El Capitan rises above Guadalupe Mountains National Park. (amarilloposters / flickr)

You have to go a LONG way to see this west Texas beauty, but once you’re deep in its desert scrub and sky island mountains, you’ll find the 350-mile drive from Santa Fe, N.M. worth your while. The Guadalupe Mountains are as rugged and impressive as anything else in the desert Southwest.

WHAT TO DO – Get a Chihuahuan Desert welcome by hiking the 2.3-mile loop to Manzanita and Smith springs, which you can find near the Frijole Ranch History Museum. Keep your eyes open and limbs clear of cacti, but once you reach the spring, remain vigilant for javelina or desert reptiles (yes, including the western diamondback rattlesnake; it’s the Old West, after all). As you continue on, you’ll come to discover that deserts aren’t just dust and nothingness, that gardens actually grow in the midst of all that heat and dryness, including the madrone tree with its peeling-skin bark and pink flowers.

Looking for something a little more laid back? The national park service promises 11,000 visible stars at night. “To gaze at such a dazzling array can both humble us, as we recognize our insignificance, and inspire us as we identify with something larger than ourselves,” they say. That makes staying at the $8-per-night campgrounds quite attractive (if you can live without showers because they don’t have ‘em).

A Texas Madrone tree grows in Guadalupe Mountains NP, one of the few that can survive. (cwsteeds / flickr)

For the hardier adventurer, Guadalupe Mountains National Park has a total of 85 miles of backcountry trail weaving through those rugged West Texas peaks. Beth Nobles at WestMountainTrail.com says work your way to Route 137 and the Dog Canyon Ranger Station at the park’s northern border, where you can pick up a backcountry permit, and you can access the Tejas Trail. From there, the park is yours. Go where few tread like the 8,631-foot Bush Mountain or West Dog Canyon, South McKittrick Canyon and the McKittrick Ridge. Check with the park service for route information such as closures.

FAUNA – Guadalupe Mountains National Park is home to deer, mountain lions and other desert mammals, but perhaps most astonishing are its bats — all 16 species of them. And if you happen to be in the park at night, keep your eyes open for the hog-nosed skunk and the ringtail, both nocturnal animals. Says the park service: “The hog-nosed skunk is a rooter that uses its long claws and pig-like snout to dig in the ground for beetles, grubs, and worms. he rocky canyons are home to the nocturnal ringtail. The ringtail, which looks like a cross between a fox and a weasel … uses its large eyes and ears to hunt for insects, lizards, small rodents, and berries.”

DID YOU KNOW? – Ye many years ago, this national park sat beneath a massive inland sea. In fact, the mountains once existed as reefs in that ocean. Also, Texas’s highest mountain (Guadalupe Peak) rises to 8,749 feet above sea level and is located in the heart of the park’s backcountry.

GET THERE – Let’s be honest. Guadalupe Mountains National Park lies a long, long way from any sizable town. That’s how they do it in Texas with all that space. From Santa Fe, give yourself a good seven to eight hours to drive there. From Carlsbad, N.M., follow U.S. 180/62 West for 55 miles before turning right into the park headquarters.

CONNECT – The park website can be find by clicking here.

TexasMountainTrail.com can be seen here and Beth Noble’s Twitter feed is TrailGirl.

Autumn brings hunters and hikers together in the woods (Compass Points Media / flickr)

Ah, autumn.

We celebrate your chilled breezes, your crystal skies, your glorious foliage. But the leaves aren’t the only thing turning orange this time of year.

As we roll into October, hikers begin to share the woods with hunters as archers first – and then riflemen and women – enter the wilderness. It’s a fact of the hiking life. From now until May, we share the woods.

