Ultra runner and Red Bull athlete Karl Meltzer set a new Appalachian Trail thru-hike speed record early this morning, Sept. 18, 2016, when he arrived to Springer Mountain in Georgia at 3:38 a.m. Karl started at 5 a.m. on Aug. 3 at the north end of the trail at Mount Katahdin, Maine. The new record set by Meltzer is 45 days, 22 hours and 38 minutes. The 48-year-old runner...
Learn MoreIn the mountains near Breckenridge, CO where the trees grow tall is a village where the houses are very, very small. It’s called the Fairy Forest. It’s on a trail that can be a really good time. There are dozens and dozens of houses, some with a pool. The trail steps lead to a more magical moment that only a fairy village brings full of happy fairy things. There is even...
Learn More“The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bed sheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.” This passage, from Summer Island, a romance novel by Kristin Hannah, is how researchers introduce a potentially important new study they...
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How will you celebrate National Public Lands Day on Sept. 24? You can hug a tree, clean up a trail or share a spectacular moment in nature with family and friends — all without paying to enter national parklands. The idea for the one-day event started 23 years ago when the National Environmental Education Foundation challenged Americans to come out and volunteer on its...
Learn MoreThe history and culture held in the mountains and hollows is intriguing. You might want to visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park this weekend for the annual Mountain Life Festival. A fixture at the park’s Mountain Farm Museum for more than three decades, the festival brings you face-to-face with the traditional fall activities of those who lived in the Smokies...
Learn MoreThe U.S. House Committee on Agriculture has unanimously approved the National Forest Service Trail Stewardship Act of 2015 (HR 845). The bill, introduced by Congresswomen Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Tim Walz (D-MN), would direct the Forest Service to take several actions to help address the current trail maintenance backlog that is adversely impacting all trail users on...
Learn MoreTahquamenon Falls State Park is celebrating Michigan Trails Week with its annual 5-mile hike Sept. 24, 2016 along the Tahquamenon River, between the Upper and Lower Tahquamenon Falls in Luce and Chippewa counties. “This spectacular hike is a very popular event at Tahquamenon Falls State Park,” said Theresa Neal, park interpreter. “It allows us to showcase not only the...
Learn MoreInterior Secretary Sally Jewell approved the first phase of a sweeping renewable energy and conservation plan for California’s deserts Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016 that’s expected to shape large-scale wind and solar development for decades to come. “Climate change is the pressing issue of the day, and this region is part of the solution,” Jewell said during a signing...
Learn MoreResearchers at the University of Illinois look at how nature restores social cues and makes people less irritable, improving how they relate to each other and establish important rituals. When families spend time together outside, not only do they improve their individual attention and focus, but they also improve family relations, getting along better with each other....
Learn MoreParadise, population one, is halfway along the Magruder Corridor, one of the roughest roads in the US West. This 163km primitive dirt track winds through the largest wilderness area in the continental US, climbing over steep mountains and crossing snow-fed streams along the Montana and Idaho border. Along with his dogs, Harrison and Ozzie, 64 year-old Earl is the only...
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We all love a good carabiner. We use them to clip our keys, our camera, our water bottle, or a myriad of other products to our backpacks, to shelves, to fences, to belt loops or to whatever we need at the moment. You want your carabiner to be strong, lightweight and maybe have some other functionality like a bottle opener. The Firebiner is all that PLUS it has the...
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When you hear about people who have hiked the Appalachian Trail, it might conjure up the image of worn and weathered thru-hikers retiring after a long, arduous journey. Although it’s always an honor to meet one of these fearless, determined and dedicated long-distance hikers, you don’t necessarily have to take six months off work in order to enjoy hiking the...
Learn MoreCyclists in Canada will soon be able to pedal from Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast to Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean, without having to share a road with a single car. The Great Trail, as it’s known, is set to open in 2017 in time for Canada’s 150th birthday. Once complete, the trail will stretch 15,000 miles (24,000km) through each of the...
Learn MoreMeet Heather “Anish” Anderson. It should be said right away that Anderson is not your typical backpacker. On Sept. 24, 2015, she set the self-supported speed record for hiking along the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia: 54 days, 7 hours and 48 minutes. Two years earlier, she set a record on the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile path that runs between...
