Fifty-two days, eight hours, and twenty-five minutes. As of Thursday evening, that’s the record Timothy Olson appears to have beat running from border to border, Mexico to Canada, on the Pacific Crest Trail. Once , he will have completed the PCT faster than anyone ever before. According to his Instagram account, his unconfirmed time is 51 days, 16 hours, and 55 minutes.

When Olson arrived at the northern terminus of the PCT at 10:48 P.M. on Thursday, he seemingly surpassed the record held by Karel Sabbe from Belgium since 2016. An FKT on the PCT, which winds through 2,652 miles of rugged mountain terrain in California, Oregon, and Washington, is one of the most prized speed records in thru-hiking and ultra-running. And for good reason: Olson averaged more than 50 miles a day for seven weeks straight for this record, often at alpine altitudes, gaining more than 400,000 feet in elevation. Not to mention another 400,000 feet of elevation loss.

Olson wore a GPS tracker for the length of his run, and once the data is confirmed, the official time will be released. (The complete tracker data has yet to be made public.) He started his journey in Campo, California, on June 1, which suggests he beat Sabbe’s time by less than 24 hours. The record comparison is complicated by the fact that trail adjustments, closures, and above all, , mean that the Pacific Crest Trail varies in route and length every year. This means that Olson, along with every thru-hiker, had to improvise: at least once, Olson ran up to a trail closure, turned around, ran back to a trailhead, and was driven to the other side of the closure. The extra added miles approximately equaled the distance of the closure, so even if Olson could not run every mile of the trail, he likely ran as many miles, if not slightly more.

Olson is not an amateur athlete, and this isn’t his first ultrarunning record. He once held the record for the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, which he won��in 2012 and 2013. But running the PCT is a fundamentally different challenge, physically and logistically.

Many FKT attempts on the country’s “triple crown” of thru-hikes, which also includes the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, end in failure, often due to injury, inclement weather, or sheer exhaustion. Olson was supported by a team of seven following along��in two RVs, rendezvousing with Olson as he passed through trailheads, and handling logistics like food and laundry. Most nights, Olson slept in an RV. But in several especially isolated sections, such as the Sierra Nevada, Olson spent the night alone, sleeping on the ground along the trail.

Sweetening the moment of victory for Olson is that his wife and fellow ultrarunner, Krista Olson, is eight months pregnant with their first daughter. “Each step of the journey, I am connected to my family,” as he ran through Snoqualmie Pass in Washington. Krista and both of his sons, Tristan, 8, and Kai, 5, were active members of his support team, meeting him at trailheads and assisting with logistics. Sometimes, his sons even joined��him for brief sections of trail.

In addition to record-chasing, trail running has helped the Olsons cope with loss—in particular, two miscarriages they experienced before their current pregnancy. As part of the FKT attempt, they’ve been raising money for , a non-profit that supports families going through pregnancy loss or baby loss.

Thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an elite physical challenge, even at a normal pace. In 2019, the Pacific Crest Trail Association issued 5,441 thru-hike permits, and another 2,437 permits for section hikes. Of those, only 1,181 people self-reported as having completed the entire PCT. Typically, thru-hikers finish in five to six months, carrying their own food and gear, and sleeping in tents each night. Completing the trail in less than two months, and the logistics needed to make an FKT attempt possible, registers on an altogether different scale of magnitude.

“In a normal year, only around one-fifth of the people who set out to hike the entire PCT actually succeed,” says Scott Wilkinson of the Pacific Crest Trail Association. “To travel the entire trail in a single season is remarkable. To do it faster than anyone ever has? It’s mind-boggling.”

The number of thru-hikers grows each year, as does the number of competitive ultrarunners. For those reasons, Olson’s FKT attempt certainly won’t be the last. But for now, he can rest easy knowing that he is very likely the fastest known PCT thru-hiker of all-time.

Editor’s Note: On July 29, the FKT organization Olson’s time as the fastest ever on the PCT at 51 days, 16 hours, 55 minutes, and 0 seconds.

The post Timothy Olson (Probably) Just Nabbed the FKT on the PCT appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Hopes for an Everest season unaffected by the pandemic dimmed last week��when the first member of an expedition at Base Camp tested positive for COVID-19, according to a source at camp��who asked to remain anonymous.

The infected patient was originally thought to be suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE)��and was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Upon arrival, the person��tested positive for��COVID-19. The rest of their��expedition team then began quarantining at Base Camp.

While only a single case of COVID-19 has been identified here so far, an outbreak would have disastrous consequences.��“When you’re sitting at Everest Base Camp at 17,600 feet, your immune system gets compromised because of the lack of oxygen,” ���ϳԹ��� Everest correspondent Alan Arnette told us��last spring, when the virus cut the season short before it even started.��“Even a small cut on your finger doesn’t heal until you get back down to an oxygen-rich environment. I think the risks are really high, and people are taking a gamble if they climb.”

The virus threatens the summit aspirations of climbers, the economic security of Sherpas, and the health of both.��

“Of course we are worried,” says Dr. Sangeeta Poudel, a volunteer at the Himalayan Rescue Association, a nonprofit that works to reduce deaths from acute mountain sickness in the Nepalese��Himalayas. If there was an��outbreak at Base Camp, Poudel says, “it would be an earthquake-like �����ٳܲ��پ��Dz�.”

The high elevation of Base Camp is particularly worrisome, as the virus could��be masked by, or mistaken for, symptoms commonly caused by extreme altitude.��

“With HAPE and COVID-19, we have a diagnosis dilemma, because they share symptoms,” says Dr. Suraj Shrestha, another Himalayan Rescue Association volunteer. Ambiguous symptoms include cough, a loss of appetite, and shortness of breath,��all commonly experienced at high elevation.��

Doctors at Base Camp have already arranged seven emergency evacuations, including��some��for multiple cases of HAPE. But because they aren’t able to test for COVID-19 at Base Camp, they don’t always feel certain in their diagnoses.��

As of now, the teams on the mountain��are feeling cautious but unfazed by a single positive test result��and are going forward as normal. While some initially expected a quieter climbing season this year, the government has��issued 338 permits,��almost as many as usual. Masks are worn sporadically��at��Base Camp, and social-distancing protocols vary widely among expedition companies, with a few��imposing strict isolation and others more or less carrying on like a normal year.

“The camp is as big as 2019, there is no difference,”��says Noel Hanna of Northern Ireland, who is at Base Camp for his third time. “Everything seems to be the same.”

Most foreigners had to present a negative COVID��test��result��upon arrival in Nepal. The government also requires a quarantine period and a second negative test after arrival, but these rules appear to be largely self-enforced. Many individuals and expedition companies seem to have followed the rules, albeit some more seriously than others. A fair share of the foreigners claim to��have received a vaccination, allaying concerns to an extent, but most Sherpas,��who travel��down the mountain and to Kathmandu more frequently, have not.

Luckily, Nepal has seen��a relatively low COVID��infection rate since early January. In Kathmandu, many people wear masks, and life mostly goes��on as usual. However, cases are starting to trend upward. Particularly worrisome is the skyrocketing number of cases in India, which shares an open border with Nepal.

Yet there is a fair amount of optimism for a successful climbing season. Doctors and expedition leaders hope that the single known case has been contained. And at the end of the day, for many summit��hopefuls, the coronavirus is just one more danger on a dangerous mountain.��

Says Hanna: “The way I look at COVID,��if I get it, I get it. It’s just the gamble you take.”

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With climate and ecological catastrophe at the forefront of conversations about the outdoors these days, it would have been easy to��remake Jack London’s 1903 classic novel����in a way that rallied viewers to engage with the natural world.��Like Buck, the story’s canine protagonist, who eventually abandons human society to join the wolves of the forest, today’s audiences might benefit from connecting with the natural surroundings we’ve��long��taken for granted.

