besthike.com - the blog

A 63-year-old American hikes “end-to-end” — from Land’s End to John o’Groats — and reflects on Britain now and in his youth.
A “typical” thru hike:
928 miles, in 56 days
Average of 16.6 miles per day
March 20 to May 16, 2007
Alone, carrying 23 lb backpack and bellypack
Stayed at B&Bs, inns, and youth hostels
[…]

There are a number of good Hawaii hiking sites. But I like best the map interface used by Na Ala Hele - Hawaii Trail System & Access. (It’s far better than the one we use on besthike.)

screenshot
If you click Kauai:

screenshot
Click on one of the numbers and you get quite a good information page on […]

First MAPS:

In a huge and wild park such as Wrangell-St. Elias, you can never have too many maps
National Geographic - Trails Illustrated has produced a 1:375,000 (1 inch = 6 miles) scale map of Wrangell-St. Elias that is a great tool for initial trip planning.
It is waterproof, tear resistant, and covers the entire park, […]

Falcon has more hiking guidebooks than anyone else in North America, some of them not very good.
Here’s their pitch:
FalconGuides are leading the way with more than 800 titles in over 30 series. Our 500-plus authors have personally hiked, climbed, pedaled, paddled, and recorded a total of more than 11,000 published FalconGuide trails, rides, and […]

When announced April 12th, the Trimble Outdoors layer with GPS-based interactive hiking information was much ballyhooed.
The Get Outdoors blog tells it like it is (I think):

I’m gonna file this one under Google Hype! since I can tell you first hand using Google Earth for any serious outdoor planning is useless.
It doesn’t come close […]

Real time GPS navigation by mobile phone getting closer to reality.

Want to scout out some hikes before your next trip? Google Earth’s new layer has hundreds of them.
Specifically, the Trimble Outdoors Trips layer features GPS-marked trails for activities including hiking, biking, backpacking and running.
The info includes directions to trailheads, a difficulty ranking, and […]

Mono Andes from Concepción, Chile is a big time outdoors photographer on flickr.
Here are just a few of his great photos.

Volcano Villarrica

Descanso
more Mono Andes HIGHLIGHT photos - flickr
He’s using every feature of flickr, including geotagging.
Here’s the map of his Araucanía photo set:

source - flickr
You can see those photos and interact with the map […]

I am liking this new feature on flickr.
First you post a wonderful photo:
Mongolia China Kazakhstan Russia - Where four countries meet.

original - flickr
Then you add a tag to show where the photo was taken:

Awesome!
Here’s the BIG map of Kit Seeborg’s photos.
By the way, because of this photo I learned that Kit is […]

Jan de Jong recommended the very professional wandelnet.nl website (in Dutch) for a comprehensive list of hikes 100km or longer. It includes guidebook recommendations.
To translate to English, I used the Babel Fish website. It works quite well, though only one page at a time.
The best part is the interactive map. (screen shot below) On […]

I went back to browse the travelogues of Jeffrey Poznanovic.
After seeing his pics of a 6-day trek through Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, I was tempted to start brushing up on Spanish and shop for airline tickets to South America.

more photos - Jeffrey Poznanovic
We’ve listed the Nahuel Huapi Traverse one of the best hikes in the […]