Adventure
Joni Sweet, at Forbes, ranked the top ten states for hiking in the US »
1. Alaska
2. Arkansas
3. Hawaii
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Iowa (tied for 5th place)
5. Arizona (tied for 5th place)
7. Utah (tied for 7th place)
7. West Virginia (tied for 7th place)
7. Nevada (tied for 7th place)
10. North Carolina
The article ranked Kentucky, followed by New Hampshire at the bottom of the list.
Filmed across two years in The Lake District National Park, Michael Lazenby‘s video takes you on a grand tour of the most breathtaking vistas and sights this stunning part of the world has to offer, including Derwentwater, Cat Bells, Blencathra, Buttermere, Ullswater, Helvellyn, Angle Tarn, Castlerigg Stone Circle, Grasmere, Windermere, Langdale, Pavey Ark, Harrison Stickle, Great Langdale, Striding Edge, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell, Wasdale, Scafell Pike, Loughrigg Tarn, Rydal Water, Whorneyside Force, Great Gable, Styhead Tarn, Swirral Edge, Catstycam, and The Scafells.
Source » Outdoors Magic
Will Renwick, Outdoors Magic »
Back in 2010, in a controlled trial for the Journal of Physical and Activity, three academics asked one group of people to walk 10,000 steps a day for 12 weeks while another group was asked to maintain their usual activity. The results that came back for the group that had been walking showed a raft of physical improvements but also indications of personal growth and psychological wellbeing.
According to the mental health charity Mind, physical activity like walking can help to improve everything from your sleep to your mood, manage stress, anxiety and intrusive thoughts, better self-esteem, and reduce the risk of depression.
So walking is good, but what about walking long distances?
“A long-distance journey makes me calmer, more grounded and more mindful,” says Ursula Martin, a prolific wanderer who has chalked up thousands of miles over the last five years, most notably walking all the way from Kiev to her home in mid Wales.
Source » Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post
Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, High Country News »
Published 5 years ago, on July 13, 2016
In 1972, Grand Canyon National Park outlawed campfires in the backcountry. Backpackers like me considered this an outrage. After all, the only people who carried those fancy little stoves back then were people incapable of building a fire. I bring this up because we are living through another explosive fire season in the West.
Of course, popular campsites back then looked a lot like parking lots. No downed wood, no dead (or live) grasses, no bushes, no bark on the trees as far up as you could reach. When a dozen people a night are building campfires, anything burnable vanishes pretty quickly.
Note: Fires denude the camping area.
I had a stove. I remember setting up my tiny SVEA, putting the pot on to boil, and turning to organize my sleeping place, because when cooking on a wood fire, it takes forever for the pot to boil.
But my pot boileth over, more quickly than I expected.
Note: Stoves are more efficient than wood fires.
A fire is convivial, although I usually don’t sit next to it: I spend a lot of time skulking around to avoid smoke. Said smoke also fills the whole camping area. I can see and smell a campfire from a mile away.
Note: Fires stink.
Rebecca McPhee, Explorersweb »
Since 2015, the Transcaucasian Trail Association (TCTA) has been developing a 3,000km hiking trail across the Caucasus Mountains. The finished Transcaucasian Trail (TCT) will consist of two 1,500km sections spanning Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
The northern route follows the Greater Caucasus Mountains and connects the Black and Caspian Seas. The southern route spans the Lesser Caucasus Mountains from the Black Sea to the Aras River.
While the trail is still being developed in Azerbaijan, there are currently hundreds of kilometres of trail open to the public. The TCTA hope that a 1,200km route from northwest Georgia to southern Armenia will be fully open by 2022.
Due to COVID, Patrick Noonan was restricted from travelling outside his own country. So he thru-hiked around 650km (400 mi) across Ireland, from Dublin to Dursey Island, at the tip of the Beara Peninsula.
Video below.
Trekking from the Sunshine Village (AB) ski resort near Banff to Mount Shark (AB) along the Alberta (AB) / British Columbia (BC) provincial border.
Rick McCharles at Best Hike calls this one of the world’s ten best.
The folks in this video did the hike in 4 days. Best Hike recommends 6 days.
This area is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site which includes the contiguous national parks of Banff (AB), Jasper (AB), Kootenay (BC) and Yoho (BC), as well as the Mount Robson (BC), Mount Assiniboine (BC) and Hamber (B.C.) provincial parks.
Video below…
In 2019, photographer and filmmaker Dylan Moron started hiking the 3000km Te Araroa, New Zealand’s longest hiking trail, interviewing other ordinary people alone the way. This is his documentary.
James Gingell (via The Guardian)
As a government civil servant, James Gingell was burnt out from working on Brexit and Covid. Trekking the length of Britain, from Land’s End to John o’Groats, was the change he needed.
James Gingell, via The Guardian »
Walking Land’s End to John o’Groats wasn’t the original plan. All I wanted was freedom. I had worked as a civil servant for three years, first in central government as the country grappled with Brexit, then, after the pandemic hit, on the Covid response. Through the tumult, my colleagues were pleasant and supportive, and the material circumstances of my life did not change. When I took a burnout questionnaire, though, I ticked every box: tiredness, torpor, tetchiness. I’m normally a silly person. But I wasn’t smiling much. I’m normally a creative person. But nothing was happening in my brain. I felt bleached.
…
All I wanted was to be free, of emails and objectives and obligations which could only disappoint, of defined, quantifiable purpose. I wanted to luxuriate in pure freedom, to walk in a wild, blank void. If our culture of metrics and targets and progress were more receptive to the idea of pointlessness as a point, I might instead have quoted another naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. He wrote that creative thoughts are like birds, coming to us only if they have branches to settle. “If the grove in our minds is laid waste – sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition – they no longer build or breed with us.” I needed to do nothing but walk and wallow in swamp and marrow for the trees to heal, for the birds to come back. The walk was more to do with that.
Resources mentioned in this article »
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