Climate change — as it is for pretty much all life forms — is a huge bummer for bees. If neonics and other pesticides weren’t enough to deal with, a recent study demonstrated that global warming has fueled drastic bee habitat loss, leading to a 200-mile reduction in their natural environments. Something out in the great abyss has it out for the buzzers (hint: it’s CO2). Because bees depend on flowers for food and flowers depend on bees for pollination, the two groups of organisms tend to sync up. (Remember scribbling “symbiotic relationship”...
read moreThe Appalachian Trail is the country’s most famous footpath. Stretching 2,189 miles from Maine to Georgia, it attracts three million hikers each year—including over 2,000 thru-hikers. That number is expected to grow with the release of the Hollywood blockbuster A Walk in the Woods starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. Will crowds swamp the A.T. or help save it? The Appalachian Trail of today stretches some 2,189 contiguous miles from the forested summit of Georgia’s Springer Mountain to the knife-edge peak of Katahdin in Maine, but Benton...
read moreAs part of President Obama’s commitment to protect our nation’s unique outdoor spaces and ensure that every American has the opportunity to visit and enjoy them, the Obama Administration today formally launched the new Every Kid in a Park program. Starting today, fourth graders nationwide can visit the new Every Kid in a Park website to obtain a pass that provides free access to students and their families to all federally managed lands and waters – including national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries. The pass is valid...
read moreIt’s the dream hike, all 2,650 miles of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail. Or, maybe, the nightmare hike, when things don’t go quite right. Either way, that long-distance trail gem, from Mexico to Canada, is etched in the minds of many American hikers, especially those who live in the states the Pacific Crest Trail crosses _ California, Oregon and Washington. Signs posted at junctions along the way, with PCT either blazed in wood or on familiar metal triangles, send chills down the spine. The number of hikers has increased...
read moreThere are around 200,000 kilometers of hiking trails in Germany. Whether they follow a river, pass through flowering fields or scale steep peaks – there’s something for every hiker in this list of top 10 walks. In the 18th century, places of natural beauty saw an unprecedented boom in tourism. Bizarre rock formations, like in Saxon Switzerland south of Dresden, were suddenly seen as wild and romantic. Since then, a trail called Malerweg (Painter’s Way) has guided visitors through the rocky scenery. The path was restored in...
read moreThe Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania is “where boots go to die,” and “lots of people leave Pennsylvania limping and bruised.” After traversing all 220 miles of the AT in the Keystone State, both statements are indeed accurate. The reason is entirely geological, owing to the amazing jumble of rocks of all types, sizes and shapes – known scientifically as felsenmeer – that make up the progressively more difficult mountain terrain. The Pennsylvania rocks at best have hikers stumbling about much like a drunken sailor for miles at a time; at...
read moreWhen Jackson Spencer set out to tackle the Appalachian Trail, he anticipated the solitude that only wilderness can bring — not a rolling, monthslong frat party. Shelters where he thought he could catch a good night’s sleep while listening to the sounds of nature were instead filled with trash, graffiti and people who seemed more interested in partying all night, said Spencer, who finished the entire trail last month in just 99 days. “I wanted the solitude. I wanted to experience nature,” he said. “I like to drink and...
read moreby Nicholas Kristof for the NY Times Most of the time in America, we’re surrounded by oppressive inequality, such that the wealthiest 1 percent collectively own substantially more than the bottom 90 percent. One escape from that is America’s wild places. At a time when so much else in America is rationed by price, egalitarianism thrives in the wilderness. On the trail, no one can pull rank on you — except a grizzly bear. (In that case, be very deferential!) Wilderness trails constitute a rare space in America marked by economic diversity....
read moreHundreds more died off the coast of Libya this week, on the heels of 71 deaths of migrants trapped in the back of a truck near Vienna, Austria. At the same time, NASA officials just warned that rising global sea levels from climate change could affect coastal regions, including 150 million residents in Asia who lived “within a meter from the sea.” While news organizations and policymakers around the world wrestle with calling displaced persons “refugees” or “migrants”or “asylum-seekers,” a far...
read moreWhen musician and naturalist Bernie Krause drops his microphones into the pristine coral reef waters of Fiji, he picks up a raucous mix of sighs, beats, glissandos, cries, groans, tones, grunts, beats and clicks. The water pulsates with the sound of creatures vying for acoustic bandwidth. He hears crustaceans, parrot fish, anemones, wrasses, sharks, shrimps, puffers and surgeonfish. Some gnash their teeth, others use their bladders or tails to make sound. Sea anemones grunt and belch. Every creature on the reef makes its own sound. But half a...
