I was on my morning hike the other day and came across a couple Christmas tree bulbs somebody had hooked to a tree.

I thought, “wow, that’d be cool picture” so I brought my camera long next time. First thing I realized: the bulb creates a fish-eye effect that makes it nearly impossible to photograph without having the camera in the picture. I shot this from a zillion angles and finally decided heck with it, I’ll stop fighting the urge to hide the camera and see what happens.

Another novelty I happened to notice on this trail I’d walked a bunch of times before.

Looks like any old fallen tree, but notice the park road in the background and the angle of the fallen stump: When this tree fell it most likely blocked that road completely. Another of those examples of nature’s seeming delight in bollixing the designs of mere humans.

If you spend much time reading about wildlife you’ll come across the phrase “charismatic megafauna” — a fancy way of describing the innate charm of tigers, elephants and other examples of threatened species that are much easier to rally around than, say, a snail darter or a spotted owl. For hikers there’s a similar phenomenon you might call “charismatic megavistas” — mountaintops, cliffs, coastlines, fiords and such that induce gap-jawed wonder.

There’s a strong tendency to become so captive of charismatic megavistas that we ignore the possibility for wonder amid the mundane in our own neighborhoods. The trail you can walk to from your front porch cannot possibly be as wonderful as the one that requires airfare and six months of planning.

Here’s a closeup of a mushroom on that tree stump. Something about this image transcends the limitations of my battered digital camera and scant photographic skills.

Lately I’ve been having a hard time getting motivated to drive a hundred miles each way for a few hours of hiking, and every time I come home with images like these, whether in my camera or in my memory, I can’t help thinking: it’s OK hike the same trail a hundred times.

Because as long as I’m paying attention, it’s not the same: different light, different weather, different colors, different state of mind.

And most of all: worth doing.

I used to delude myself that going on hikes and encouraging others to do the same via my blog was the extent of my obligation to the planet that makes it all possible. The guiding philosophy of outdoor-oriented recreation is that being out there is the first step toward appreciating it enough to keep it around for our great-great grandkids.

That’s true as far as it goes — but it does not go nearly far enough.

Over the weekend I finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs, who was depicted as an occasionally reprehensible human being who had at least one redeeming quality: zero tolerance for lame excuses. Inspired by his famous reality-distortion field, I started thinking about how much good my hikes and my blog posts were doing for the planet. And I had to sneaking suspicion it was not a hell of a lot.

And that’s what got me thinking the next thing I’d blog about is how being a hiker — or hunter, mountaineer or kite surfer — is better than nothing, but better than nothing is not going energize our species to stop trashing stuff faster than it’s being replaced.

So you no doubt noticed that November was a slow month the ol’ blog. I finally had a feast of work on the business side that left no time for hiking or blogging for four weeks in a row. After nine months of famine, I was so happy to have constructive work to do that I had no qualms about taking a hiking/blogging break.

So I finally got my first chance to do a little hiking this morning at Tanglewood Park, the big urban park where I go when I’m too lazy/busy to drive to a trailhead. And guess what: in the four weeks I was away, the thoughtful caretakers of the park had painted a bunch of wide cuts through the woods with big fat strips of asphalt.

Actually these “trails,” paved though they may be, make the park much more accessible to casual walkers and bicyclists, who otherwise had to dodge cars, RVs and park district trucks on the park’s main roads. The park has three golf courses, so you can imagine the motorized traffic it gets.

Most of the paved trails are far from the places where I walk but still, they were a jolt of reality about the imperative to pay attention to what’s happening to our open spaces. I just walked over there; I never gave any thought to how the park was being managed until I saw they’d put in a bunch of pavement without consulting with me.

But here’s the reality of how the world works: while it’s a certainty that nobody will ever ask for your permission if there’s reasonable suspicion you’ll say no, most often they won’t ask if you’d say yes, either. If you want to have a say in how things turn out, you have to speak up.

In the case of Tanglewood, I’d have to weigh the asphalt blight against the reality that we have serious obesity troubles around here. The new trail lets people who can’t afford the entrance fee ($2 is a deal killer if you haven’t got it) park in the free area and walk/ride with considerably less anxiety about getting flattened by a soccer mom’s SUV.

Most likely I’d have gritted my teeth and put up with the decision to pave the trails. At some point they must have been discussed at a public meeting and voted on by elected officials. I could’ve at least raised a little hell to let ’em know somebody’s paying attention.

