Not when you live in part of the country where you can experience a rare coastal forest escape, hike on the country’s most iconic trail, and explore a high country oasis all while enjoying the cold embrace of the season, minus the threat. Sure, it can get cold and there can be snow. But not to the extent you need extreme weather gear to survive. Rather, winter here offers a stark beauty that can be enjoyed in solitude. And if you really don’t like the “cold,” but can tolerate cool, winter backpacking at the coast offers an experience you can’t have any other time of year.read more
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
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
The signs are subtle at first. You walk out in the morning and the light isn’t quite as bright; the sun seems a little … behind, like it forgot to set its alarm clock. And that after dinner walk in the evening? You’re getting closer and closer to finishing in the dark.read more
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