However, the��, which hit��theaters February 21, remains polite and politically agnostic��while subtly glorifying wild places and adventure. Audiences are taken on a virtual Disneyland ride through the Yukon’s gold rush,��starring a computer-generated and easy-to-love version of Buck, a��Saint��Bernard–Scotch collie mix,��and live-action human heroes led by Harrison Ford.��The plot will be familiar to most older audiences: Buck begins the story as the domesticated pet of Judge Miller (Bradley Whitford)��but is kidnapped from his home in California and shipped to a boomtown in northwest Canada, where he’s sold to mushers and soon learns to thrive on the frontier as a member of a mail-running dogsled team. Later��the team is sold to the movie’s villain, an inexperienced, mean, and cartoonishly dressed��prospector (Dan Stevens). But Buck is soon saved by John Thorton,��played by��Ford��with gruffness and a grandfatherly sympathy. Given more freedom than ever, Buck is drawn to the forest, where he meets a pack of wolves. He travels back and forth between Thorton and the forest��and eventually joins the pack permanently, embracing his wild ancestral birthright.��

But while 20th Century Fox (now owned by Disney)��has made a children’s��version of The��Call of the Wild designed for��wide appeal,��Ford has no reservations about advocacy. During a recent��press interview��in Los Angeles, I asked Ford what he would say to any fans that didn’t believe in climate change.��

“Get out of my house,” Ford replied, without hesitation.

That response won’t surprise anyone familiar with Ford’s years of unapologetic environmental activism. A former Boy Scout and current��resident of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Ford was once ��from Indonesia during a documentary shoot��as he aggressively questioned the country’s forestry minister about illegal logging in one of the country’s national parks. Now 77 years old, Ford says he was drawn to The��Call of the Wild��as an opportunity to make a family film.��

Fans of the book may be divided about this unabashedly��tame remake, but the film succeeds��by doubling��down on two things��outdoorspeople will appreciate: dogs and adventure. There were no real canines used on set,��and Buck’s movements are a little too perfectly expressive to be confused with a real animal—but the CGI captures all the reasons we love gregarious, mischievous pets like Buck, and rooting for a protagonist without any lines isn’t��difficult.��

Those of a certain age in the audience will be treated to a reminder of the exasperated Ford that they loved in Indiana Jones��and Star Wars: “Son of a…,” Ford mutters��characteristically��at one point��as he walks outside and slams��a door behind him, newly resolved to rescue Buck. (Of course, this being Disney, the noise from the slamming door cuts off Ford’s line before any expletives are heard.)

As an adaptation, the movie freely discards some of the grittier and darker parts of the book (London’s version��includes far more graphic violence).��It’s not a perfect representation of dogsledding, the gold rush, or the Yukon either. It was also filmed outside Los Angeles and heavily augmented with CGI, and it’s kind of depressingly impressive to realize that a film about the role of nature in our lives chose to have its depictions of natural scenery magnificently rendered by computers. What the movie gets right is the��sense of belonging that one experiences—whether one is human or a dog—when communing with the natural world.

It’s a feeling Ford knows well: he and his family just spent 12��days rafting on the Colorado River, which he described as transcendental. “Each day it is just you, geology, sky, and the power of nature,” he said. He spoke slowly and seriously, taking time to find the right words. “The beauty of interrelationships, the biodiversity, all of this spectacular complication that’s part of nature, that’s life,” he continued. “That’s as elemental as it gets.”��

Humans have often attempted to express the elation, contentment, or sense of pure rightness that comes from spending time in the wild. Attempts to capture those feelings��in popular stories can often be sappy or insufficient compared to actual��experience, and��Disney’s new adaptation, bursting with cheesy moments and CGI-altered reality, is no exception. But at the end of the day, what’s��the harm of an utterly tame, family-friendly flick that glorifies an animated approximation of the wild? With any��luck,��it’ll inspire some of the children watching to go outside.��

The post ‘The Call of the Wild’ Is a Classic for a New Era appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

While doing a routine check of passing vehicles in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, in 2006, Sergeant Trey Cate and his fellow soldiers were ambushed. Standing in the street, the initial blast—triggered by a suicide bomber—shattered his legs. Moments later, gunmen hidden on nearby rooftops opened fire, shooting him in the back, arm, and helmet. A stray bullet hit a barrel of gasoline, and fire enveloped the wounded soldiers, including Cate.

Remarkably, every soldier made it out alive. But when Cate got to the hospital, a doctor told him he’d never walk again.��Cate didn’t accept it. “Watch me prove you wrong,”��he told the doctor.

“They told me I didn’t understand how injured I was,” says Cate. “I told them they don’t understand my mentality.”

Thirteen years later, not only does Cate, 35,��walk, but he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 2017 and the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018.

Cate��was introduced to former Marine Jeremy “Mac” McDonald, 34, as part of the thru-hiking community. Together,��the two veterans are organizing one of the most ambitious thru-hiking expeditions in recent years: a ��that will take��on the 6,875-mile Great Western Loop.��

McDonald��spent eight years in the Marine Corps, did three tours in Iraq, and was the head of Marine security at the U.S. embassy in Dakar, Senegal. “I’ve backpacked in some of the craziest places, just because I’ve gotten to travel so much,” he says. In 2014, after he��left the Marines, McDonald hiked the Appalachian Trail.

But Cate has the more unusual thru-hiking conversion story. Stuck in the hospital��as he recovered from his war injuries, Cate would spend hours daydreaming. “I’m in a hospital bed, and people are telling me I’ll never walk again, and so all I could think about was walking again,” he says. Not accepting he’d spend his life in a wheelchair, Cate forced himself to get out of bed and practiced putting one foot in front of the other.

“While walking around, the hospital aides would follow me with a couch on wheels for when I’d fall,” Cate says. “I’d lost a lot of weight at this point—I’m six foot three,��and I weighed 140 pounds.”

It was Cate’s younger brother who first told him about the Appalachian Trail. When Cate saw photos of how happy his brother looked while trekking��a 30-mile section, he immediately knew he wanted to thru-hike the entire thing. “I had already been daydreaming about doing something with my legs,” says Cate. “Why learn to walk again if I don’t do something incredible?”

But it wasn’t only��the injuries to his legs that Cate was trying to overcome. The blast left him with a traumatic brain injury, and when he initially came to in the hospital, he had amnesia. “When I woke up, a woman was hugging me, and I thought, Wow, my girlfriend is old,” says Cate. “I shoved her away. But turns out��it was my mom.” He recognized her after a few days, but his memories never fully returned.

After Cate retired from the Army and graduated from the University of South Florida in 2015, he decided to fulfill the promise he’d made to himself on the hospital bed years ago. He began preparing to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, but Cate��says a side effect of his brain injury was that it left him overly trusting of others. On White Blaze, a forum for Appalachian Trail hikers, an anonymous user played a joke on him, feeding him false information about what thru-hiking entailed. He told Cate that if he started hiking the Appalachian Trail in January, he wouldn’t need anything warmer than a 30-degree sleeping bag. (That is very incorrect; temperatures frequently drop��to single digits.) Cate also believed it when the stranger told him that the backcountry shelters had electric outlets, and that he could charge his phone there at night. (Also not true.)

Cate completed half of the hike, starting in Georgia and getting off trail at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia��because he wasn’t appropriately prepared. He then went home, studied what he did wrong, and tried again the next year. That time��he successfully hiked the entire trail, and he loved it.

The two got the idea to tackle the Great Western Loop because they wanted to do more with their passion for the outdoors, “something really interesting that gets the attention of the entire thru-hiking community,” says��Cate. Taking a dozen people on the longest thru-hike in the United States��certainly qualifies.��

The loop��links together five existing long-distance trails: the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the , the Arizona Trail, and the Pacific Northwest Trail. Its��footpath follows the Sierra, the Cascades, and the Rocky Mountains��and passes through 12 national parks and 75 wilderness areas. To date, only two people have ever hiked the Great Western Loop to completion in a calendar year, one of whom is�����ϳԹ��� columnist��Andrew Skurka.

