This is a two-part hike with a short drive on a forest service road in between. Both the Case Camp Ridge Trail and the North Face Trail start on Forest Road 475B in Pisgah National Forest. The first climbs 1000 feet in 1.7 miles to the Blue Ridge Parkway near Cherry Gap at mile 416. It’s a short walk from the trail to the Cherry Cove Overlook and a close-up view of...
Learn MoreThinking of heading off into the wilderness this weekend? Whether you’re planning an all-day hike to see waterfalls or a stroll to the park for some fresh air, here are some great recipes for keeping happy and energized. It’s even more fun when you make it yourself....
Learn MoreTheir service to their country may be over, but their devotion to their fellow soldiers continues. For the past three and a half months, Sean Gobin and Mark Silvers, recently separated from the Marine Corps, have been hiking the Appalachian Trail to raise money in order to purchase adaptive vehicles for veterans who have suffered amputations during their service in Iraq...
Learn MoreWith all due respect to Charles Dickens, walking fast probably is not the way to go in Valais. With its toothy Matterhorn, ancient glaciers, strange historical footnotes and flourishing wine scene, the only way to walk here is very, very slowly. Walking, in Switzerland, is a point of national pride, as instinctual to the populace as political neutrality or tuning the...
Learn MoreIt’s an Idaho ecologist’s heaven. Standing still, Steven Bekedam pointed out five native grasses thriving near his feet: bluebunch wheatgrass, Sandberg bluegrass, Junegrass, Idaho fescue and Great Basin wildrye, the big clumps that send up flowering stalks 5 or 6 feet high. “It’s so out of the ordinary to see all of these grasses growing in the same place,” said Danelle...
Learn MoreA million acres of national forests sounds like a lot, and indeed it is. But consider the 8.6 million people who visit the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests every year and those vast green swaths that checker any map of Western North Carolina don’t seem quite so big after all. Recreation has grown exponentially in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests during the...
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Friends of Panthertown is having a big fundraising benefit, the 2012 Bald Rock / The Divide Horse Exhibition & Silent Auction to be held on Saturday, June 30, 2012 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Bald Rock / The Divide equestrian community located on US Hwy. 64 between Cashiers and Sapphire, North Carolina. This exhibition will feature a spectacular horse show, silent...
Learn MoreAmong the oldest, most majestic trees in our forests are the hemlocks. Isolated stands of them date back 500 years or more. For decades, hemlocks in eastern states, most notably in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, have been under assault by an invasive species, the hemlock wooly adelgid. The tiny insect has devastated some hemlock forests, and it has made its way...
Learn MoreGreat Smoky Mountains National Park officials have closed two backcountry camping areas because of bear activity and posted bear warnings in several other areas. The measures were taken as bears, searching for food, have become increasingly bold in interactions with humans, park spokeswoman Molly Schroer said. No one has been injured. Bear problems, including animals...
Learn MoreIf you’ve been on the Blue Ridge Parkway lately, you’ve noticed the tall grass along the road and around the facilities. On May 7th, 2012 a Parkway maintenance worker was killed when his mower went over the edge of an overlook. Mowing in all National Parks was stopped until an investigation was completed. Parkway management and maintenance supervisors are...
Learn MoreIt was getting dark. They were lost atop Mount Lafayette in the White Mountains. And Analia Oliva and her boyfriend, Cory Robertson, out for a day hike with their dog, were not prepared for a night in the woods. The only tool they had with them was Oliva’s iPhone. Except that they had no reception, and Robertson, 25, and Oliva, 20, had used up much of the battery taking...
Learn MoreIsrael – arguably the world’s largest small country and certainly its most diverse – is a hiker’s paradise. Paths like the Bible Trail on Mount Gilboa, the Gospel Trail or Jesus Trail in the Galilee link sites sacred to Jews and Christians while passing through breathtaking mountain landscapes. The Kinneret Trail and the Jerusalem Trail, both...
Learn MoreA hiking trail to connect Vermont’s Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail to a 4,600-mile path to North Dakota could be coming to a farm field about midway between Lake Champlain and the spine of the Green Mountains. The North Country Trail National Scenic Trail is being extended from its current eastern endpoint in Crown Point, N.Y. The route it would take through...
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Pilot Mountain stands 5084 feet above the western edge of Pisgah National Forest, near the Blue Ridge Parkway and Looking Glass Rock. There are three ways to get to its summit, but the one I enjoy most is the section of the Art Loeb Trail from Gloucester Gap along Forest Road 475. It isn’t particularly long, but it is quite strenuous. You will get your exercise...
Learn MoreThe rampaging streams that wreaked havoc across Duluth, MN this week also ravaged parks and trails across the city and beyond. From Jay Cooke State Park through Duluth and up the North Shore, swollen rivers and brawling creeks chewed away trails, manhandled bridges and uprooted mature pines. Duluth’s city parks were hammered by the runoff, said Judy Gibbs, trails...
Learn MoreAfter 22 years of work, a trans-Quebec hiking trail spanning the entire breadth of the province is nearing completion. Once finished, the 1,645-kilometre Sentier national au Québec will connect the Outaouais region in the west to the Gaspé region in the east. From the Gatineau Hills north of the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan region, the SNQ will run east through the...
Learn MoreLast month, passengers on the Metro-North Railroad trains that run along the Hudson River looked up from their tepid coffee and their iPads to find the familiar view transformed. Just south of Hastings-on-Hudson, it looked as if a giant hand had carved a gash in the umber face of the Palisades, the wall of jagged cliffs that towers over the west bank of the river,...
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This year marks the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Appalachian Trail, the longest hiking-only footpath in the world, measuring roughly 2,180 miles in length from Georgia to Maine. The anniversary will occur on Tuesday, Aug. 14. The original trail took more than 15 years to build and was completed on Aug. 14, 1937. Construction involved the cooperation of...
Learn MoreMany hikers are amazed by the balds that dot the Southern Appalachian landscape along the Appalachian Trail. Walking out of a tunnel of rhododendrons onto an open meadow where the views go on forever can be an exhilarating experience. But what if Big Bald was no longer bald and the beloved Max Patch became a maze of bushes, brambles, and vines? This year, the $35,000 to...
Learn MoreWith a 42 percent HIV and AIDS rate and 200,000 orphans living in the country, the African nation of Swaziland is a country wracked with seemingly insurmountable conflict. But volunteers from all over the world are raising money to assist the country by hiking one mountain at a time. A group of local hikers ranging in varying skill levels is set to summit the 10,068 ft....
Learn MoreOn Saturday, June 30, 2012, Anne Weiler-Brown will take participants on the Timber Creek Overlook Trail in Kolob Canyons, Zion National Park. Anne, an acclaimed mixed media abstract expressionist, begins each art piece with hours of field work…painting in plein air (French expression for painting outdoors). According to the artist, “Abstract painting must be rooted in...
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. 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. 
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