Here are a couple of tips to help you stay safe if you’re hiking or backpacking on lands where hunting is permitted:

• KNOW THE SEASONS – Each state has scheduled hunting seasons – bow season for deer, rifle for bear and so on – so check with your state’s game commission so you know what’s hunted and who’s hunting them.
• WEAR BLAZE ORANGE – Most of us don’t go into wilderness to make a fashion statement (although I’ve seen a fair share of teens try to replicate an Abercrombie ad more than once). So pull on that blaze orange vest. Don that fluorescent orange cap. Besides, in many places, it’s the law that you wear a certain amount of blaze orange if you plan to enter the woods during hunting season. You might not wear all that bright color walking the sidewalks of your hometown, but in the wilderness, it’s about being seen and being safe.
• HIKE WITH OTHERS – Here’s the trick: be seen and be heard. Go hiking with a group and keep a conversation going. Don’t be obnoxious, but talk loud enough so hunters know you’re there.
• HIKE DURING MID-DAY – Hunters love the mornings and evenings. So do hikers, and it’s for the same reason – it’s usually the best time to spot wildlife. There are fewer hunters in the woods during the afternoon, but keep in mind that there may still be a few out there.
• SHARE THE WOODS – Hiking during hunting season? Keep that mindset with you. Hunting is not going to go away; it’s just a fact of the hiking life. Let’s get into a sharing mood. So much of our wilderness is public, and some of that public enjoys hunting. We’d appreciate it if hunters kept that “share the woods” mentality, and we should show the same courtesy.

These are just a few tips on how to stay safe while hiking during hunting season, which usually lasts into May. Be seen, be heard and stay safe!

Vermont is the location of my next backpack. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

I have nothing planned.

I’ll go to Vermont in two weeks for a four-day walk on the famous Long Trail, nab a few Green Mountain high points, and then, I have nothing planned.

That feels a little strange.

I remember a weekend jaunt in New York’s Catskills many years ago, and once inside my car, I spent one moment remembering the emerald quality of the view from Wittenberg Mountain and several more thinking about the next trip I had scheduled – a weekend on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. I remember a sleeping in the snowy New Hampshire woods thinking of a spring trip I had scheduled for Pennsylvania’s Golden Eagle Trail.

There was always something next.

But this trip to the Green Mountains next month represents the only major backpacking weekend I have scheduled before the birth of my son in December. After I finish near Camels Hump, I will for the first time in about six years have nothing next. No trip for which to train, about which to daydream, about which to anticipate.

Consider it the punctuation of a seven-year journey.

When I wrote last month about my pending trip to the Adirondacks – the one I canceled due to a family emergency, the one I said I was searching for something I could not identify – I now know what stirred inside me. It was a recognition that the opening chapter of my hiking career was reaching its conclusion. I have grown from a naive college graduate who had never heard of Gore-Tex to a proud contributor to Backpacker and to the creator of this hiking website. I have laced up my boots for trails in the Adirondacks to Arizona, from Ireland to Costa Rica, from the Smokies to Zion. I’ve seen about a dozen black bears in the wild. I’ve had my share of failures and triumphs.

Yet I fear that my backpacking education has so much further to go. There are so many places I haven’t yet hiked. There’s so many skills I haven’t mastered. So much I need to learn so I can teach my son.

I want to introduce my child to the world of American trails. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

My son. My first child. These past several months have been filled with visions of introducing him to the wilds of the United States, to stash him in a kid carrier and take him to those amazing sites which you can only reach by your feet – the waterfalls of Ricketts Glen, the vastness of the Grand Canyon, smell of balsam trees as you emerge above treeline in New England. I want to show him the joy of morning’s gray light white it firsts illuminates your tent, the determination of ascending a high peak with your pack tugging against your shoulders, the way a mountain stream cools your skin, the way a waterfall spotted in the distance through the trees accelerates your adrenaline. I want to teach him the skills he needs.

I have so much to learn so I can teach him. And after he’s born, those first six months or so, I won’t be hiking. I’ll be near him, caring for him, caring for his mother, building our life as a family. Hiking won’t be a priority. It will be a memory. It will be a hope for the future.

Honestly, though, what puts my fear at ease is a mindset to which I’ve committed. Yes, this current chapter in my hiking career has reached its conclusion. Naturally, a new one begins, and this time, with a new hiking partner. After stepping away from backpacking, maybe he and I will discover it together, for him a whole world to explore for the first time. And for me as if it’s brand new again.

There’s no need for us fathers-to-be to be panicked about losing our identity, about sacrificing parts of ourselves to raise our children. I see our experiences – and for me, that means time spent hiking trails – as the foundation for the world we’re going to introduce to our children. I don’t know if my son will love hiking the way I do. But I can take him to the trailhead and invite him to come along.