To accomplish their goal, Cate and McDonald��set up the expedition as an LLC called ��and partnered with a marketing company for publicity and to acquire sponsors to provide supplies and funds to the hikers, which include��McDonald.��They spent much of the last year getting��sponsors��and now have a budget of around $250,000. With the plan in place, they are ready to start hiking in March, beginning and ending in Cuba, New Mexico.

Because of the logistics required, Cate volunteered to follow the hikers in a support van rather than hike himself. “This level of organization is what we used for military missions,” Cate says. “You have to consider everything down to the final detail:��the weather, the supplies, the travel.” Two vehicles will follow the hikers, ferry them to town, and resupply them with food. Support staff will also assess pick-up points, respond to emergencies,��and��even do their laundry.��

“There definitely will be a rate of injury,” says Phaneendra Kollipara, one of the thru-hikers selected for the expedition. Kollipara, a 27-year-old engineer from India living in Michigan, has hiked all three major trails in the U.S. “There are things we can do to help prevent injury, but bad luck can happen to anybody,” he��says.

��between the ages of 22 and 36 and��hailing from four countries were selected. All are experienced thru-hikers. Each selected a charity to raise money��for, including the , the , and the , and they’ll be seeking��donations while they hike as well as asking sponsors to support their chosen organizations.��

Cate and McDonald initially spread word of their plans in person and by posting in thru-hiking Facebook groups, and soon enough, applications began flooding in. Experience in long-distance hiking was requisite,��but not enough: Cate searched for individuals��who were patient and��easy to get along with and who��followed directions well. “I tried to stay away from people who wanted to ‘race’ the whole time��or would get angry the moment something didn’t go their way,” Cate says. They wanted people from different backgrounds, they recruited internationally, and they tried to balance the number of men and women. Because 12��people is an unwieldy number on a trail where campsites rarely fit more than four tents, the team��will be divided into four groups of three people, with��staggered��start times.

Skurka was the first person to ever hike the Great Western Loop, completing it in 206 days in 2007. “It was complicated enough when I did it by my lonesome,” he says. “I can’t imagine what it would take to organize for 12��people.”

He��points out that the biggest challenge the group will face will be hiking through the Sierra Nevada��once the snow starts to melt around mid-May, and then booking it all the way to the Rockies, where it’ll��have to exit the San Juans of southern Colorado before the snow falls in October. “You’re basically racing against winter the whole time,” says Skurka. “You need to throw down 30 or 40 miles a day. That’s the inherent difficulty.”

Even if you can handle the physical challenge, says Skurka, it can be just as tough psychologically.

“I would struggle to do that trip nowadays, because it’s got so many mind-bogglingly boring miles, hour after hour after hour,” he says. “You can’t do these things for fame and fortune, you have to love it at the end of the day. There are too many hours at some level of discomfort to make it worthwhile otherwise.” That said, Skurka looks back on the Great Western Loop as one of the best things he’s ever done. “I hope they can experience that, too.”

Cate and McDonald are hopeful that the success of this��expedition will��allow them to host new outdoor challenges in the future.��But for now, they’re counting the days until the��adventure begins.

“I am very excited,” says McDonald. “I wish we were starting yesterday.”

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In the year 2019, thermoses��can do anything. They’re leak resistant. They’re vacuum insulated. They can , , and . If social progress was measured by the sheer variety of vessels designed to keep your bean juice piping hot, we’ve arguably reached utopia.

But as a nondrinker of that bitter, brown liquid, I wanted to know: What can travel mugs do for me? So a few friends and I drove from Santa Fe��to Juárez, Mexico, this fall��and visited the extremely disputed��birthplace of an alcoholic drink dear to the hearts of many: the margarita. After filling four thermoses with the frozen cocktail, we drove back to Santa Fe and taste-tested the concoction��from each travel mug.

The test gave us the answer to��that age-old question: Which container��best keeps margaritas tasting cold and fresh after 24 hours of travel? These are the results of our investigation.

The Bar

The 99-year-old in Juárez opened during Prohibition, when distilleries from Kentucky and other states��moved to Mexico to legally continue their craft. The bar and restaurant quickly became a destination for ethanol-deprived Americans, who would cross the border in��El Paso, Texas, seeking refreshment. Legend has it that the establishment’s bartender in the late 1930s, Lorenzo “Lencho” Hernandez, first put tequila, lime juice, Cointreau, and crushed ice in a cocktail shaker. But in reality, the Kentucky Club is hardly the only bar that claims to have invented the drink, and the true origin story will probably . But for our purposes, these margaritas did��just fine.

The Test

We purchased eight margaritas on Saturday, October 12, at 2:35 P.M., and��drank a few at the club (this round of drinks��would serve as our control group). We then gingerly poured two margaritas each into insulated travel mugs representing four different brands: CamelBak, Hydro Flask, Stanley, and Yeti.��On Saturday night, we camped at White Sands National Monument,��outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, (and had a hard time resisting a swig from our vessels) before returning to Sante Fe on Sunday afternoon, October 13.��At 5:18 P.M.,��three other journalists and I taste-tested the margaritas in each thermos (that’s is 26 hours and 48 minutes of travel time.) The four of us each awarded the drinks a score on a scale of one to ten, for a possible total of 40 points. We considered��three criteria: coldness, taste, and drinkability. In order to preserve the purity of our palates, we did not order Domino’s Pizza until after the testing concluded.

Test Case 1: CamelBak Eddy + 20-Ounce��Bottle

Sitting around the day-old margaritas, we didn’t know what to expect. Would any of them be cold at all? Would they all taste exactly the same, rendering our intended comparisons—and our entire journey south of the border—a waste of time? relieved our first concern. The margarita had��remained colder than room temperature. But the crushed ice had melted, so the snow-cone texture that makes the cocktail so enjoyable on a hot day was absent.��The drink was what can be best described as luke-cold,��which was better than our worst fears.

Otherwise, we thought the margarita in the CamelBak tasted OK. The��tequila wasn’t well masked, leaving��the beverage with a somewhat harsh flavor. One reviewer succinctly summarized our collective impression: “I would definitely drink it, but I already have a pretty low bar.”

Score: 20/40

Taste Case 2: Yeti Rambler 18-Ounce��Bottle

We had high hopes for our��. This��high-end brand has��made coolers so cool, they’ve��become a lifestyle.��And we did think the margarita in the��Rambler��tasted notably better than that in the��CamelBak. Not only did this version seem smoother and saltier, it was even colder than the CamelBak’s. But��there was also no sign of ice.

Two of our judges felt the drink took��on a metallic taste while in the Rambler. It was the low note of a travel-mug margarita (mugarita?) that otherwise held up well.

Score: 28/40

Test Case 3: Stanley Master Unbreakable Trigger-Action Mug, 16 Ounce

This aesthetically pleasing ��may be unbreakable, but it broke our hearts��a little. The green liquid in it remained about as cold as the CamelBak version, but the flavors were amiss. Two of our judges agreed that the adult beverage tasted “briney,” which some cocktail experts would surely agree is the spiritual antonym of “refreshing.” There was no ice.

It was almost as if Stanley thermoses weren’t explicitly designed to preserve the flavors of margaritas for more than 24 hours. (This mug is an excellent choice for coffee and tea, howver.) I think it is safe to say we’re never going to drive to Juárez to fill our Stanley Master Unbreakable Trigger-Action Mug at the Kentucky Club again.

Score: 17/40

Test Case 4: Hydro Flask 18-Ounce Wide Mouth

Rejoice, for the Hydro Flask version of the mugarita has no equal! All four of us gave the highest scores (an 8, an 8.5, a 7, and a 6.5 out of 10), largely because of how well the Wide Mouth maintained the margarita’s true and original flavor. We all concluded that the��concoction in this thermos was just as cold as the Rambler version. Sadly, all the ice inside the Hydro Flask had melted, too.

“It has the best mouth feel,” said one judge (not a qualified sommelier). “It tastes as if the individual components have not separated��but rather kept together nicely.” All of us agreed that the flavor reminded us of a multidimensional, fresh margarita.

