If you’re thinking about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, you might want to think again.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) is discouraging people from attempting to hike the entire 2,190-mile trail — called thru-hiking — and has said it will not recognize attempted thru-hikes until the coronavirus pandemic is “under control.”

The group — which manages the multi-state trail — also said it will not distribute hangtags, the plastic tags given to aspiring thru-hikers to promote sustainable hiking practices and celebrate their attempt.

“Due to the pandemic and the risk that interstate travel could spread COVID-19 (including the emerging variants that could be even more contagious), the ATC has been advising hikers to postpone their hikes until the CDC has deemed the pandemic ‘under control’ or a COVID-19 vaccine or effective treatment is widely available and distributed,” the ATC said on its website.

“We do not feel it is appropriate to provide what could be perceived as a reward for long-distance hiking, which we are actively discouraging until one of the above conditions is met,” the group added.

The group said it hasn’t distributed hangtags since March 2020 because of the pandemic.

Those who want to be considered thru-hikers have to complete the entire 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail in one trip within 12 months — though it typically takes between five and seven months.

Cite…

Protective face masks are now a requirement for entry into a national park.

The National Park Service announced its new mandate in a press release, which notes that the PPE requirement is in compliance with President Biden’s executive action that states masks must be worn on federal property, including parks and buildings.

Mask wear is required for visitors, park employees, partners and contractors due to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. This order remains in effect indefinitely.

Face masks must be worn on lands managed by the National Park Service when social distancing cannot be maintained. This includes “narrow or busy trails, overlooks and historic homes,” according to the release.

Additionally, the National Park Service is implementing capacity limits on one-way trails as a coronavirus-related health and safety measure. Temporary closures can be applied in response to local conditions.

On-duty park rangers will reportedly uphold the mask and distancing requirements.

Cite…

At the National Mall in Washington, at least four National Park Service employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days as the pandemic hit its highest level yet in the nation’s capital.

At Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, officials said they’ve had 28 confirmed cases within the park.

And in California, parks this week once again started closing campgrounds and other facilities in response to restrictions imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With the pandemic worsening, NPS is under growing pressure to step up its protections for employees as its caseload grows.

NPS officials have declined to disclose the specific number of cases, citing the privacy of employees, but a public health official told the NPS advisory board in September that about 150 staffers had tested positive since March.

The park service has declined to provide an updated number.

More employees have tested positive this year as most parks have remained open during the pandemic, complying with orders from both President Trump and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

Read full story…

As visitation at Zion National Park reaches record highs, park officials are asking for the public’s help as they grapple with a rising challenge: unprecedented levels of graffiti along the protected sanctuary’s most popular trails.

“We take this very seriously, and it’s becoming a huge problem for us,” chief ranger Daniel Fagergren says. “It’s everywhere.”

He says nearly every day at Zion, staff are finding words and shapes painted and drawn with mud, dirt, or pigment or even scratched on rocks or carved within moss. The vandalism has been found along the vast majority of hikes located in Zion Canyon, including The Narrows, Angels Landing, West Rim Trail, Emerald Pools Trails, and Kayenta Trail, and has been increasing since park officials first brought attention to the growing concern back in September.

According to Fagergren, the graffiti issues are twofold and both related to the coronavirus pandemic.

One reason behind the problem may be that thousands of first-time visitors from across the nation have flooded the park, including residents of major cities under strict restrictions, some of whom may not appreciate or understand the ethics of preserving and protecting public lands. He says September and October were both record-setting months for visitation. October saw a 30% increase in visitors compared to October of 2019, which was another record-setting year.

Fagergren said another part of the problem is that there have been fewer patrols keeping a sharp lookout for vandals, as he works to keep his own staff safe and prevent them from contracting COVID-19. While more acts of vandalism have slipped through the cracks as a result, he noted that graffiti is also contagious, spreading exponentially as more and more visitors see the vandalism and presume the acts are acceptable.

Read full story…

When President Richard Nixon ‘s signature on the Clean Air Act of 1970 prompted North Carolina to create its Division of Air Quality, air quality was bad in Western North Carolina.

“Back in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, once summer hit your mountains would disappear,” recalled Jim Renfro, longtime air quality specialist for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “You’re outside in the valley looking up, and you couldn’t see the mountains through the haze.”

In one of the true environmental success stories of the past century, the situation has improved dramatically since then — and as 2020 fades into 2021, it’s expected to keep getting better.

“Without a doubt we are seeing the lowest ambient air pollution levels that have been recorded since the inception of our program,” said N.C. Division of Air Quality Director Mike Abraczinskas. “That’s wonderful news, testament to all of our good work, advancements in technology, regulatory and non-regulatory measures. North Carolinians are definitely breathing the cleanest air that they have anytime during their lifetimes.”

Data from the early days of the pandemic — March and April — show reductions of about 30 to 50 percent in vehicle miles driven as compared to 2019 figures. For the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2020 traffic counts at the DAQ’s roadside site in the Research Triangle Park, one of the busiest stretches of road in North Carolina, were down an average of 26.8 percent compared to the same period in 2019, Abraczinskas said.

It appears that this drastic reduction in time on the road is leading to a noticeable improvement in air quality.

Read full story…

It’s been a terrible year for all of us, especially kids. The pandemic has eliminated the kind of routine social interaction we’ve all taken for granted. No team sports, no movies, no museums, no sleepovers, no playdates. Parents face the dual tasks of making sure their kids are getting the physical activity they need as well as trying to replace the lost hours of socialization.