read moreDoes the Ted Cruz in you ever wonder whether global warming really is just a hoax? Whether skeptics really are the Galileos of our time? Whether climate scientists really do just want to make money? Well, wonder no more. A group of researchers just tried to replicate 38 peer-reviewed studies that support skeptic talking points, and surprise! They ran into some trouble. In a paper published last week in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, the researchers reported a number of problems with the 38 studies, including questionable...
read moreAt the Asia Pacific Resilience Innovation Summit held in Honolulu, Hawaii, Governor David Ige dropped a bombshell. His administration will not use natural gas to replace the state’s petroleum-fueled electricity plants, but will make a full-court press toward 100 percent renewables by 2045. Ige’s decisive and ambitious energy vision is making Hawaii into the world’s most important laboratory for humankind’s fight against climate change. He has, in addition, attracted an unlikely and enthusiastic partner in his embrace of green energy—the US...
read moreAs August winds down into September, summer days in Seattle, WA are still long but the temperatures have cooled off, making it the perfect time to get outside for one last hurrah before summer officially comes to a close. The only problem? It’s also prime wildfire season—and this year is no exception. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now that the biggest wildfire in Washington’s history is currently raging in the northeast part of the state. Even so, this doesn’t mean adventurous types can’t venture into the outdoors, but...
read moreYou have arrived at the campsite after the first of five long days walking. The view is spectacular as the sun dips between the surrounding peaks, sending shafts of light splintering across the valley. You delve into your hastily loaded pack, glancing at the surrounds and wondering if life could be any better. Then you reel in horror – your hand hits a wet patch, deep in what should be dry territory. You delve further, only to find a soaking sleeping-bag. The culprit is a cracked water bottle. It will be a long, cold night. The...
read moreGreat Smoky Mountains National Park rangers remind visitors that graffiti not only detracts from the natural beauty of the park, but can also permanently damage irreplaceable resources. Park resources including one of the best collections of log buildings in the eastern United States, backcountry hiking shelters, live trees, stone walls, bridges, and tunnels have all suffered from a range of small markings with ball point pens to elaborate markings with permanent marker to lewd and offensive spray paint messages that leave the park in worse...
read more1965 was the year Winston Churchill died and Mary Quant introduced the miniskirt. The Sound of Music was released and the US Supreme court legalised the use of contraceptives by married couples. Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, released just the year before, seemed prophetic indeed. But perhaps it was the opening lines of the iconic song – “gather round you people/wherever you roam” – that best forecast one of the landmark events of 1965: the opening half a century ago of the 267-mile long Pennine Way. Yet while the launching of the...
read moreMany Missouri business owners are preparing for the state to finish conversion of the former Rock Island Railway into a hiking and biking trail. “The trail would stretch about 200 miles in Missouri, from Pleasant Hill, a town half an hour southeast of Kansas City, to Beaufort in the south-central part of the state. It also might loop with the Katy Trail, creating 400 miles of the longest rail-converted trail system in the country.” A year ago, the trail’s future was uncertain, but the Surface Transportation Board approved the...
read moreAmericans love to hike their 167,00 miles of trails located on federal and state lands. We are building new trails to meet demand, and trail use is projected to continue increasing. But how do Americans feel about placing hut systems on some fraction of their trails? How do we feel as a nation about hut-to-hut hiking, skiing and biking? No one knows. It’s worth talking about. In the USA there are a dozen or so hut-to-hut systems. While popular with those in the know, hut systems are not yet part of the consciousness of most American outdoor...
read moreThis new project would convert an abandoned rail line and Mississippi River levee road into an 84-mile biking and walking trail. Governor Asa Hutchinson, in his weekly radio address, said “I believe in this new vision for the Delta, and I want to do what I can to promote it. I’ve even pledged to take a bike ride along a portion of the Delta Heritage Trail this fall. I encourage every Arkansan to do the same; to enjoy our great outdoors and to rediscover the Delta.” This project converts an abandoned Missouri Pacific rail...
read moreFriends of the Mountains to Sea Trail have provided an interactive map that allows you to explore multiple aspects of the MST – the route across the state, terrain, and satellite imagery. They have also added icons to help you find places along the trail where the route has been updated, as well as photos taken along the trail route by FMST members. Learn more about the map here… ...
read moreAs motorists take the curve on N.C. 151, heading up the mountain from Asheville toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, they should notice a large stone lovingly placed there 95 years ago to commemorate the area’s history. But they probably won’t. Eagle Scout hopeful Levi Smith is looking to change this by giving both the monument and the adjacent Stony Fork picnic area a much-needed facelift. Although he lives nearby and drives by the site on N.C. 151 regularly, it wasn’t until a recent hike with Boy Scout Troop 58 that the 17-year-old knew the...
