’ve not seen anything like this any where else,” Jim Johnson, a local...
Learn MoreIt has been a challenging year for 34-year-old Jake Bramante of Kalispell, Montana. First he hatched a plan to quit a stable day job as a network consultant to try and walk all 734 miles of trails in Glacier National Park in a single hiking season. Since he became the first person known to accomplish that feat, word of Bramante’s project has spread far and wide. Now he’s...
Learn MoreAs winter closes in, hiking opportunities in the Western North Carolina mountains often close down. Wind chills can plunge into the single digits or below on high peaks, making hiking hazardous. Snow and ice can leave rural roads leading to trailheads impassible. Still, hikers cooped up for the holidays feel twinges of cabin fever. They hanker to buckle on a day pack and...
Learn MoreIt’s only eight-tenths of a mile long – just a tiny stretch in a hike of nearly 1,000 miles. But conservationists and hiking enthusiasts are celebrating the newest link in the state’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which passes through 79 acres of Johnston County woods. The state Department of Transportation gave the tract to the all-volunteer Triangle...
Learn MoreEnjoy the great outdoors with your family by attending the Clermont Park District’s Winter Night Hike on Thursday, January 19, 2012. Join a park naturalist at 6:30 p.m. for a moonlight stroll along the trails of Shor Park, located at 4659 Tealtown Road in Union Township, OH. “This will be a fun discovery walk for the entire family,” said Clermont Parks’ Chief Naturalist...
Learn MoreSometimes, removing a few trees is good for the forest — at least when it comes to wildlife habitat. That’s the idea behind a wildlife habitat enhancement project under way on national forest land in Madison County, one of a number of such initiatives planned in the mountains to benefit species ranging from bears to songbirds. The project, on 15 acres in an area known as...
Learn MoreJoin a park ranger at Congaree National Park, South Carolina for Big Tree Hikes from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 15, and Friday, Jan. 27. The 6.5-mile hikes will take visitors to some of the largest trees found in the Congaree floodplain and show visitors how “Champion” trees are determined. Participants will learn how to take measurements and, perhaps,...
Learn MoreBureau of Land Management natural resource specialists in Lake County, CA will lead guided four-mile hikes in the Cache Creek Natural Area from mid-January through late-February. The hikes will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Enjoy the scenery of Cache Creek canyon where eagles, tule elk, osprey and other wildlife may be seen. The first mile consists of a...
Learn MoreImagine a 7,700-mile hiking trail from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Ron Strickland does. The 68-year-old Bedford, Mass., hiker who founded the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail has been working on the transcontinental route since 1996. There are only 940 miles to go. “The Pacific Northwest Trail took me decades to work out,” Strickland said...
Learn More
Usually I work on Saturday, but with this being Christmas Eve I had a chance instead to get out into the woods to enjoy the day. I chose to take a waterfalls hike in DuPont State Forest, about a 40 minute drive from my home. Little River drops more than 1000 feet in less than two miles over a series of falls that take the river from granite domes to pastoral valley. In...
Learn MoreIn 2010 the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative charged the Secretaries of the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality to develop a conservation and recreation agenda for the 21st Century. The intent of the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative...
Learn MoreFor the most part, Whistler is a hiker’s paradise. No one in town lives more than a few minutes walk from a hiking trail that, in most cases, is a gateway trail to an amazing spiderweb of other trails. So why a Lillooet hiking guide? Sometimes, particularly if your hiking history includes a lot of dryland treks, you just need to get the heck out of the coastal...
Learn MoreFor the past ten years, the City of San Clemente has embarked on the process of developing a continuous 2.5 mile coastal trail paralleling active railroad tracks within the Right-of-Way owned by the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). In addition, the City proposed construction of new, improved safe access points to the City beaches. Although the City has 18...
Learn MoreThe Arizona Trail is complete after twenty-six years of dedicated effort. The trail is a continuous, 800+ mile, diverse and scenic route across Arizona from Mexico to Utah. It links deserts, mountains, canyons, communities and people and was designated a National Scenic Trail in 2009. The Arizona Trail was officially completed at a ceremony on December 16, 2011. The...
Learn MoreVolunteers in Colorado are helping to build a completely new hiking trail, called the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), that stretches from Mexico to Canada and across Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Volunteers with the Continental Divide Trail Alliance (CDTA), based in Golden, Colorado, dig out the trail, clear vegetation and move huge boulders and trees...
Learn MoreLooking down on a 12,000-foot peak through the gaping side of a helicopter, I breathe the coldest, thinnest air I have ever breathed. Somewhere out there, three hikers and a dog are willing us to see them, to spot their molecule of color on Mount Charleston’s miles of November snow and shadow. Clouds menace, driven by icy winds that pummel our 1973 Huey like it’s a...
Learn MoreNothing sells a conservation message more than a walk on the wild side. And doing it during the winter adds a whole new dimension to the appreciation. “If you’ve never snowshoed and you’re an avid hiker, snowshoeing is a way to see the forest and to see Oregon’s back country in a completely different way,” said Sean Stevens of Oregon Wild....
Learn MoreSimilar to the famed Appalachian Trail, the Great Eastern Trail is being constructed by linking existing trails from Alabama to New York, and is more than 70 percent complete and open to hikers. When completed, the new, long-distance, nonmotorized trail, primarily used for hiking, will be approximately 1,800 miles long. In southern West Virginia, the Great Eastern Trail...
Learn More
I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. My regular hiking companions have designated me the lead hiker, so I suppose that makes me the slowest Meanderthal. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
Recent Comments