In years to come there are going to be some very heated arguments over the most productive use for open spaces. Sure, we’d love to see more wilderness areas established and current protections strengthened. But more people and more energy demands are going to make that seriously difficult. Those of us who like our fun under the sun will have to become a lot more zealous about our default position: recreation that preserves 80 percent of an ecosystem is far better than development that ruins all of it.

I think once you get involved in, say, the politics of local parks you might understand that it’s not so hard to influence how things turn out. And once you start local, it’s not such a huge leap to start thinking global.

Here’s how the final voting shook out:

You’ll notice that 59 votes were cast — it didn’t escape my notice that every time Thom posted a “please vote for my tale” plea to his Twitter feed, his vote count bumped up a few notches. See, that’s the kind of initiative that built this great nation of ours.

Fifty-nine doesn’t sound like much, but bear a few things in mind:

1) This is the Internet, where amusement rules and anything which imposes any sort of difficulty triggers a mad rush to the “back” button.

2) This contest required voters to read five stories, then decide which one they liked best. People hate to read on the Web, so this drives down the vote totals in any “pick the best story” contest.

3) People had utterly nothing to gain from participating in the contest if they weren’t one of the finalists.

All of which boils down to: Having nearly 60 people jump through all those required hoops is, frankly, pretty remarkable.

So anyway, if you were among the Two-Heel Drive Elite who voted in this contest, submitted an entry, or both, buy yourself and extra beer or otherwise reward yourself for being a part of something so cool that most people could not be bothered to participate (this is, by the way, the definition of cool).

Related posts:

• I’m Pemmican’s Blogger of the Week
• Finalists for Most Extreme Hiking Tale
• What’s your most extreme hiking story? Winner gets a cool box o’ beef jerky

Normally I’m ethically opposed to accepting freebies, but I figure most of the terrible things in history have been the result of fanatical devotion to a belief, so now and again I relent. They mailed me the nifty gift box, but when it got here I realized something: I’ve never been a fan of beef jerky.

A few weeks back the folks at Pemmican finally told me when my interview was actually going to be published, which, coincidentally, happened right when I was looking for an excuse to post something on the hiking blog that did not require actual hiking (I know, heresy). So I figured that the surest way to unload the box o’ jerky was to stage a giveaway, with the prize going to the contributor of the most extreme hiking tale, as judged by Two-Heel Drive readers.

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011, was the last day to vote in the contest, by the way. Here’s the winner.

So next time somebody tells you nothing good has ever emerged from a marketing department or social media team, you can cite all the very cool entries hikers contributed in the contest, and, hopefully, all the people who were inspired to avoid trail-related extremities in the future.

Related posts:

• Extreme Hiking Tale: We Have a Winner
• Finalists for Most Extreme Hiking Tale
• What’s your most extreme hiking story? Winner gets a cool box o’ beef jerky

Extreme hiking stories inevitably boil down to: at which point did you decide to turn back? At the first sign of trouble — when it made sense — or after a string of mishaps left you scared, cold, wounded or in some other condition of extremity?

For those who missed the first round, or who need a reminder: A couple weeks back I asked folks to submit their most extreme hiking stories. More than 30 replies poured in. I narrowed it down to my favorite five stories of the bunch.

What’s next: Sometime between now and Nov. 8, read each of the entries (click on the link to read the full posts), then come back here and vote. There’s a poll box down below the summaries. On the 9th of November I’ll announce the winner.

1) J.K.: Wild night by a waterfall

Sulking and with no other real options, I climbed into bed and hoped it could find a way to sleep through the night. Politely summarizing, I was freezing to death. However, this was quickly mitigated by one thing – massive winds picking up my tent at about 1pm and standing it on its side while I was inside. Now this may be a problem for most, but it was a serious problem for me. I was camped on TOP of a roughly 300’ waterfall, in fact, about 15’ from the edge. I had originally put my tent there because I thought it would be good for photographs when the sun was setting. Yet now, I was just about to fall right over it. I kept running through newspaper headlines in my head about my pending death and acknowledged I was the most stupid human on the planet.

Read J.K.’s full post

Takeaway. Some things are not best learned the hard way: like when you discover what you thought was a stove was actually a miner’s headlamp.

2) Gambolin’ Man vs. hungry bear

Carefully, I approached the feast site and was amazed to discover the bear had only eaten half of the food, and left the other half for us, how nice, thank you, Ursula! But that wasn’t the case. The bear still had my pack and a lot more food. I salvaged what I could, banging on the shovel head with a smaller trowel, and that seemed to keep the bear at a distance (of about 50 ft., still too damn close for comfort).

