Blog: Jeff Clark’s Meanderthals Niche: Hike reports from mainly western North Carolina, with a few diversions to the American West. Nitty gritty: Clark is a consummate hiker/geek: a retired techie whose Internet Brothers site has gobs of tech-related gems. His…
Blogs, Latest Posts
Challenge: Profile a great hiking blog you discovered in the past month
by tom • April 24, 2011 • 4 Comments
Hiking blogs are the slot canyons of the Web: they dwell in a narrow niche. While some of us glom readership from folks Googling the trails we write about, some of our most avid readers are other bloggers. So, hiking…
Blogs, Latest Posts
A hiker’s guide to Twitter
by tom • April 23, 2011 • 4 Comments
Awhile back I started a list of hiking and camping bloggers on Twitter, which can come in handy despite its potential for becoming a soul-sucking time sink. I talked to a guy the other day who summed up Twitter’s appeal:…
Wildlife
Earth Day Challenge: Why we have to change for the better
by tom • April 22, 2011 • 2 Comments
I have welcome news: our planet is going to be just fine. We’re the ones in trouble. In all the hype about “sustainability,” something seems to get forgotten: there are scads of sustainable populations of strange invertebrates living 18,000 feet…
Latest Posts, Wildlife
Posted in honor of John Muir’s lost cause
by tom • April 18, 2011 • 3 Comments
Tonight’s American Masters episode, “John Muir in the New World,” concluded as required with an accounting of Muir’s failed quest to keep this dam from being built in Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. The leading experts agreed that some…
Hiking, Latest Posts
It’s OK to be a day-hiker, really
by tom • April 17, 2011 • 5 Comments
It’s OK to hike in the park down the street. It’s OK to walk a half-mile in the woods and call it a hike. It’s OK to take the kids car-camping in the state park and make .75 miles per…
Hiking, Latest Posts
Why we hike: a challenge to the hiking blogosphere
by tom • April 14, 2011 • 18 Comments
Yesterday’s “why can’t I stop hiking” was huge hit among the hiking twitterati so I figured I’d expand on that theme with a challenge to everybody in the hiking blogosphere to post a short “why we hike” essay (if you…
Hiking
The case for hiking, revisited
by tom • April 13, 2011 • 2 Comments
It’s just walking on dirt. So why can’t I stop hiking? It’s not everything; it’s all the little things that seem huge at the time: like when that startling flash of brown in the tree canopy turns out to be…
Gorges State Park, Latest Posts, Mountains Sourth
First hike to Rainbow Falls in Gorges State Park
by tom • April 12, 2011 • 4 Comments
The first time I landed in Transylvania County, I figured the “Land of Waterfalls” signs represented the typical rural region overselling its meager asserts. Well, two awesome waterfall hikes in two visits has turned me around. This week’s source of…