We admit that, by now, several margaritas into the evening, the tequila may have altered the accuracy of our judgments��as well as our mental states. But there was one thing we knew for sure: we had undoubtedly made the most of our weekend��for the sake of science.

Score: 30/40

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It was��Valentine’s Day 2019 on the Pacific Crest Trail in Southern California, just a few dozen miles north of the Mexican border. This stretch of the PCT runs through the Laguna Mountains, 6,000 feet above sea level, and the high-desert scrub that spreads in every direction was blanketed with snow. Pretty much nobody was thru-hiking it this early in the year, but 33-year-old Cory McDonald was already underway. As he trudged along on a thin layer of frost, weighed down by a backpack, he heard a voice behind him say, “Hey, Second Chance!”

Cory froze. He turned to see an older man he didn’t recognize, who somehow knew his trail name. “I saw you on YouTube,” the man said.

The stranger, standing trailside, didn’t look like a thru-hiker. Of course, people thought Cory didn’t either—thanks to his shaved head, baby face, and a weight of nearly 400 pounds. But at least Cory��had a backpack. This man wasn’t carrying one, and he made Cory very uneasy when he said, “I followed your footsteps through the snow.”

This wasn’t the first instance of somebody tracking Cory down in the wilderness. Don’t murder me,��he thought as the man came closer. How many more times is this going to happen?

Cory’s decision to attempt the PCT dated back to March 2018. He was living by himself in Fort Myers, Florida, definitely not loving his existence. He’d recently given up trying to make a living as a day trader, which was stressful and volatile. Before that��he’d quit a job selling soft drinks to gas stations, and before that he’d worked at Target and Pizza Hut. He was bored. He also doubted that he’d ever find love.

“I was very depressed, very unhappy, miserable with everything,” Cory told me when I first interviewed him by phone last summer. “My life wasn’t going in the direction I wanted. I couldn’t get a girlfriend. I was very lonely, and I kept sitting around, dreaming that one day I’d have this awesome life.”

Cory blamed his weight. “I tried different diet plans, but none of them were working,” he recalled. “I kept gaining weight every year.” Heart disease runs in his family, so he visited a cardiologist, who studied the results of an echocardiogram and told Cory his heart looked mostly healthy. But the doctor��scared him with stories about former patients who had dropped dead from a heart attack in their late thirties.

“That was a big eye-opener,” Cory said. “I just felt like I hit rock bottom.”

Not long after, while surfing YouTube on his couch, Cory came across a channel called , where he discovered a series of hiking videos made by a woman named Jessica Mills, a 33-year-old from Alabama who used the trail nickname Dixie. Dixie was a vision: charming, fun, outdoorsy, and doing a solo long-distance hike on a trail that Cory knew little about, the PCT. It was far away from Florida, in the romantic-sounding West.

One video led to another, and Cory soon discovered an entire ecosystem of thru-hikers who were vlogging about their adventures. They shot videos as they went, releasing episodes on their YouTube channels maybe once a week. Cory and thousands of others could vicariously experience a thru-hiker’s journey as the hikers lived it.

“I was blown away by Dixie, Darwin, Jay Wanders Out, Whimsical Woman, all the YouTube hikers,” said��Cory, ticking off the names of other thru-hiking stars. “I started binge-watching them and said, ‘I want to do this, too. I want to go hiking.’”

Cory had some experience camping and hiking in Missouri and Florida, and he researched what he needed to know about taking on the PCT. He didn’t train, but he spent more than a hundred hours rounding up equipment. “It was next to impossible to find gear that would fit me, ultralight or otherwise,” he said. In November, he sold his house. Cory knew he’d be slower than most thru-hikers, so he booked a ticket to San Diego for the end of January 2019, months before anybody else would begin the northbound transit.

As for YouTube, Cory was interested in becoming a star himself—but not until after his thru-hike, when he’d lost some weight. He decided to bring a GoPro with him anyway, for practice. Before long,��a friend in Florida encouraged him to go ahead and start making episodes, sending her his footage so she could edit and upload it. He gave in, and on the Second Chance Hiker��channel debuted on February 6. In it��you watch Cory at home in Florida, stepping onto a scale. Then he’s on the jet ride to California, asking for a seat-belt extension. Finally, you see him standing next to the southern terminus of the PCT, goofily waving at Border Patrol agents as they drive past.

“I’m Second Chance Hiker, and I’m starting the Pacific Crest Trail on January 30��to drop 200 pounds,” Cory announces. It’s windy, and the sky is overcast, but he’s giggling and smiling. “I’m just trying to get my life back on track.”

Thousands of thru-hikers tackle the country’s longest trails every year. And hundreds of thousands, if not millions, watch them on screens. I watched some myself in early 2018, as I prepared for my own thru-hike of the PCT that summer.

In 30 minutes of recent searching, I found more than 60 YouTube channels devoted to thru-hiking. The most well-known��belong to Dixie and a hiker , who asked that I not share his real name. Both Dixie and Darwin have more than 200,000 subscribers. Dixie has posted nearly 350 videos, which have collectively gotten more than 31 million views. Rates vary, but for every thousand views a channel receives, its creator earns a few bucks through advertising. That can add up quickly, and it’s fair to say that YouTubers like Dixie are the biggest names in thru-hiking right now.

“YouTube’s influence is enormous,” said��Scott Wilkinson, director of communications at the Pacific Crest Trail Association, which is based in Sacramento, California. “With good reason. People like Dixie and Darwin are so popular, because they are authentic and they care. There is nothing crass or commercial or enterprising about what they do.”

Not long ago, Wilkinson said, Cheryl Strayed was the biggest trail celebrity—her 2012 book��Wild, along with the 2014 film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon, brought more people to the PCT than ever before. But Wilkinson said��that YouTube and social media may have surpassed��Wild as “the leading drivers��of growth on the trail.”

Dixie is the queen of the medium. Young, blonde, friendly, with an easy-listening accent and scraped-up limbs, she’s part southern belle and part hardcore adventurer. Her videos have the unusual ability to make thru-hiking seem both approachable and epic.

“I want to bring the experience to people’s living rooms,” Dixie told me. “If I’m freezing cold and miserable, how do I let other people feel that, without just telling them that I feel cold? How do I have somebody else get as close to that experience without doing it themselves?”

Alas, the online thru-hiking community is also rife with cyberbullies, trolls, and argumentative jerks, many of whom aren’t thru-hikers but seem to think they know all about it. Dixie has had some unsettling experiences. One time she blocked a man from her YouTube channel after he cursed out other viewers in the comments section. He found her email address and wrote: “I can’t wait to find you on the trail this year, where you can’t silence my voice.” After Dixie posted a video about whether thru-hikers should carry a gun on trail—she doesn’t think it’s necessary—one person commented, “I’m going to put a bullet in your skull.” Equally chilling, a few fans discovered her home address in Alabama and visited her house unprompted.

For Dixie and others who get targeted, the online vitriol comes in all forms: body shaming, gear shaming, charges of egotism and self-promotion. The most successful YouTube thru-hikers, like Dixie and Darwin, make enough money from their online presence to support what is basically a never-ending journey. Darwin, who hit the trail in 2015, says he can make anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 a month off views of his YouTube videos—not a fortune, but enough to keep him going. Dixie says she makes twice as much from the crowdfunding platform Patreon as she does from YouTube;��there, 900 monthly donors get access to private Q and��A’s with her, and some use Dixie as a consultant to help them plan their own thru-hikes.

Darwin and Dixie both said��that people’s��skepticism about their authenticity and motives can sting. Running a successful YouTube channel is harder work than it appears, and there are easier ways to make a living, but they do it anyway because they love it. Neither has been tracked down on the trail, but they don’t doubt��it could happen.

“If people were willing to show up at my house uninvited,” Dixie said,��“they’d absolutely be willing to find me on trail.”

Because of the exertion he put himself through on his first day, Cory ran out of water that night. There are few water sources along the initial stretch of the PCT—just a sea of muted-green, drought-tolerant shrubs stretching across khaki-colored mountains that characterize much of the first 700 miles. Fortunately, a storm rolled inland, and the next day Cory collected rainwater running off his tent.