“The brain, like other body parts, needs exercise to stay healthy,” says Tracy Inman, associate director of the Center for Gifted Studies at Western Kentucky University. “For our cardiac health, we know it’s important to do aerobic exercise, complete with sweating, huffing, and puffing. Athletic sweat looks very different from academic sweat. The gifted brain thrives on novelty and complexity. So your son’s endless questions strengthen his brain. He’s connecting that new information you provide to what he already knows, understands, or is able to do. The more complex the information, the more his brain works.”

There are seeming frivolous and silly questions, and there are also the more serious questions, the things that get talked about to make sense of what’s happening in the world. Those have spurred discussions about issues like racial inequality and gender identity that might never have taken place while stealing moments between after-school activities and work deadlines in a pre-COVID world.

While marathon conversations can be as exhausting as a slog up a mountain, they are also a learning experience. No adventure is as nerve-racking as taking care of a kid, but each trip is like a progress report, some assurance that you’re not raising a future junk-bond trader or an internet troll.

Read full story…

  It was well after dark on a recent evening when Philip Carcia, a record-breaking hiker, emerged from another 28-mile day in the woods, his legs streaked with mud and crisscrossed with bloody cuts, into a desolate parking lot near New Hampshire’s border with Maine.

Mr. Carcia, 36, has been living out of his red Toyota Yaris on the outer reaches of the White Mountain National Forest all summer, attempting to break the record on an obscure and extreme hiking challenge known as the Redline: a journey through all 650 trails in a guidebook of the White Mountains, for a total of 2,000 miles and half a million feet of vertical gain.

The trip almost didn’t happen. Like so much else canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic, serious hiking has been in doubt. In the early months of the outbreak, venerable organizations like the Appalachian Mountain Club closed their mountaintop huts, and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy emailed hikers attempting the trek from Georgia to Maine in March and asked them to stay home.

Mr. Carcia watched some of his hiking friends get off the trail. He thought about canceling his trip, but then decided to press on. The intentional isolation of hiking might hold some answers for the forced isolation of the virus.

Read full story…

Officials at Utah’s Zion National Park are grappling with unprecedented amounts of graffiti throughout the park as visitors continue to flock to the canyon.

These days, besides their normal job description of welcoming visitors, park rangers face the additional challenges of managing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic response as well as the presence of a toxic cyanobacteria bloom in the North Fork of the Virgin River, which runs through the park.

The graffiti, which has been found along the popular Narrows hike, the Kayenta Trail and on the West Rim/Angel’s Landing Trail near Scout Lookout is something that Zion’s chief ranger Daniel Fagergren said the park has never seen at this level until this year.

“I have seen more graffiti than I have ever seen before. It’s all over, and we’re trying to get ahead of it,” he said.

The park is seeing a new type of visitor, one who may have never visited a national park before and may only be venturing out as a result of being cooped up due to the pandemic.

“They are different visitors than we normally get,” Fagergren said, adding that many of them don’t have the same affinity for pubic lands as visitors in the past.

Read full story…

Hiking is a wonderful thing. It’s great exercise and it’s good for the psyche. But with more newbies hitting the trail, and concerns about social distancing, it’s time to take a fresh look at trail etiquette.

Many people aren’t riding together anymore due to COVID, so if four friends go hiking, they each drive a car. “This, along with more people seeking outdoor recreation, has resulted in a parking problem at the trailheads,” says a mountain guide. We’ve heard stories of 2-mile backups at popular trails, and trailside parking lots full by 7 a.m. or earlier.

What can you do? “Go wicked early,” he suggests. Bonus: You’ll get to see a nice sunrise. That’s better than arriving late and taking a chance on hiking out of the woods in the dark. And always have a Plan B: If the parking lot is full, go to another location. Weekends are obviously busiest, but midweek crowds have been substantial during the pandemic as well.

In a perfect world, we would all respect each other’s personal space. That doesn’t always happen on the trail. “Some people are trying to keep their distance on the trail, some hold their breath, and some don’t care — and don’t care that you care,” he says.

Typically, a group of hikers should yield to an individual on a trail, and the person who’s ascending has the right of way (meaning, descending hikers should make way for them). Newbies may not realize this, and you may have to get off the trail to avoid other hikers. But going off the trail can harm the environment.

What to do? “Aim for rocks and roots and open drainages,” Cherim says. “Don’t walk on mosses and alpine vegetation. Walking on roots doesn’t hurt trees, but walking on the soil around trees causes damage.”

More tips here…

Trish Jennings watched customers dining 6 feet apart outside her Bit & Spur Restaurant and Saloon on an evening in mid-August, missing the usual gregarious chatter of outdoor adventures.

Springdale, a small southwest Utah town sits just outside the gates of Zion National Park, and most of the restaurant’s customers arrived after a day exploring the park’s 2,000-foot-deep canyon. Jennings, 53, and her staff are accustomed to swapping hiking and camping stories with thousands of visitors every summer from all over the world, often forging new friendships.

For many residents like Jennings, those daily exchanges were essential to the town’s spirit, often making it seem bigger than a community of 660 people. But the COVID-19 pandemic — along with Springdale’s new social distancing measures and mask requirement — have given the easygoing, sociable town a subdued feeling this summer.

While tourists have steadily returned since the park reopened on May 13, there are still fewer than usual — 449,518 recreational visitors in July, down from 629,802 the same time last year, with few, if any, coming from outside the country — and the conversations in restaurants, shops and motels are shorter and more transactional. Many of the town’s elderly residents are staying home, avoiding the crowds at the park.

Read full story…