Read Gambolin’ Man’s full post

The lawyers forced me to add: Never, ever attempt this, folks. You can go two weeks without food; a bear can end your life in two seconds.

3) Clarke Green: Rough night in the ‘Daks

Started hiking up around three that afternoon. Rain, then sleet, then snow. Hand over hand scrambling up, thick forest, steep, no place to shelter. It’s dark, handheld flashlights quit; only my headlamp with a remote battery pack keeps on working. Fifteen degrees, wet, hypothermic kids, who are giving out; very bad news.

Read Clarke’s full entry

The upside of surviving a mess like this: you learn you’re fit to deal with children.

4) Tgabrukiewicz: Taking a beating in the Trinity Alps

A granite boulder the size of a soccer ball nearly took my head off; I put up my arm just in time and deflected it off my Timex Ironman watch (killed it) and into my outstretched shoulder, severely dislocating it.

I managed to climb to the trail and sat on a rock, rubbing my Saint Christopher medal and saying a silent prayer. I walked back down to camp (about a mile) and told my camp-mate that we needed to seek medical attention. Immediately.

Read Tgabrukiewicz’s full post

You know what they say about flying a plane: any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Same’s true for backpacking trips.

5) Zachary Robbins: Chillin’ in Linville Gorge

It was late so we made camp by the river, in a valley. It was cold, it got down to 2 degrees F that night. And we couldn’t really make a fire. All the wood was icy and frozen. The only thing we could keep burning was these tall grass we cleared out and would burn for a couple minutes, no logs would catch on fire. My hands froze pumping water out of the river. That night I basically spooned my friend in the tent to contain warmth, while wearing all the clothing we had.

Read Zachary’s full post

It’s funny how the rules of acceptable guy behavior change below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

….

Here are the final results

Honorable mentions — Their stories weren’t as extreme as the finalists’, but they still had a certain charm:

• Dijukno: Glissade gets out of hand.
• Sarah Barlow: Dealing with the bear is the husband’s job.
• Bryce: 52.2 miles in 23.5 hours (that’s movin’!).

Related posts:

• Extreme Hiking Tale: We Have a Winner
• I’m Pemmican’s Blogger of the Week
• What’s your most extreme hiking story? Winner gets a cool box o’ beef jerky

Last week at Stone Mountain was only mildly colorful at 2,300 feet, so this week I surmised the woods would be blazing around 3,500.

I woke at an absurdly early hour and set out for Price Lake on the Blue Ridge Parkway, aiming to arrive at dawn and capture a signature snapshot of blazing reds, yellows and oranges reflected in the still water.

Everything about this plan went awry. I left so early that it was still pitch black when I turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway from Highway 421 just east of Boone. I had time to kill, so I stopped by Moses Cone Manor and clicked a few time-exposures.

OK, not bad, but not why I was here.

Julian Price Memorial Park was just a few miles down the road. I pulled into the parking area just beyond the dam to see this:

OK, so here I am shivering in the cold a hundred miles from my warm bed — and the fall color has fled.

Serves me right, actually, because I’m a total snob about “leaf season,” which, to my mind, attracts throngs who appreciate nature only when it’s bright and shiny.

And yet: I like bringing hope bright-and-shiny fall-color pictures like everybody else does.

So back to my Saturday morning. It’s 33 degrees and the whole point of my being here fluttered to the forest floor a week ago. Should’ve been a flop, I suppose, but this turned out to be my favorite hike since McAfee Knob on the Appalachian Trail back in July.

I might’ve been too late for fall color, but I was just in time for morning color.

Little fingers of fog rose from Price Lake as I walked the 2.3-mile trail around the shoreline. That’s Grandfather Mountain in the distance beginning to glow from the morning sun.

My favorite section of this hike isn’t remotely photogenic: it’s a backwater bog caused by busy beavers. One of their success stories:

It wasn’t enough to chop down this tree; they seem also to have sheared off almost every scrap of bark.

I’d been walking nearly two miles before the sun rose high enough to illuminate the trees along the shoreline.

When the fall colors are really popping, the pictures practically take themselves. You have to try a little harder in the weeks after the peak — my favorite time of year to hike the North Carolina high country.

One more look at the morning fog on Price Lake.

Instead of completing the entire lake loop, I crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway and caught the Boone Fork Trail, one of the best hikes along the Parkway.

Here’s the trail disappearing into the tree cover.