By his fourth day, Cory had walked a total of 7.3 miles. Slow starts aren’t unusual, but most thru-hikers on the PCT aim to cover around 20 miles per day.

Still, Cory remained inexplicably, infectiously happy. He’d sing silly songs to the camera. He’d laugh like a little kid at his own jokes. Cory confides his thoughts and feelings to viewers, as if he’s speaking to good friends on FaceTime. It’s endearing, which is probably why his YouTube channel took off and people started watching and cheering him on. “I’m very proud of you for just getting out there and giving it a shot,” wrote a viewer. “Sending love and support from Australia,” wrote another. A fan group launched on Facebook; its members uploaded photos of themselves hiking. One of them posted watercolors he’d painted��based on stills from Cory’s videos.

But not everybody approved of Cory’s quest, and some believed he shouldn’t have been attempting it because of his weight. He was a danger to himself and others, they said.

“You need to take the black capsule,” one troll suggested, a reference to committing suicide. Another, writing on a popular forum for Appalachian Trail hikers called White Blaze, said: “If more people Fat Shamed others (which should probably be compulsory), then perhaps the 39.8% of obesity amongst the 99.3 million US adults could be seriously reduced and SAVE LIVES, instead of being concerned about ‘hurty feelings’!”

“You would think some of these park rangers would intervene … and [put] a stop to this freak show,” someone else wrote on the same forum. “I did call the PCT assoc. when I first saw this clown and gave them a ear full about it. I think if more people did they can pull his permit.”

Cory tried to ignore the nasty comments, but then something truly unexpected happened: strangers, fans and haters alike, started searching for him on the trail.

In Southern California, the PCT roller-coasters up forested mountains and down into desert-valley passes, crossing highways and back roads several times a day. By watching Cory’s videos and approximating his mileage, people could home in��on him. Early on, a woman from the Facebook fan group announced her intention to help “rescue” Cory and get him off the trail. Shortly after, strangers started driving to various segments of the PCT to look for him. They would park along the road and start hiking until they saw their quarry. One man who showed up was homeless, and he told Cory that he would follow and “take care” of him.

If people weren’t trying to rescue Cory, they were��often trying to manipulate him. One stranger demanded that Cory hire him as a “manager.” In Agua Dulce, a small trail town outside Los Angeles that’s been used as a location for dozens of Hollywood films, a woman impersonated a journalist to get access to a home where Cory was staying overnight, claiming that she had an appointment to speak with him. She then tried to physically intimidate him into accepting her brand of drinking water as his official sponsor.

“She said it cures cancer and snakebites,” said��Cory, who doesn’t remember her name but calls her Water Lady. Other hikers hid Cory in the back of the property, but Water Lady parked out front and refused to leave. Cory’s friends had to sneak him out.

Two incidents frightened Cory more than any others. On a February morning at 6:30,��still too early in the year for other thru-hikers to be on the trail, Cory was lying in his sleeping bag when he heard a voice outside his tent.

“Second Chance, is that you in there?” a man asked. “I’ve been searching for you. I’m here to help.” Cory freaked out. He was alone in the woods, and he hadn’t asked for assistance. “It’s very scary, because you don’t know what their intentions are,” Cory said. “Some of them have it in their mind that they’re here to save me��and I should be grateful and thankful.” Not long after, another stranger showed up, the one who tracked Cory’s footsteps through the snow. In both cases, he hid his fear, politely refused their help, and excused himself before hurriedly hiking away.

After encountering the “stalkers,” as Cory called��them, he messaged Darwin on Instagram, looking for advice on what to do about such people. Darwin shared a strategy that he and Dixie had used for years: Delay your social media. Don’t post YouTube videos, Instagram posts, or anything else until weeks after you’ve hiked through an area.

Cory started publishing videos on a monthlong delay, and for the most part, it worked. Strangers stopped finding him;��nobody tried to rescue him. By April, as more and more people began thru-hiking the PCT, Cory discovered that many of them had been watching his early videos as they prepared for their own hikes. If they happened to catch up with him, they were thrilled.

“One day��ten people in a row wanted a selfie with me,” Cory said. “I felt like the nerdy kid in the high school movie who becomes super popular, and everybody wants to talk to you and get your picture.”

Life was looking up. Cory kept posting videos, gaining 25,000 followers. And he’d met a girl in Agua Dulce: Nessa Pepp, a fellow YouTube thru-hiker from Germany. “She’s the perfect girl,” Cory said. “She’s really sweet, and she sells honey in Germany. When we first met, she didn’t know who I was, and she actually didn’t think I was a hiker, because she thought I was too fat. I thought that was really funny.” They started hiking together a few days later��and after a few weeks became a couple.

Before long, Cory and Nessa ran into a problem that had nothing to do with YouTube or his weight. After weaving through the desert mountains, the PCT ascends into the glacial-carved Sierra Nevada. But 2019 was a record-breaking snow season, and the range’s famous mountain passes—the trail reaches its highest point at the 13,000-foot Forester Pass in California, near Mount Whitney—were snowbound and dangerous. When Cory arrived in the southern Sierra, he assessed the situation, then chose to do what many PCT hikers do: skip the Sierra and get back on the trail far to the north, in Ashland, Oregon. The plan was to do the California portion later that year, once the snow melted.

Though it was already June by this point, Oregon’s Cascades also hadn’t fully escaped the grasp of winter. On Devil’s Peak, not far north of Ashland, the trail disappeared beneath a sheet of snow. Faced with the option of pushing on or backtracking, Cory and Nessa decided to keep going. Cory strapped on his microspikes and followed a steep, trodden snow track that went down the mountain.

He didn’t get far. Nessa was filming when Cory started sliding out of control, grasping at the snow unsuccessfully. The images she shot, which can be seen��near the end of on YouTube, show him flailing and grunting loudly in discomfort.

In , Cory finally stops sliding, and he slowly makes his way back to the snow track and down the mountain. Shortly after, as the adrenaline rush fades, he stumbles and feels a sharp pain. Screaming and��unable to get off the ground, Cory realizes that he’s badly hurt, and Nessa uses her InReach to call for emergency assistance. In due course,��, and Cory is taken by helicopter and ambulance to Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Cory’s story—inspirational, defiant, feel-good—was suddenly overshadowed by an uncomfortable question. The online critics and haters had doubted his ability. Were they right?

When an adventurer negligently wanders into the wilderness, it’s not just their livelihood at stake. Search and rescue missions are expensive, often billed to the public, and can distract personnel from other emergencies. Sometimes��volunteers get hurt or die in a rescue attempt, which happened in California .

The consequences are far-reaching, and Cory is aware of that. But he thinks the public does a poor job of determining who has��acted��negligently and who is capable��but simply got into a jam that could have happened to anyone. Cory told me about a number of hikers he met who were rescued at some point but faced no consequences or judgment. Cory begged Nessa not to hit the SOS button, because he knew what the critics would say about a guy like him getting rescued.

“I went up there with all the right gear, I didn’t cross my limits,” Cory said. Accidents��happen all the time, but there’s a double standard. “If you are attractive, they assume you know what you’re doing. But I’m a big fat guy, so I get judged much more harshly.”

Cory was right about the flak he’d get after posting the video of his rescue. “Pathetic,” one commenter said. “People like them should not be allowed in the mountains.”

“I swear you act like you’re so hurt to get … attention and sympathy,” wrote��another.

“I tried to watch the rescue video, but it was too painful,” Cory said. “I didn’t like that day at all. It was an awful day.”