read moreDue to a drier than usual spring and summer, the fall leaf color in the mountains of Western North Carolina should be putting on a more spectacular show than it has in many years, according to Western Carolina University’s autumnal season prognosticator Kathy Mathews. Mathews, an associate professor of biology at WCU, gives her annual prediction of how foliage around the region will perform as the sunlight of summer wanes and days become frosty. She specializes in plant systematics and bases her color forecast on both past and predicted...
read moreThe question arises: why are the three most famous accounts of hiking three of the world’s most famous long-distance trails written by people who did not hike the whole distance? The loneliness and skull-bound nature of a long-distance hike fits quite nicely with the thinking out, if not the actual writing, of books. The dusty back aisles of Amazon are glutted with first-person accounts of successful thru-hikes, most of which tend to be buffed-up re-writes of the author’s trail journal. These books have a limited audience (namely, other...
read moreThink you have the grit to produce grist? Then consider helping out Great Smoky Mountain National Park by volunteering to help provide visitors with historic information at Mingus Mill. The mill, located a half-mile north of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee, North Carolina, was built in 1886. It offers visitors a unique look into the inner workings of the turbine-wheel operated mill that custom-ground a variety of grains, including corn, wheat, and rye. The complexity of the mill provided customers with custom-ground cornmeal or...
read moreIs it looking like your plan to hike your kids and your 12-year-old nephew 3,000 feet and nearly four miles uphill to the brink of Upper Yosemite Falls—and then, of course, back down—is on the express bus to the graveyard for dumb ideas from overzealous hiker-dads? Hike, backpack, cross-country ski, or do anything physical outdoors with kids regularly, and there will inevitably come a time when you have an unhappy kid who’s complaining he can’t take another step without severe consequences, possibly including death. You’re out on the trail,...
read moreWildfires are exploding across the western United States, overstretching resources and, in some states, resulting in tragic consequences. Some 30,000 firefighters and additional support staff are now fighting fires across the United States — the biggest number mobilized in 15 years, according to the U.S. Forest Service. And it’s still not enough. Two hundred members of the military are being called up to help further — they will be trained and deployed within just a few days — as are Canadian firefighting forces. There’s even some talk of...
read moreThe South Coast track is not like the Overland track, Tasmania’s most popular walk. There are no huts and it’s not guided. We would be cooking all our own food, carrying our gear the whole way and carrying out all our rubbish. The only access to the starting point at Melalueca is by light plane. A false start on day one – the fog was too thick for the plane to land – made it clear why most hikers choose to fly in and walk out rather than the other way, risking getting stuck in bad weather waiting for a flight back to Hobart. Some days you...
read moreMore than a decade ago, Kieran Roe sealed and stamped an envelope and dropped it in the mail. What he got back proved to be far beyond his expectations. “I couldn’t have fathomed everything that would come from it,” said Roe, executive director of Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (CMLC). Roe’s envelope contained a grant application to the Corporation for National and Community Service with a proposal to initiate Project Conserve, a new AmeriCorps program in western North Carolina. “We were still a fledgling land trust. We only had a...
read moreThe U.S. Forest Service closed a large chunk of the North Fork Coeur d’Alene River drainage in Northern Idaho due to a forecast of hazardous fire weather and because of close to 20 fires already burning on the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District. “It’s probably among the most popular forest access in all of the Idaho Panhandle,” said Jason Kirchner, spokesman for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. The closure, unprecedented in its size for this area, is necessary to protect public safety, Kirchner said. “We’re not aware of ever needing an...
read moreTech. Sgt. Stacy Trosine is on the journey of a lifetime. The Fairchild Air Force Base airman is hiking 710 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, much of it alone, in honor of three soldiers she served with in Afghanistan. She started the trek on Aug. 8. Trosine has been deployed seven times in her 18-year military career, including three stints in Afghanistan, but her most recent deployment affected her profoundly. “I was embedded with the 466th EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) last year. I was deployed with the most amazing group of men,” she...
read moreA popular Windward Oahu hiking trail sees countless hikers every day. How safe is it? There have been concerns about rocks falling at the Lanikai Pillbox Trail, that danger is currently being addressed, but hikers have brought up new issues about the pillboxes and are worried they could one day come crashing down. Ask any hiker headed up the Lanikai Pillbox trail and you’ll probably hear something like this. “The pillboxes, its quite a historic place and its an unbelievable view on Oahu,” said hiker Lasse Christiansen. “I have been coming...
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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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