Boone Fork Trail descends to the confluence of two creeks — no matter how you hike it, it starts out with a comfortable downhill and ends with a pretty good climb.

It has excellent water features along the way. Few full-scale waterfalls, but dozens of pleasant, picturesque cascades.

Here’s one on the way down.

Here’s a scene from the return leg.

Either of these two loops is a pretty good hike for beginners, depending on your experience and fitness level. For veteran hikers, combining both loops creates an excellent hike of just under 8 miles and less than 1,000 feet of elevation gain. You’ll have to time it right to miss the crowds — the park and its trails are popular for good reason — going on a weekday or starting out at dawn are the best options.

If you’ve done this hike just once, do it again, no matter what time of year. I suspect it’ll be better during the 50 weeks of the year when the fall colors aren’t stealing the show.

Julian Price Memorial Park links:

• All my Julian Price Park hikes.
  
• EveryTrail GPS tracks.
• Wikipedia entry.
• Trail map (PDF download).
• Virtual Blue Ridge page.
• Blue Ridge Parkway homepage.

Google map

View 10-22-11 Julian Price Park in a larger map

Listen to reason, or listen to the rock?

I went with the rock. The Stone Mountain Loop hike was only another 3.5 miles and 1,000 feet of ascent. The skies were as blue as they get on this side of the United States, the temperature was in the mid-70s. The park was crowded, for sure, but why wouldn’t it be on a day like this?

I’ve developed a crackpot theory that massive expanses of exposed rock create their own gravity, and somehow the human subconscious responds to the rock’s gravitational pull. Our susceptibility to the attraction (some might say seduction) determines our urge to get out there amongst the mountains.

Utter rot, no doubt, but I have no better explanation.

I also ran into Chris Berrier, who joined me on a hike at Panthertown Valley this past summer. This are his Nikes in the first picture that shows up on my homepage. Here’s his EveryTrail trip from Sunday.

OK, let’s see my pix from Sunday:

I got to the park early enough for decent morning light — this is a shot of Hutchinson Homestead, where a family lived for generations.

I’d never been to the base of Stone Mountain at this time of day with this light; first time I noticed this huge crack in the stone face. (Proof of the adage that you never hike the same trail twice.)

Just beyond the Hutchinson Homestead area, the trail splits, with an option to check out the Cedar Rock or Blackjack Ridge trails. I hadn’t done Blackjack Ridge, so I checked it out. Nothing sensational, but it was very quiet and peaceful.

Eventually the trail returns to Cedar Rock, which looks out over Stone Mountain.

I wondered if adding my hiking boots to the frame would somehow humanize all that rock.

Puddles are always productive sources of pictures.

From Wolf Rock you can see the fall colors coming in — you can just barely see the colors at the top of the ridge at the highest elevations.

We simply don’t get the flaming reds and oranges that redecorate the Northeast every autumn, but I prefer the diversity of hues/shades we get in the Southeast. The pictures might not be as sexy, but the experience is richer.

Can’t resist visiting this busted-up old cabin near Wolf Rock.

Pine cone on a tree that had fallen across Wolf Rock Trail.

Another view of Stone Mountain that I had not seen before.

Stone Mountain Falls was especially attractive.

Lots and lots o’ steps on the wood walkway.

View from the top of Stone Mountain Falls.

View from the top of Stone Mountain. Awesome as always.

First time I noticed the summit marker up here.

Reflection on the back window of my car in the parking lot.

I reckon that’s enough for this week.

How are the fall colors shaping up in your part of the world? Fill us in and link to picture in the comments if you’ve got ’em.

Links for this hike:

• EveryTrail GPS tracks.
• EveryTrail Guide: Stone Mountain Loop
• North Carolina State Parks page for Stone Mountain State Park
• All my Stone Mountain hikes
• Park map (PDF download)

Google map for this hike

View 10-16-11 Stone Mountain State Park in a larger map

NOTE: I have picked the five finalists in this contest. Click the link to vote on your favorite (Nov. 8 is the last day you can vote).

C’mon, dish: you’ve seen some pretty extreme stuff on your hikes. I want to hear about it here — anything that you can put “-est” and the end of.

• funniest
• coolest
• smartest
• dumbest
• scariest
• hairiest

Once all the entries are in, I’ll pick my five favorites and let y’all decide which one’s the best. The winner will get this box of Pemmican Beef Jerky sent to me because I did an e-mail interview with somebody on their social media team.

While I was grateful for this box of goodies, once they arrived I realized I didn’t really know what to do with them, because,

• I’m not a jerky eater.
• I’d really rather not accept freebies from people seeking publicity for their stuff.