As Cory recuperated in a hospital bed in Klamath Falls, he learned that he’d likely sustained tissue and nerve damage in his back. His doctor said he would recover, but he had to stop hiking for at least three weeks. It’s not uncommon for thru-hikers to end their hike because of injuries, but Cory didn’t want that to be the end of his story.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said on YouTube. “I’m out here to accomplish something, and I haven’t accomplished it yet.” A hiker and fan living in Bend, Oregon, opened up his house to Cory, who rested, recovered, and plotted his return. Progress was slow—at first��his back couldn’t even bear the weight of his pack. He decided to spend time hiking and camping in Oregon forests around the PCT, slowly building up his strength. But before he left for the woods, a surprise visitor showed up.

It was Dixie. Turns out��Cory’s original inspiration to hike the PCT was a fan of his channel.

“I was completely blown away to meet Dixie,” Cory said. “Meeting her has been one of the greatest highlights of my hike.” The two had a long conversation, and Dixie helped Cory get back on the trail, carrying some of the gear to the campsite where Cory would spend the next five days.

After seven weeks of recovery, Cory got going again in August. The PCT in Washington is not as high as the Sierra, but it’s steeper and wetter, and winter can dump snow on the Cascades as early as mid-September. With his back still healing, Cory hiked sections of trail without a pack, occasionally skipping ahead by car so he could keep up with Nessa. They weren’t just racing the weather; they were racing Nessa’s six-month visa, which was set to expire on September 27. But they were determined to make it to Canada in time.

By this point, Cory had hiked significantly farther than his critics expected, but he would keep hearing hateful comments from people who doubted him. “You shouldn’t be hiking until you deal with your food addiction first,” a stranger��in Washington told him on the trail. Cory had noticed a consistent pattern. “It’s always older white guys,” Cory told me. “Every time.”

But Cory didn’t care about any of that anymore. His back had healed and he was backpacking again. He didn’t care that he wasn’t a “purist” thru-hiker, choosing to cherry-pick the sections of trail he wanted to hike the most, meeting up with Nessa when he could. He hiked Washington’s Goat Rocks Wilderness twice, where the razor-thin crest of the Cascades dramatically slices through the alpine air, just because he found the scenery so moving. He had lost nearly a hundred pounds and felt healthier than he had in 10 or 15 years. His shaved head had grown wild with hair, his unruly beard a thru-hiking badge of honor. And Cory kept churning out YouTube videos, where fans loved him just as much as he loved them.

In his last video from the PCT, people who had watched his hike jammed the comment section with their affection. “I have followed you from day one and worried, laughed, cried, cheered with you in every video,” one wrote. “I’m so proud and happy for you, and deeply inspired,” said another.

Reinvigorated, Cory told��me he is newly determined to keep hiking, to run toward life rather than hide from it. “The PCT has been a complete reset of my life,” he said. Not to mention, Cory reminded��me, he found love. Nessa managed to renew her visa, and they’re now figuring out their future.

On September 20, Cory of the Pacific Crest Trail. In the final moments of his nine-month journey, he and Nessa slowly danced on the border of Canada.

The post Fame, Romance, and a Second Chance on the PCT appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

If you thought Sweden was all meatballs and Abba, you are sorely mistaken. In fact, one of Sweden’s largest sociocultural exports in 2019 is rather serious: flygskam,��and it has . Translating roughly to “flight shame,” the movement was initially espoused by Olympic biathlete��Bjorn Ferry in 2015��and��aims to shun others into flying less, citing the massive carbon footprint of air travel as its raison d’être. The global surge in air travel to preventing the climate crisis. A single round-trip flight from New York to London produces about 2,173 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger, . In 56 countries, the average person emits less carbon dioxide in an entire year.

Now, flight shame��is ��to the United States. But it’s not so simple as saying all plane flights are equally bad��and every alternative is always better.��For the person who wants to travel greener without giving up travel altogether, it’s worth digging deeper into how carbon emissions compare among the options available to you. I talked to , a researcher at the��nonprofit science advocacy organization��,��who helped��me put together nine principles��that’ll help you��cut��your carbon footprint while planning your next trip.

Consider Driving��Instead of��Flying in Some Cases

Air��travel isn’t always the worst. “A vehicle that is traveling a long distance and isn’t fuel efficient won’t be as good of a choice as a plane for a single traveler,” Anair says. In a standard vehicle with average fuel economy—around 25 miles per gallon—a traveler will probably emit more carbon driving alone than they would flying economy for the same distance.��This is because even though a plane expends much more fuel than any car, the carbon cost is shared among all of the plane’s passengers. When comparing cars to planes per passenger per mile, a plane is almost always more efficient than a solo driver.

Taking a flight that’s in the air for an hour or less, though, will almost certainly be the least green travel option��of all, because��planes use an inordinate fuel while taking off and landing. “So, for shorter flights,” Anair says, “the takeoff and landing emissions are a bigger fraction of the overall trip.” Which means longer flights of more than an��hour, while producing more emissions overall, produce less emissions per mile.

Fly Direct

Yes, fly direct—or at least straight. A layover means double the carbon-intensive takeoffs and landings. It also likely means a less-direct route. A flight from Houston to New York via Orlando burns��a lot more jet fuel than a direct flight, so you might as well treat yourself by avoiding the layover altogether. If you have to take a multiple-leg flight, a layover in a city in the direction you are headed is much better than a city that’s out of the way.

Choose the Bus (Almost Always) Over Planes, Trains, and (Most) Automobiles

There are exceptions to every rule, but in many instances, a bus trip emits less carbon that a car, plane, or even train trip. “Traveling by bus is consistently a good low-carbon travel choice, even when compared to trains, for intercity travel,” Anair says.��Despite in airplane and car efficiency, interstate coaches usually have the smallest carbon footprints, especially when you’re traveling alone, for long or short distances. Obviously, buses are slower than planes, but not only are they greener, they’re often . If a bus won’t work, and you’re traveling solo or with one other person, Amtrak is another good option. Especially in the Northeast Corridor, where trains travel on electricity rather than diesel.��But, again, traveling in a packed,��energy-efficient vehicle will beat out both alternatives.

Carpool

A car at full occupancy—say, four people—is far better than a plane. It cuts the carbon footprint per passenger by close to 75 percent, compared to a solo driver. But on a plane, a family of four would take four seats that could be occupied by individual customers.��In fact, a hybrid car carrying four people is so efficient that��it will probably emit less carbon than four people traveling by train��and is even comparable to travel by bus. Driving an electric car? You’re golden.

Avoid Delays��Whenever Possible

While they’re often out of our control, try to plan around��flight delays and bad traffic. Some airports and carriers experience than others, and planes idling uselessly on the tarmac��or flying in circles overhead��equate��to completely pointless carbon emissions. Same goes for cars in stop-and-go traffic. “If you’re traveling in a gasoline vehicle, getting stuck in traffic is not very efficient,” Anair says. Choosing to travel along routes or during times of the day with less congestion is an easy way to ensure you are not adding to your carbon footprint while going nowhere at all.

At the End of the Day, Fly Less, Not More��

Driving to your local national park in your gas-guzzling SUV, eating exclusively red meat, and burning your garbage is still probably better for the environment than flying to Alaska to stay at an eco-lodge. Every form of long-distance travel contributes significantly to your carbon footprint, and a staycation is an effective way to reduce your impact, no question. Changing your vacation plans from two one-week trips abroad to one two-week trip abroad could effectively cut your long-distance travel emissions in half.

In terms of business travel, which, according to , accounts for around 28 percent of domestic flights��Americans take every year, employees should utilize the other technologies to conduct meetings and conferences.��“Meet over a video conference rather than take a business trip. That can reduce how much people might travel in a year,” Anair says. But if you have to attend in person, consider giving up your first- or business-class seat for economy. “First class typically takes up about the area that would accommodate two economy seats,” Anair says. The more space dedicated to roomier, upgraded seats, the fewer��people can fit on a��plane. Your choice won’t affect the overall footprint of the flight, but it will impact your individual trip.��“It’s a luxury that comes at a high price,” Anair says, “Not just in dollars, but in carbon efficiency.”