Yes, this trip to Vermont in two weeks represents something. It is a celebration to mark the evolution of this backpacker and to begin anticipating the next hike. whenever that may be, with a new partner.

Pittsburgh has plenty to offer the adventurer. (freebird710 / flickr)

Don’t be confined to the rusty cityscape and high-density neighborhoods of the Steel City, all tucked into those river hills that lord over three rivers. There’s too much water, too many forests, too much potential for exploration. Check out these options to make Pittsburgh an adventure destination.

SEE IT Call it the wild jewel of western Pennsylvania. Ohiopyle State Park lives up to its much-discussed reputation as a top-notch spot for hiking, paddling and cycling. The park encompasses nearly 20,000-acres that hug the Youghiogheny River, and the waterway cuts a 1,700-foot deep gorge that’s full of green-leafed rhododendron and high cliff vistas. Cool off by taking the 2-mile Ferncliff Trail to the Ohiopyle Falls or challenge the Yough’s Class III and IV rapids. Located about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Along the Laurel Highlands Trail in Ohiopyle State Park, Pa. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

BACKPACK IT Ohiopyle State Park is also the starting point of the Laurel Highlands Trail, one of Pennsylvania’s premier hiking paths. The trail blazed with yellow stretches 70.1 miles to Seward, Pa., and along the way you can enjoy mixed hardwood forests, patches of rhododendron, quiet ravines and Adirondack-style huts. Much of the trail runs along ridge lines with a few climbs and descents sprinkled in between, making it one of the more moderate backpacking trails in the Keystone State.

PADDLE IT The city – yes, the city of Pittsburgh – offers up a few canyons of its own; urban canyons, if you will. Three rivers surround downtown Pittsburgh, and when there’s that much water, someone is going to dip their paddles into it. Rent kayaks from Venture Outdoors, which you can find by the bright yellow 6th Street Bridge, and enjoy a leisurely day meandering past skyscrapers, cargo boats and the city’s famous bridges. It may not be the wilderness, but the trip packs in plenty of scenery.

LINKS: Ohiopyle State Park, Laurel Highlands Trail, Venture Outdoors

Lassen Peak was once a volatile volcano 100 years ago. (glennwilliamspdx / flickr)

Obscured by the popularity of Yosemite and Death Valley, Lassen Volcanic quietly exists in the northeast corner of California. Once a fiery landscape of volcanic eruptions, it now exists as a lake-filled dream landscape for mountain lovers and a quiet alternative for those who want to see something between Mount St. Helens and the Sierra Nevada.

WHAT TO DO – For a kid-friendly hike, loop around Manzanita Lake. “Well shaded by looming Jeffrey pines and bordered by lush willows, this trail offers a welcomed respite from the heat of the day,” the National Park Service writes. It also has — in addition to hopefully spotting a beaver — camera-ready views of Lassen Peak.

For a more challenging Lassen Volcanic experience, take on the Brokeoff Mountain Trail in the park’s southern end. Walk 7 miles and up 2,600 feet of peaceful meadows and hard-scrambling above-treeline landscapes for panoramic views of five named peaks, including Mount Shasta.

Winter blankets Lassen Peak (exquisitur / flickr)

During winter, the park shuts down its 29-mile main road for vehicular travel, but skiers can slide away deep into the park’s peaceful backcountry, which can receive as much as 30 inches of snow each winter month. The park service recommends starting a cross-country skiing expedition at the Loomis Museum or the Southwest Parking Area, with trails breaking off to Lassen Peak, Ridge Lakes and Forest Lakes, as well as other routes. Choose a trip based on your experience level as there are dangers like avalanches to consider.

DID YOU KNOW? – Lassen Volcano erupted 150 times between 1914 and 1915. The last known rumble was in 1921.

FAUNA – Lassen Volcanic hosts that icon of the American wilderness – the black bear. Protect your food while exploring the backcountry. Birdwatchers should enjoy the 83 varieties of winged-creatures which dart through the park, including the mango-colored western tanager with its strawberry-tinted head.

GET THERE – Lassen Volcanic is about 250 miles from San Francisco. Hook up with Route 44 east to Route 89 south if you’re coming from Redding, Calif., to reach the Manzanita Lake Entrance.