So this way, I figure the folks at Pemmican can get their free jerky in the hands of somebody who’ll actually benefit, I’ll be able to maintain my ethical purity, and we can share some great stories to tell around the campfire.

What the winner gets:

• wooden box
• 5 bags of beef jerky
• small water bottle
• nylon swag bag

I’m not creating a bunch of complex rules for this thing. Just keep it as short as possible, make it punchy and try to surprise us.

To enter, just leave a comment below. I’ll take entries for a couple weeks, then I’ll select the finalists and conduct the voting. After that, we’ll declare a winner.

OK, start telling your stories.

Related posts:

• Extreme Hiking Tale: We Have a Winner
• I’m Pemmican’s Blogger of the Week
• Finalists for Most Extreme Hiking Tale

“Any girls we could find!”

Hoots and giggles fill the Bathhouse at Hanging Rock State Park, where one Dr. Harley Jolley is just about done regaling us with tales of life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, which sent him to Yellowstone during the Great Depression and built the stone structure we’re sitting in for his presentation.

Harley Jolley appears in "Civilian Conservation Corps," an American Experience episode on PBS. Credit: PBS

This morning I googled Dr. Jolley and found out he’s published a book on the CCC and appeared in a PBS “American Experience” episode devoted to the Civilian Conservation Corps. (Watch it here).

He’s quite a remarkable guy: Pearl Harbor survivor, retired professor of American history, authority on the Blue Ridge Parkway — and deft performer. He knew when to be funny, when to be poignant. He worked the room without a microphone, nobody had any trouble hearing.

Professor Holley, left, with a guy who was posted at Hanging Rock State Park with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Didn’t get his name.

I saw all this after I’d finished an excellent 5.5-mile hike to Moore’s Knob, where the view is always worth the climb if the weather cooperates. It was sunny and pleasant, ideal hiking weather, with splashes of fall color starting to light up the hills.

Here’s how you can tell you’re at a great park: Every time you think it’s as good as it can get, it gets better. I’d done the Moore’s Knob hike at least a half-dozen times, but this time I took a detour around the park lake for some views I’d never seen before.

Then I strolled through the campground, soaking up the aroma of all those open-fire breakfasts, found the trail and huffed to the top of the Knob, marveling at the contrast between the greens, reds and yellows.

Then I came back down, joined the Friends of Sauratown Mountains, and caught a history lesson from one of the people who lived through one of the most fascinating chapters in U.S. history.

That’s within a percentage point or two of perfect.

Let’s see some pictures:

You really get a feel for the fall-color transition here — still lots of green, but plenty more colors coming in.

Here’s a look at the Bathhouse from across Hanging Rock Lake. This is the first time I’ve seen it from this perspective.

These look like holly berries; can anybody help me out here?

If you take the path around the lake, take note: you’ll eventually come out on the park road, which leads to a left-turn on the campground road. You follow the road till it ends — look for the “Trail” signs, first on your right, and then across the road on the left.

This counterclockwise route is the shorter, faster and steeper way to Moore’s Knob. The trail markings intuitively guide hikers on a clockwise route with a more gradual ascent to the top. In theory this makes sense, especially for beginning hikers, but in reality I find it just drags out a long climb that I’d prefer to get out of the way ASAP.

On the other hand, it’s much harder to find your way on the counterclockwise route — it’s easy to miss the turn-off and confusing when you reach the campground. But if you’ve got your park map and feel adventurous, it’s worth checking out.

More pix:

Wanna know the definition of lucky? It’s being able to stand on a place like this, get all “been there done that” for about 60 second, then realize “wow, this really is worth the climb.”

The Sauratowns, a mountain range of our very own.

OK, this shot is better with people in it.

Now, back to the trail:

Color up close.

And from a distance. Standard advice for photography is there should be one object of focus in the image. Great thing about having your own blog: you can ignore standard advice when the urge hits.

OK, that’ll do it for this week.

Links for this hike:

• EveryTrail GPS tracks.
• My previous Hanging Rock hikes
• North Carolina State Parks page.
• “Civilian Conservation Corp” on The American Experience.
• “That Magnificent Army of Youth and Peace: The Civilian Conservation Corps in North Carolina, 1933-1942”

Google map

View 10-8-11 Hanging Rock State Park in a larger map

They reflect a welcome trend: We’re starting to see a return to the good old days when hiking bloggers linked to each other all time. Each act of linking encouraged more linking, creating a beneficial cycle of goodwill — and Google juice.