The post How to Cut Down on Carbon Emissions When Traveling appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Lisa Zaccone was racing her coworkers to Chicago. Except, not really. They were tracking the number of steps they took each day, converting those steps into approximate mileage, and competing to see who, in a hypothetical trip starting at their office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, would arrive first in the Windy City.��

Doing those calculations every day for everyone in the office was a lot of work, so Zaccone��asked her son,��John, a 31-year-old software engineer, to create an app that tracked the progress of their footrace for them.

John didn’t say no, even though he had never developed an app before. He wasn’t that kind of software engineer. But his mom was asking, and who can turn down their mom? So he began working on a way to track those steps.��However, John thought he could do better than the imagined��road walk from Michigan to Illinois that his mother and her coworkers had come up with. Instead, he coded the Appalachian Trail.��

Today, John’s mom has 2,000 people to thru-hike with—virtually. That’s how many people have downloaded the app, called��,��since June, and it’s not far off��the (2,272) who successfully completed the actual trail during its first five decades of existence. Currently, the app is only available for iOS, but John’s developing an Android version, which should be ready next year.

The app connects to your iPhone’s Health app, which measures the mileage you’ve walked while carrying your phone, even when the app isn’t in use. John’s app uses that information to then show you where you would be on the Appalachian Trail��if you were thru-hiking. And you’re not hiking alone. Literally every other user is visible on the same map, passing you and getting passed by you.

“Some people tell their friends to download the app at the same time, and then they’re motivated to keep up with each other,” John says. “I want it to be a social experience.”

Having thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail last year—physically, not virtually—I was intrigued��when I first heard about the app. It’s the latest example of technology finding a window into the world of thru-hiking, much like the navigation apps that many actual thru-hikers now rely on. I love the idea. Not everyone has the time, money, or ability to hike the Appalachian Trail, even if they like the idea of thru-hiking. Hiking virtually might not be as good as the real thing, but it’s a lighthearted and easy way to connect with the trail and get a sense of how long it takes to hike 2,000 miles.

“I went to school in Blacksburg, Virginia, which is basically right off the Appalachian Trail,” says John,��who has backpacked a few sections of the AT. “I really wanted to make an app for the people who have the inspiration or the dream to hike the whole trail.” As users progress, they pass virtual signposts, which include��shelters, scenic points, and trail-volunteer information. The first 150 miles are free, then��it costs $3��to walk the rest of the way to the trail’s northern terminus in Maine, Mount��Katahdin.��

For a person walking 10,000 steps a day, John��calculated it would take an average of 440 days to hike the entire trail on Walk the Distance.��That’s more than twice as long as it would take most thru-hikers, and it doesn’t take into account elevation change or a heavy pack. But it’s still an impressive achievement, given that the average adult in the United States only . In 2020, John says, he wants to challenge people using his app to walk the entire trail within the calendar year, which would be slightly more than 12,000 steps a day.

But he��isn’t content with just the Appalachian Trail. His next coding project?��The Pacific Crest Trail. Who knows, maybe one day you can become a virtual triple crowner.

The post You Can Now Hike the Appalachian Trail Virtually appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

The campfire is out, it’s dark outside your tent, and you hear something rustle in the woods. You know it’s probably nothing, but your body is on alert. Then, as a moonlit��shadow slowly passes over your vulnerable tent, you ask yourself:��Why did I think it would be a good idea to spend the night at a haunted campground? For the thrill, of course. But haunted houses are cliché, and you visited the corn maze last October, so put your nerves to the test and head out into the woods, where strange sounds, floating figures, and high electromagnetic readings abound. Here are a few campgrounds across the spooky spectrum that you can visit this Halloween.

Lake Morena, California

This , near the start of the Pacific Crest Trail��and��not far from��the Mexican border, has experienced unexplained activity for at least 40 years. On October 26, 1983, the San Diego Union��ran a story with the headline��“More than Fish Haunt Morena.” At the time, park volunteers and rangers attested to witnessing levitating bodies, hearing heavy footsteps when nobody was around, and seeing an old man in their peripheral vision.

On one occasion, reported the newspaper, when a ranger hosted a relative in his house, she woke in the night to see “a baby’s christening gown across the room. It floated to her, brushed her cheek, floated back where she had first seen it and disappeared.” In the years since, guests have reported similar experiences of floating��figures, unexplained sounds, and even a woman in white standing at��the shoreline.

Big Moose Lake, New York

Stories of hauntings are often preceded by legends of murders, and—if the murder happened at all—the details are murky. This isn’t the case for the story of��, site of the well-documented murder of Grace Brown in 1906. Located in a remote region of the Adirondacks��near Fourth Lake, in a place��that has��primitive campsites,��the lake and the killing��that took place there��have��inspired numerous fictitious accounts, including��Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy��and the movie��A Place in the Sun,��starring Elizabeth Taylor.

The story��goes that��18-year-old��Brown was working at a skirt factory in Cortland, New York, when she met the company owner’s charming nephew, Chester Gillette. They began secretly dating, and soon enough, Brown��was pregnant. She begged Gillette to marry her, desperately wanting to avoid the fate of an unwed young mother. To her delight, he promised he’d take her on a trip, presumably to propose. They traveled to��upstate New York��and decided to paddle��a canoe onto the lake. Brown��had mentioned that she couldn’t swim, and when they got far enough out, Gillette��grabbed a tennis racket from his bag��and smashed in her head. She fell into the water and drowned.

Gillette was arrested within days��and eventually sentenced to death. Ever since, campers have reported seeing a supernatural presence at Big Moose Lake. “I understand her ghost haunts the lake,” a told The New York Times in 2006.

Fort Worden State Historical Park, Washington

There are miles of buried tunnels, dead ends, and old rooms beneath , a former military base that’s now a campground 60 miles north of Seattle. “There is a lot to be explored here that will get your spine tingling,” says Megan Claflin, who works for��the park, where you��can explore century-old fortifications that housed nearly a thousand troops and officers. While Claflin would not confirm whether the area is definitely haunted, she did say that visitors have had unsettling experiences.

Ghost hunters who have visited the fort claim to have witnessed��paranormal activity, including��glowing orb��sightings��and high electromagnetic readings. “This was an active military base��and then juvenile detention center for about ten��years,” says Claflin. “There is certainly an echo of the individuals who made the fort their home, and if you believe in that kind of thing, perhaps there are some who have yet to move on.”

Braley Pond, Virginia

This��popular fishing spot��in George Washington National Forest, 60 miles from Charlottesville, is the site of Virginia’s most haunted campground, . Rumors of disembodied laugher, floating figures, and other unearthly��activity escalated after a ��took place there in 2003. According to a story by , not long after the murder, paranormal��researcher Shea Willis visited the pond��and immediately began experiencing nausea and dread upon arriving.

Just before midnight, Willis and her colleagues heard something moving in the water, “splashing violently.” As they ran back to the car, Willis claims something landed on her back and began crawling all over her body. They escaped the campground and made it home, but Willis continued to feel haunted, experiencing nightmares and not feeling like herself for weeks afterward. “It was like a communication with whatever this thing was,” she told the Dyrt. “Like little bits and pieces of it were still stuck with me.”

Holy Ghost Campground, New Mexico

In New Mexico’s northern Sangre de Cristo Mountains, , within Santa Fe National Forest, is an isolated but scenic place to spend the night. But before you go, know that it’s rumored to be the haunting grounds of a Spanish priest who was murdered there in the 17th century.

According to local ghost-tour guide Allan Pacheco, the surrounding Pecos Wilderness is home to all kinds of bizarre��activity. “There are a number of people who have gone missing in that vicinity,” Pacheco��says. “It’s like the Bermuda Triangle of New Mexico—people disappear into thin air. No clothing or bones are ever found.” According to Pacheco,��people have also spotted UFOs, seen strange shadows, and heard voices. “There’s��all kinds of speculation. Maybe there is a cosmic doorway that opens up there, maybe a Star Trek–type dimensional wormhole. Different beings, different energies, you name it.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson��at Santa Fe National Forest denied the existence of paranormal activity in the area: “Holy Ghost Campground cannot be haunted for one simple, yet big and important reason:��ghosts are not real.”