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This remote corner of the Smokies isn’t easy to get to, but your efforts will be rewarded with solitude, quiet, peaceful 2nd growth forest, and a pensive wandering. The Cherokee lived on one side of the ridge. The Cataloochee settlers on the other. They met in the middle to graze their cattle on “The Ledge” between the two. The bald knobs are reforested...
Learn MoreMore than 5,500 miles of paved roads wind through the national park system. You probably haven’t given much thought to any of them, but Timothy Davis has. A Park Service historian, Davis has written “National Park Roads,” a fascinating and lavishly illustrated book about those paved ways. They may well be the most important development in the history of the National Park...
Learn MoreYosemite National Park added Ackerson Meadow, 400 acres of critical wetlands and meadow habitat on the park’s western boundary through a donation. The landmark addition was donated to the park through a cooperative effort between The Trust for Public Land, Yosemite Conservancy, and the National Park Service. The Trust for Public Land purchased Ackerson Meadow from...
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Every fall, on the first weekend in October, Wild South hosts training for a new group of volunteers interested in joining the Volunteer Wilderness Ranger team. The USDA Forest Service in Alabama manages three federally designated wilderness areas, Sipsey, Cheaha, and Dugger Mountain, totaling 42,218 acres. For the past several years, Forest Service budgets have afforded...
Learn MoreThe Pisgah National Forest begins the next phase of construction on the Catawba Falls Trail on the Grandfather Ranger District on Monday, September 12, to improve the trail and crossing of Chestnut Branch with a new footbridge. The Catawba Falls Trail is a popular hiking trail near Old Fort, NC. Chestnut Branch is the last creek crossing before visitor reach the lower...
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One million gallons of saltwater and an unknown quantity of crude oil have leaked from a North Dakota pipeline into a creek that feeds the Missouri River. The spill was on Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation land approximately 15 miles north of Williston, North Dakota. The leak comes from a saltwater collection line owned by Summit Midstream Partners LP. The saltwater is...
Learn MoreWilderness areas on Earth have experienced alarming losses in the past two decades, a new study suggests. By comparing global maps from the present day and the early 1990s, researchers have concluded that a 10th of all the world’s wilderness has been lost in just 20 years. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, finds that just over 30 million square...
Learn MoreWe know the least about the plant we love the most in the mountains. When Tabitha Graves took up carnivore research for the U.S. Geological Survey base at Glacier National Park, one of the biggest puzzles needing attention was the role huckleberries play in the food chain. Although creatures from grasshoppers to grizzlies like the purple fruit, we know little about what...
Learn MoreHidden in an unknown corner of Inner Mongolia is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech. The city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Stretching into the distance lies an artificial lake filled with a...
Learn MoreBruce “Buck” Nelson appreciates a good adventure. He’s hiked the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest and Appalachian trails. He’s canoed the length of the Mississippi River, hiked and hunted his way across Alaska and spent 70 days living off the land on Admiralty Island, home to 1,600 brown bears. Since late March, the 58-year-old retired smoke jumper of Fairbanks, Alaska,...
Learn MoreA hefty backpack slung from his shoulders, hiker Martin Kubik places a hand on a fallen tree blocking his path and groans. “I hate this,” he mutters as he lowers himself beneath the trunk, one knee scraping the ground, to pass under. It is a labored routine he repeats again a few hundred yards farther down the trail at the next fallen tree, and then again at the next...
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On a February, 2016 morning, biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission visited a Waynesville dairy farm where the landowner said he had shot three elk damaging his property — a bull, a cow and a calf. While walking the farm’s wheat fields and ridge lines, the biologists found even more dead elk, some gruesomely decomposed, some buried, which were not...
Learn MoreJust sleeping at altitude will help you acclimate, as more time in the area will leave you better prepared, regardless of your fitness level. But the best way to make the most of your high-altitude adventure vacation is to plan excursions that progressively take you higher over the days of your trip. “Progression makes the altitude less shocking on your...
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Watch where you’re stepping while hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles this month. There may be an extra pair of legs (or four) on the path. It’s the beginning of tarantula mating season, and the males are on the prowl. According to the National Park Service, those big, furry arachnids that call the American Southwest home will be spending the better...
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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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