CONNECT – Lassen Volcanic officials maintain a Twitter feed (LassenNPS). Their website can be found here.

Hurricane Irene washed out many popular hiking spots. (NASA / flickr)

Feels like late September outside the windows of Compass Points Media‘s headquarters in southern Pennsylvania; the inevitable calm after Hurricane Irene whipped the northeast coast and flooded New England with devastating results.

As of this Monday night writing, Irene can be blamed for 27 deaths and petrifying images of wrathful ocean waves and muddy rivers washing away bridges and roadways.

The hurricane also wreaked havoc with hiking destinations, from Virginia northward.

Vermont sustained serious flooding, from a deluge that swamped Brattleboro to rivers choked with mud and debris. The Green Mountain Club posted the following warning on its website about the Green Mountain National Forest:

The club asked people to please heed state warnings to avoid driving today. If you do decide to hike, do not attempt to ford high water.

Check out the Green Mountain Club’s list of trail conditions in Vermont, including information about blowdowns and road closures near places like Camels Hump.

The Appalachian Mountain Club reported bridges out, severe erosion and blowdowns on the trails leading to their popular backcountry huts in the White Mountain National Forest, N.H. Check out their list here if you plan to backpack in New Hampshire for Labor Day weekend.

Hurricane Irene also lashed New York’s Adirondack Mountains, prompting major closures operated by the Adirondack Mountain Club:

Because of storm damage, the Adirondak Loj and the Johns Brook Lodge are inaccessible. ADK’s headquarters in Lake George is closed. If you need to contact ADK, please call 518-449-3870. ADK is also urging people to stay out of the Adirondack backcountry until further notice. Water levels are high and many trail bridges have washed out.

Southward in Virginia, Shenandoah National Park officials did not discourage hikers from exploring the famous Blue Ridge park, but they did advise caution when camping. The storm created plenty of blowdowns and potential tree falls, so make sure you look up before choosing a campsite.

One the great promises of hiking is that the mountains and the trails will recover thanks to time and the thousands of volunteers who work to maintain the pathways. Give it some time, and we’ll be back enjoying the outdoors.

Gracie, our Maine coon. (Dave Pidgeon)

Last post, I wrote about an upcoming trip to the Adirondack High Peaks and how I saw it as raising a lot of questions about my hiking lifestyle. Alison, my wife, and I are expecting a baby boy soon, and I wondered if this Adirondacks hiking trip would be the last adventure of any kind for a long while.

On the eve of the trip, however, something became very clear – before I am a hiker, I am a husband first.

Alison called me at work Wednesday morning. She was tearful, mournful. Our vet had told us that our cat Gracie, a long-living and personable feline if there ever was one, was experiencing kidney failure, and it was time for us to do our duty as pet owners. It was time to let her go.

Alison has owned Gracie since her college days in Pittsburgh, Pa., when she rescued her as a stray Maine coon with long gray hair and half a white mustache. Gracie has been by Alison’s side through many a good and bad day.

Gothics rises among the Adirondack High Peaks. (Andy Arthur / flickr)

Let’s face it. Pets are a part of the family. Alison and I are not crazy-cat people by any means, but we are affectionate and immensely enjoy the people and pets in our lives. We are creatures of social habits. And when one of our circle has to leave, an emptiness blankets the house for some time.

How could I leave Alison in this house for four days after losing one of her best friends? How could I go about tromping around the mountains when my wife and soul mate grieves at home?

I am a husband first; a hiker second.

“But you’ve waited six years to go,” she said last night about my Adirondacks trip, noting how the last time I was there was in 2005.

And I can wait another one if I have to. The mountains and the trails, they’ll always be there, but moments when you can be a husband, the consoler-in-chief of the house, those times don’t come along often. And when they do, it’s our duty to rise to the occasion.

Maybe next year I can meander around the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Maybe next year I won’t go alone. Think a baby boy would enjoy crawling on top of Mount Marcy?

Hiking in 2005 up Algonquin in the Adirondacks. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

Casey Lyons, an editor at Backpacker, wrote in the latest edition about a trip he took to New York’s Adirondacks Park and the existential questions nagging his mind:

Mostly, I want to find out if my 18-year-old self would punch the man I’ve become in the face.