Update: On Friday, October 18, after this story published, a group of ���ϳԹ�����editors bravely spent the night at Holy Ghost to investigate the claims of paranormal activity. The night passed peacefully, but the next morning, associate managing editor Aleta Burchyski got up early to fish the nearby Holy Ghost Creek. About ten minutes in, her hook got snagged on a root along the bank. As Burchyski worked to free the hook, she saw a dark figure of a man in her peripheral vision, approaching her. “He was walking weird, kind of loping,”��Burchyski says. Initially��she thought it was her husband coming over to tell her how cold he was, walking strangely in an attempt to warm up. “But then I turned to say hi,”��she says, “and NOBODY WAS THERE.”

Bannack State Park, Montana��

The Montana Territory, before it became the state in 1889, was a rough-and-tumble place. During the gold rush of the 1860s, a��civilian group known as the Montana Vigilantes��set out to capture and hang members of the Innocents,��a highway gang that targeted shipments of gold passing through the territory. The Vigilantes accused Henry Plummer, the local sheriff of Bannack, of leading the gang, and Plummer was hung from the same gallows north of town that he had previously ordered built. It’s still disputed whether Plummer was guilty, and in a 1993 posthumous trial in Virginia City, Montana, the jury was split six-six.

Maybe it’s the ghost of Plummer who��haunts today—now a ghost town with a spooky reputation. Visitors regularly report paranormal experiences. “Our most commonly seen spirit is a young girl named Dorothy who drowned here,” says John Philip, a ranger at Bannack State Park. You can camp nearby, and while visitors are not usually allowed in Bannack itself after dark,����are scheduled there��the weekend before Halloween.

Humboldt State Park, California

Hiking through the redwoods of at night during a full moon, or camping overnight at��one of 250 sites, you might encounter strange��“ghost trees.” They look like regular redwood trees, but their leaves are pale, as white as a skeleton.

While eerie in the right light, these albino redwoods are more hauntingly beautiful than anything. Only about 400 are known to exist around the world. Without chlorophyll, these redwoods are unable to produce their own sugar, so nearby trees will pass sugar to albinos through their roots, allowing them to live. Why do the other trees give up precious nutrients? One theory points to the fact that albino redwoods have , which could kill an ordinary redwood. So it’s possible that a symbiotic relationship exists, in which other redwoods feed the albino trees, and the albinos in turn remove more heavy metals from the soil.

These trees are fragile��and easily damaged by visitors. Enjoy them from a distance, or you won’t need a ghost story to scare you—an angry ranger will do the job fine.

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It’s the kind of freak accident that nobody thinks could happen to them. In late August, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office in Washington State received a broken cell-phone call. A tree had fallen and struck Finn Bastian, a 28-year-old from Germany, while he was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. As emergency responders rushed to the scene, Bastian’s condition deteriorated. Search and rescue managed to bring Bastian to the trailhead, but after CPR failed to revive him.

The tragedy happened two weeks after another tree , 56, as she slept in her tent on the Colorado Trail. Falling timber killed a hiker on the Appalachian Trail in 2015 and again in 2018. And two kids died in Yosemite Valley, California, when a limb from an oak tree , also in 2015.

There are no exact statistics kept on the number of Americans killed by falling trees, so it’s difficult to know for sure if the problem has gotten worse, and if so, how much worse. After all, you’re still far more likely to die driving to the trailhead than you are from a falling tree, says Wesley Trimble of the American Hiking Society. But it turns out, the tragedies named above may not be isolated incidents—especially as phenomena like beetle kill, wildfire, and climate change continue to ravage American forests at increasing rates.

“A lot of forests are suffering, whether it’s from pine beetles, other invasive species, or diseases that are causing trees to die off,” says Trimble. “The likelihood of trees falling down is a much lower possibility when there is a forest full of healthy trees, but there are a lot of unhealthy forests, especially along the Colorado Trail and Pacific Crest Trail.”

In California and Colorado, forests are littered with a particularly high number of still-standing dead trees, known as snags. An unprecedented have died from drought and bark beetles since 2010 (both afflictions have been linked to climate change). Any of those dead trees can fall at any moment, especially once they’ve been left standing long enough that their roots begin to rot, leaving them precariously unsupported.

All that’s in addition to the deadwood that has accumulated over a century of fire suppression. The result is forests stocked with vertical firewood—which can lead to the kind of massive, out-of-control wildfires that have plagued California in recent years. These fires, of course, kill even more trees. While some burnt trunks fall over, many remain standing—adding to the risk of falling timber. For that reason, burn areas are particularly at risk for spontaneous falls. That’s a problem for many thru-hikers; both the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail wander through a number of burn zones.

So, are the numbers of standing dead trees increasing? It’s hard to make a global statement. But in Colorado, for example, there were an estimated as of 2017. That’s one in 14 trees—as much as 30 percent more than in 2010.

“As the climate gets dryer and hotter, these problems are going to become even greater, at least until we change the way our forests are managed,” says Trimble.

Trail crews work to make hiking paths safer, but there are simply too many dead trees. Even can’t get to them all, which means it’s impossible to completely eliminate the risk. A single crew will often remove hundreds of downed trees from a section of trail each season, but its priority is typically the downed trees blocking the trail—not dead trees that are still upright.

The prospect of falling trees shouldn’t keep anyone out of the woods, says Trimble, but it is a real danger. As a thru-hiker and former trail-crew supervisor, he has a few precautions that he thinks every hiker, camper, and backpacker should consider when in the forest. Here are his top tips.

Look Up

You can get hit by a tree while hiking, but the bigger danger comes when you’re sitting still, like while taking a lunch break or lounging in your tent. It doesn’t take long to evaluate your surroundings, and that’s the easiest way to avoid a hazardous situation.

“There are campsites that people have used for years and years, but people never look up [to assess the trees in the area],” says Trimble. “I honestly don’t think enough backpackers and hikers evaluate that risk.”

There are two things to look for first: hung snags and widow-makers. Hung snags are dead trees that have begun to fall but are��caught in the branches and trunks of adjacent trees and haven’t��hit��the ground. Even if they look stable, they could easily shift, break apart, or even uproot the tree they’re��leaning on.

Widow-makers, or foolkillers, describe broken limbs and branches hanging freely in a tree. Even tiny a disturbance can cause a widow-maker to come crashing to the ground.

You should also evaluate��any other dead trees in the area. Trimble says there are so many snags in today’s forests that��it’s often impossible to find a primitive campsite without any nearby. Maintained campgrounds sometimes remove trees that are deemed dangerous. But if there are dead trees, it’s simply a judgment call. If you see a snag that’s leaning or appears unstable, it’s probably worth pitching your tent elsewhere.

This might sound like a lot, but in practice, it doesn’t take long to check for hazards. “Take two seconds and evaluate what’s above you,” says Trimble. It could save your life.

Be Alert to the Weather and Your Surroundings

If it’s windy, maybe save that hike through a burn zone for another day. Heavy rain can saturate soil, making it easier for a snag to uproot. If you notice trees leaning over the trail and bobbing up and down, take heed.

When it comes to avoiding falling trees, hiking is less risky than camping or taking a break along the trail, because it’s an advantage to be already moving. Trees fall fast, but being on your feet and able to quickly get out of the way can make a difference. Still, that won’t matter if you aren’t paying attention to what’s around you. “I know a lot of PCT hikers listen to music or podcasts or audiobooks on trail,” says Trimble, “but when it’s windy out, I intentionally do not have my earbuds in so I can be more aware of my surroundings.” Often, snags will creak or crack before they falter, so keep your ears open. It could help you notice an impending fall before it happens.

A completely windless day is no guarantor of safety, however. Trees can fall due to disease, rot, and other reasons, even in calm weather. (The tree that killed Finn Bastian on the PCT, for example, was at its base.)

The odds of getting hit by a falling tree or limb are still small��and often a matter of chance. But a basic awareness of the danger is an easy way to make those odds even smaller.

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