I remember all the hiking blogs jumping on the gloom and doom prediction that “hiking was dying“.
From Feb. 2008:
… Since the late 1980s, the percentage of Americans taking part in such activities has declined at slightly more than 1 percent a year. … participation is down 18 percent to 25 percent from peak levels.
Outdoor camping’s popularity jumped 7.4 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to a report from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. Overnight backpacking is up 18.5 percent …
Backcountry.com – The Goat – Camping Stock Rises in Weak Economy
In our current economic crisis, more families are ditching the hotel room and learning how to pitch a tent …
Backpacker – Daily Dirt – NEWBIE CAMPERS ON THE RISE
Its day three of Trail Magazine’s attempt on Mt Kilimanjaro via the Machame route, and things are starting to get tough. The mountain is getting seriously spectacular but the air is getting thin and exhaustion is kicking in. As midnight on the last day approaches, will it be a glorious dawn on Africas Highest mountain or a whopper of a disappointment? Join Trail Magazines Simon Ingram to find out…
Colorado police arrested a four-person burglary crew that would run a smash-and-grab on cars parked at trailheads. The four thieves-who are kind of like supergroup combination of Bonnie and Clyde plus Thelma and Louise-would wait until hikers had left their cars before smashing windows and stealing credit cards to buy video games and electronics. …
I’ve tried just about everything over the years, including leaving an empty vehicle unlocked.
There’s no perfect solution. Each trailhead needs be considered individually.
In Hawaii last year I left my rent-a-car miles from the (reportedly dangerous) trailhead at a campground. Walked the extra distance to the trail, for security.
At many trailheads in Canada there’s no worry. Remote hikes in the Rockies are almost all safe.
Today, being lost in Yellowstone National Park is as simple as turning on the wrong road after you lost your complimentary map or you can not locate the restroom in the Old Faithful complex. For Truman Everts, being lost in Yellowstone was a struggle between life and death. Everts’s account details his 1870 adventure in Yellowstone after finding himself separated from his travelling companions.
The separation began Everts’s thirty-seven day struggle for survival in a pre-developed Yellowstone in which Everts had to find what little food and shelter he could just to survive.
Readers will find this account to be a real-life struggle for survival reminiscent of Jack London’s fictional work. The editor, Lee Whittlesey, does a superb job of editing Everts’s story by providing the reader with additional information and the historical background of the book.
The work is also illustrated with many early day photographs of Yellowstone which provides an stunning visual account of early-day Yellowstone National Park. This book will be appreciated by anyone looking for an exciting true-life adventure story as well as historians of the American West. People who have been “lost” recently in Yellowstone will also appreciate the book, even if their modern-day adventure pales in comparison to Evert’s
His bad luck was horror show. Everything went wrong. He was treed one a night by a cougar, for example.
Almost his only food for 37-days was the root of a plant commonly known today as Everts thistle or elk thistle.
It’s a shame he could not catch fish. (He did gulp down a couple of mineral tainted minnows.)
Art Wolfe, an internationally acclaimed photographer, invites you to experience the world with him as he travels and photographs Patagonia, Peru, Bolivia, Alaska, Ethiopia, Madagascar, India and South Georgia Island. Watch in HD (high definition) as Art captures images of majestic glaciers, expansive deserts, teeming rainforests, remote mountain peaks, and exotic tribal gatherings right on location.
A wonderful sample of the program takes you to the rarely photographed North Face of Mt. Fitz Roy:
From Allie Comeau on the Sierra Trading Post blog:
According to reports, he’s taking Katie Holmes and their daughter, Suri, on a cross-country camping trip this summer.
Photo Credit: Vanity Fair, 2006
… they’re bringing along a team of bodyguards and a Scientology advisor so they’ll be traveling in more of a troupe than a family (but at least they won’t have to worry about bears). …
Today, being lost in Yellowstone National Park is as simple as turning on the wrong road after you lost your complimentary map or you can not locate the restroom in the Old Faithful complex. For Truman Everts, being lost in Yellowstone was a struggle between life and death. Everts’s account details his 1870 adventure in Yellowstone after finding himself separated from his travelling companions.
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