Over the past couple years it seemed like so much linking and sharing had gravitated to Facebook and Twitter that it was becoming nigh unto impossible to attract inbound traffic from other bloggers. Now I’m glad to see things are turning around.

Of course the main motivation for linking should be to point out cool content on sites you admire, but there’s another excellent side benefit: the more you link to other sites, the more likely they’ll link back to you. Those inbound links are a huge deal in Google’s eyes. The more you have, the better your site ranks.

These are my top 25 referrers, in order of most traffic they sent in the past 30 days:

1. Hiking Finland
Hendrik Morkel’s week-in-review posts send tons of traffic my way on the times I’m lucky enough to make his list. Best way to catch Hendrik’s attention is to engage him on Twitter, post engaging and original content, and declare him King of the Hiking Bloggers.

2. Best Hike Blog
Rick keeps having amazing adventures in places like Corsica and the Japanese Alps, but he also finds time to link here if I do something that catches his fancy. Rick’s biased in my favor because we let him camp on our back porch once. Or maybe it was twice.

3. The Goat
Rocky Thompson remains positively old-school in his blogging. Still delivers a dependable serving of snark in a format unchanged for over half a decade.

4. Trail Sherpa
We’re starting to get some traction over there — owner Tim is starting to develop suspicions that the Carolina/Tennessee faction is about to take over.

5. Meanderthals
Jeff’s blogging just keeps getting better and better of late.

6. Jolly Green Giant
The Giant had to step back from his hiking & blogging to deal with knee and hand issues; send best wishes for his strong recovery.

7. Hiking the Smokies
The Smoky Mountain Hiking Blog crew made an impressive foray to Glacier National Park last month.

8. Live Free and Hike
Karl’s New Hampshire blog continues to have a nice mix of hikes, gear and photography.

9. Trout Underground
If I could afford another hobby I’d be damn tempted to take up fly fishing just to have an excuse to read Tom’s blog every day.

10. Randy’s Waypoints
Randy keeps reading me despite the fact that I haven’t lived in his neck of the woods for over two years. He has tons of great photography on his blog.

11. Section Hiker
Philip keeps bringin’ it — I liked his post awhile back about how he quit the corporate world to get more hikes in.

12. Must Be This Way
Andy Howell over in the UK sparked a huge conversation about commercialism in blogging awhile back (they practically wore me out with their devotion to the intricacies of freeing gear reviews from the taint of commerce).

13. Appalachia and Beyond
Tim’s post linking to a bunch of blogs inspired me to write this one.

14. Free Outdoors
Richard delivers on his decades of hiking wisdom.

15. Modern Hiker
Casey still sets a high bar for Los Angeles-area hiking blogs. He’s getting a lot more competition of late but I don’t think they’re making a serious run at him yet.

16. Mountain UltraLight
I met John through Trail Sherpa, where he’s on our contributor team. You know he’s serious about make-your-own-gear projects when he talks about building backpacks with Cuben fiber.

17. My Life Outdoors
The Hiker’s Choice Awards at MLO were a huge hit (I want to thank my legions of fans for stepping aside and giving somebody else a chance in the contest. But really: 2 votes was taking it a bit too far.)

18. Northern California Hiking Trails
John had a great naked-hiking story awhile back. Yes, I’m going to make you go look for it.

19. Out There With Tom
These reports from a former editor at the Great Falls Tribune are always engaging: especially the fact that they happen all year, snowfall or no snowfall.

20. Gear Talk with Jason Klass
Jason is the Sultan of Stoves, the Viceroy of Video. Can’t wait to hear how his Mount Whitney trip turned out.

21. Take a Long Hike
Ray reports on a few thru-hikers who finished the Appalachian Trail this season. One guy lost over 40 pounds (I’m surprised he didn’t simply vanish into thin air).

22. Trail Cooking
Sarah’s always got a lot cooking besides her world-class freezerbag recipes (including, well, one in the oven as they say).

23. Daily Hiker
Branden keeps the hot hiking news flowing, but he’s also got a huge following over on Facebook.

24. Nature for Kids
Nature for Kids proves you cannot go wrong posting adorable pictures of your children.

25. Hiking With Impunity
Mike’s point: hike smart and you’ll avoid punishment on the trail. Using the term “impunity” sorta implies punishment is a deserved outcome of hiking (think “Wall Street bankers who ruined the economy with impunity”) but it’s just a few steps from the old adage that if you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.