Tag Archives: Appalachian Trail

5 Special Spots for hiking and backpacking

We’ve been thinking about some of our favorite mountain places to explore come fall, and realized that there are a variety of ways we love to explore them. There’s the day hike: spending a day to see as much as possible, then heading home. There’s the basecamp trip: Either establishing camp in a campground or hiking in a short distance in full pack and setting up camp, then doing day hikes from there. Or, there’s the point-to-point backpack trip. Since we all explore differently, we thought, why not look at all three options? So today, we do. read more

Backpacking squeezes the most out of fall

It is the season that inspires our great philosophers. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, wrote: “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”

Or this, from a more contemporary purveyor of percipient thought:

“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!” read more

GetBackpacking! Winter 2020-21

Never has there been more incentive to be outside than there is for the winter that lies ahead. We’ve always known that being outside is good for us; now we’re being told that it’s vital for our well-being.

For late fall we have three backpack trips suited to people who may have burned through their vacation, for the winter, we have three weekend trips to our most iconic locations. Here’s the lineup: read more

Virtual escapes: Videos of the places you’d love to be exploring

Every Thursday until the world reopens, we’re going to share with YouTube videos of the outdoor world. Each week will have a different focus. This week’s: The places our GetBackpacking! program hopes to visit this year.

OK, so maybe we can’t hike some of the places we want. But somebody has, and odds are they’ve posted a video about it on YouTube. They may not be the real thing, but they do provide voyeuristic escape, a bit of humor (both intentional and otherwise), and they can inspire your planning for trips in the hopefully not-too-distant future. And the videos cover just about every trail you can imagine.    read more