Best hikes, treks, tramps in the world.
The world’s most travelled hiker, Cam Honan, has 3 coffee table books in the series.
Ideal inspiration for future hikes, click through to check them out:
Click PLAY or watch a TV feature featuring Cam on YouTube.
Cam Honan:
Over the past five decades, UK-based Cicerone Press has established itself as the gold standard for hiking guidebooks.
I bought my first Cicerone guide in the mid-90’s, and since that time if I’ve been planning a walking trip in Britain or continental Europe, there’s a good chance I utilised one of their books.
Apart from hiking, Cicerone also publish cycling and mountaineering guides, and in recent times have begun to expand their coverage beyond Europe, and now increasingly feature other areas around the world such as the USA, the Himalaya, Andes and Atlas mountains.
Strathcona Provincial Park (1911) contains the highest peaks of the Vancouver Island Ranges. Some notable mountains located within the park boundaries include:
Exploring Strathcona Park is the best guidebook. It’s not inexpensive, but worth it. Great maps. Colour photos. Comprehensive coverage.
Author Phil Stone is truly an expert.
I plan to be spending quite a bit of time in Strathcona over coming years working towards establishing a possible coast-to-coast Vancouver Island route.
Detailed map.
Orca Books publishes some of the most popular day hiking guidebooks.
Hiking Trails 1 (Victoria area)
Hiking Trails 2 (south/central Vancouver Island)
Hiking Trails 3 (northern Vancouver Island)
I’ve been using Trails 2. It’s the 9th edition (2010) and has been well tested.
Maps could be better. But the information provided is clear and succinct.
He got into hiking in his 20s, but it was trekking and scrambling in little know wilderness on four continents visited on his five-year-long H.M.S. Beagle voyage between 1831 and 1836 that cement him as one of the most worldly hikers in history.
“Mount Darwin” is the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego. On February 12, 1834, Captain FitzRoy named a mountain after him on his birthday. …
Darwin walked mainly to discover plants and animals unique to those regions.
I learned all this by reading his travelogue Voyage of the Beagle.
By the way, the famous phrase “survival of the fittest” comes from Herbert Spencer’s 1864 publication, “Principles of Biology.” The term is largely thought to have been coined by Darwin regarding his thoughts on evolution; however, this is a wrong assumption.
When writer Ken Ilgunas set out to walk the 1,700-mile proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline and talk to the people he met there, he expected challenging debates about climate change, energy security and national sovereignty. In researching his new book, “Trespassing Across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland,” he expected to experience the wisdom of the people and decipher the pipe’s symbolic meaning. He expected enlightenment.
Instead, he found a country we wish were just a caricature: an America that does not actually value debate, or enlightenment, or wisdom at all. …
Ilgunas is a very interesting and thoughtful writer.
He’s personally against the pipeline.
I listened to an interview on the Backpacker Radio podcast.
The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned in 2010 and now owned solely by TransCanada Corporation. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma. …
… The proposed Keystone XL (sometimes abbreviated KXL, with XL standing for “export limited” Pipeline (Phase IV) would connect the Phase I-pipeline terminals in Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska by a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. …
