Back when hiking was pretty much my full-time job I hiked daily, racking up 30 to 40 miles a week. My philosophy, to borrow from Dani Rojas, was “Hiking is life.” When I scheduled hiking programs I did so under the assumption that hiking was everyone’s life. Who wouldn’t want to hike as many days of the week as possible?
Tag Archives: trips
Why we backpack
Editor’s note: Next week we unveil our first half GetBackpacking! plans for 2022. This week, for the yet-to-be-convinced of the joys of backcountry adventure, we look at the “why” — Why we do this?
Some folks, even avid hikers, have a knee-jerk reaction to backpacking. To the perceived discomfort, the perceived inconvenience, the perceived difficulty. Backpacking’s sometimes negative image is, in our opinion, a perception problem.
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!”
5 trips made for the first-time backpacker
In today’s GetHiking! Southeast Podcast we scout a potential graduation trip route for our first GetBackpacking! Intro to Backpacking class in Virginia. In the podcast, we explain what, in our opinion, makes for a good weekend trip for first-time backpackers. That is, a trip that will get them hooked on backcountry camping.
GetBackpacking! Let the adventure begin
Why backpack?
Here’s why, as documented in this three-and-a-half-minute video we shot during our June 24-27 GetBackpacking! trip exploring Virginia’s Triple Crown. Four days, three nights, 35 miles, three major climbs, three iconic views and great scenery throughout. Challenging? Yup. But oh so worth it.