Harsh? Sure, but I’m considering many of the same questions, and I, too, am heading to the Adirondacks for … something. I know hiking will be involved, but I’m in that stage of life when trips like these should bring some sort of enlightenment. Will it be about the past or the future? Am I nuts to think I’ll even find enlightenment? I have no idea.

I’m a fifth of the way through my 30s and nearing the age of 33. Four months from now, I’ll be for the first time a father, the most exhilarating and frightening concept I’ve ever faced. I’m entering a new chapter. It’s like I closed my eyes when I turned 30 and woke up to a different world where I owned a home instead of bouncing from apartment to apartment; I went to work in television news after nearly a decade in newspapers; I don’t backpack nearly as much as I used to; my priorities include fixing a leaky toilet before planning my next hiking trip; and I have a little boy arriving in December who’s going to rock my world even more.

I am a perpetual existential question.

My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I go through phases when I want to yank on the emergency brake and examine whether this life is the way we imagined it years ago. I’m a little fearful of the answer. I’ve avoided watching my Blu-Ray copy of Into the Wild, just to make sure I won’t drop everything for a year to explore the wilderness. There was a time when that would have been an admirable remedy to constant soul searching; now that would be the height of irresponsibility.

If friends thought I was a daydreamer before, I’ve become more intense now, staring at a computer screen for lengthy moments at the websites of national parks or at photos I took when my life was marked more by the number of mountainscapes I shot rather than the number of visits I make to home improvement stores.

Alison and I hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. (Dave Pidgeon)

This Adirondacks trip to touch high points like Mount Marcy and Gothics represents … something. Perhaps the end of an era when I could easily pack up the gear and explore a new corner of the American wilderness. Maybe instead it’s a celebration of what’s to come. I spend time imagining the look on my son’s face when I introduce him to places like Bryce Canyon or the Smokies, when he’s old enough to appreciate the preservation of those epic landscapes (by the time he’s six months old, right?).

But when will that actually be? Will he even want to be my hiking buddy?

“It can’t just be a hobby for you,” my wife once observed. “It has to be a lifestyle. I don’t get that.”

Many don’t. But if you’ve ever had to find a niche or discover what you’re made of, and you found it staring at a lonely waterfall or reached the peak of a mountain you thought you’d never reach, you know what I’m aiming for.

As I ready myself for this Adirondacks trip, I inhale the aroma of hiking that spills out of my gear closets — the nylon tents, the Techwick shirts, the well-worn backpacks, the mud-spotted boots. I question the properness of leaving my pregnant wife for four days to go hiking. Am I being selfish? “You better go because if you don’t you won’t ever stop talking about it,” my wife says half jokingly. And when my son is born, my focus will have to be on him and his mother for a long while. I take that responsibility willingly and enthusiastically. The snowshoes will have to stay hung on the wall; the tents furled; the gear packed away. It’s the right thing to do.

My guess is that I’ll have to take it on faith that in the years to come, the hiking life I pine for will be renewed.

Take good care of your hiking feet. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

And then, all your plans come to a sudden halt.

Two weeks ago, I felt I was well on my way toward training for endurance hiking. On a Sunday, I whipped through an 18-miler in northeast Pennsylvania and looking toward a 20-mile loop in Shenandoah National Park, Va., two weeks later. I returned home feeling fit, confident and determined. Later that week, I went on a training run, which went well.

Until the last step.

Standing at my front door, a burning sensation tore through my left Achilles Heel. Instinct told me that this wasn’t going to be an easy stretch-it-out fix but an off-your-feet-for-weeks kind of injury. That day at the television news station where I work, we covered several tornadoes that devastated parts of our coverage area, which meant a lot of running around the newsroom and further damage to the Achilles.

I couldn’t get up and down stairs comfortably. The pain spiked. I felt future hiking plans slipping away.

Not sure what I did yet, and I’m scheduled to see an ankle specialist today. The heel has healed but there’s still a little swelling, and I can only perform on an elliptical machine with minimal discomfort. Certainly not confident enough to tear off a 60-minute run around Compass Points Media headquarters.

I’m being more patient with this injury than any I’ve had before. I’ve learned that the body does heal, but it has to on its own time. You can’t force it. But I’m sure shortly I’ll return to the trails and the pursuit of great things in the outdoors.

