Hike/Climb

Old Sauk River Trail   The Old Sauk River Trail offers the spring hiker an easy opportunity to explore the rich textures of a vibrant rainforest, on par with the legendary lushness of the Olympic Peninsula. Along the way, you’ll pass through remnants of towering old-growth forest, curtains of hanging lichen, an understory carpeted with emerald green moss, luxurious fern …

“I travel across the skin of the earth, much like a blade of grass, held gently, travels across my skin. I imagine my hands and my feet moving over the ground in such a way that the earth finds sensuous. I feel her playful pinch in the sharp plants that I pass. I feel her desire in the heat of …

We’ve all met those guys; they tell you how great things used to be when they were young. “The men were tougher in those days (meaning they themselves were), the ocean was wider, the current ran faster in the Tacoma Narrows (someone once said that to me), the mountains were taller when I was climbing.” Actually, that last one is …

Lube the joints. Warm the bones. That refrain usually gets me out on the trail in the dead of winter. It helps if the rain isn’t blowing perpendicular to gravity and the temperature is forty or better, which I realize is leaning toward balmy for the days-are-getting-longer season of the year. But thirties and raining? No way I’m going out …

I’ve been wandering the mountains for a good part of my life. In fact, I’ve built most of my life among the summits and the euphoric experiences they offer. I derive my livelihood by moving through the mountains, and there was a time when the argument could have been made that, simply put, this was the entire purpose of my …

Autumn is enchanting almost everywhere. But our planet has some unique places that manifest the season’s splendor in such vivid, phantasmagoric glory that hitting these places at precisely the right time is an experience one never forgets. Obviously, the hardwoods of New England and the aspen forests of Colorado. The arctic plain burnished with gold; the cottonwood trees of the …

“Both awe and wonder are often experienced in response to nature, art, music, spiritual experiences, or ideas. In the midst of these moments, we can feel overwhelmed by the vastness of something that is almost incomprehensible—it almost feels like what we’re witnessing can’t be true—like we’re seeing something that doesn’t fit with how we move through and understand our everyday …

After three years of avoiding COVID, it finally caught me. I got a Paxlovid prescription and went backpacking on the Olympic coast to battle the COVID demons at the ocean’s edge. Was it my fevered brain, or was the shoreline at Cedar Creek with its wave-sculpted sea stacks surreal? Did I actually see multiple orca pods hunting on two different days, …

As the snow begins to retreat in the North Cascades, and the color scheme ever so slowly shifts from white to green, I get the itch. Of course, having plied these North Cascades for numerous happy decades, I am used to waiting: there’s a lot of snow up there, and it melts out slowly, unveiling the verdant greenery in its …

The Wind River Range of Wyoming is a destination nearly every backcountry enthusiast dreams of visiting. This spectacular section of the northern Rockies boasts 40 granitic peaks over 13,000 feet high, the largest glacier in the American Rockies, and over 1300 named lakes. While not as well-known as other destinations such as Grand Teton and Glacier National Parks, the ‘Winds’ …