Mountain folds visible from Canyon Vista and the Loyalsock Trail in Worlds End State Park, Pa. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

Loop around what used to be the Pennsylvania frontier on this 16.7-mile trip that’s a premier backpack in the Keystone State.

When pioneers first reached the ridgetops guarding the Loyalsock Creek, they gazed out at the mountain folds and wondered if they had discovered the very edge of the globe. And it’s from that experience where Worlds End State Park in northeastern Pennsylvania takes its name.

You can follow this loop — which incorporates a section of the Loyalsock Trail and the entirety of the Red X Trail — to wide open views and gushing cascades, to open swamps and white-tailed deer habitat, to riverside campsites and shadowy thickets of spruce and pine.

DIRECTIONS: Worlds End State Park in Dushore, Pa., is about 180 miles west of New York City. Take I-80 to the exit for PA 42 north, and follow PA 42 for about 30 miles. Turn left onto PA 3009, and take that about 6 miles to PA 154 E. Turn right onto PA 154, and follow that to Mineral Springs Road, where you turn right and arrive at Worlds End. This hike begins in the parking lot for the visitor center.

A yellow disc marks the Loyalsock Trail in Pennsylvania. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

KNOW THIS: The park is free to enter, but you should register with the park system if you plan to camp out. The Loyalsock Trail has periodic trail registers for you to sign, which you should do in case of an emergency.

The loop features steep climbs and long, flat ridgeline hikes. There are plenty of campsites spread throughout this loop, so you can tinker with your itinerary to make for two equal days or one short and one long. If there’s been recent rains, prepare for boggy stretches of trail.

This is a moderately difficult backpack or a strenuous day hike.  Total elevation gain is about 3,000 feet, and some of those climbs make you wonder if you shouldn’t use your hands. You won’t need to, however, and the trip rewards you with flat stretches that are easy on the legs.

HIKE ON: Start this loop from the parking lot of the Worlds End State Park visitor center and follow the yellow “LT” discs into a picnic area and then across a road bridge over the Loyalsock Creek, a name taken from a Native American language (“LAWI-SAQUICK”), which means “middle creek.” On the other side of the bridge, follow the Loyalsock Trail into the woods and ascend the ridge. After the first 0.75 mile, cross High Rock Run waterfall and arrive at High Rock Vista, as it looks over the Loyalsock valley and at the face of several ridgelines.

The remaining 8.6 miles follows the Loyalsock Trail eastward out of Worlds End State Park and into Loyalsock State Forest. The mostly level path arrives at Alpine Falls after 3.45 miles from High Rock Vista, and the area teems with campsites. Continue on for another 3.3 miles, crossing several streams and forest roads, and arrive at Sones Pond, upon whose shore rests more campsites. The Loyalsock Trail then descends the ridge for 2.2 miles and 420 feet to a road bridge across the Loyalsock Creek. At the other end of the bridge starts the Red X Trail.

Double Run cascades in Worlds End SP. (Compass Points Media / flickr)

The Red X Trail is marked by yellow discs with a red “X.” At first, the trail skirts along the shore of the Loyalsock Trail, then climbs out of the cut to follow Route 154 before returning to the river and then back to Route 154. That lasts for 1.45 miles until the Red X Trail veers south, crosses Route 154 and enters the woods along Shanersburg Run. Shortly afterward, the Red X Trail steeply climbs out of the ravine, ascending 430 feet over just 0.6 mile. The rest of the Red X Trail as it winds its way for 3.1 miles to Canyon Vista remains comparably flat. At Canyon Vista, you get an idea of why the pioneers thought this place was the edge of the world — you cannot see the horizon beyond just a few mountain ridges.

The Red X Trail descends into Double Run ravine, and this is where the long walks and steeps climbs pays off. Double Run is packed with photo-worthy waterfalls as the Red X Trail moves 1.4 miles down the canyon, eventually meeting Route 154. Hikers can choose to follow the Red X Trail as it moves along the shore of the Loyalsock Creek, or you can follow Route 154 for just 0.4 mile back to your car.

Download the track and waypoints here.

Check out all the information you need about Worlds End State Park here.

View Worlds End State Park, Pa. in a larger map