Last fall, scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that a popular lake in Wyoming鈥檚 Wind River Range is contaminated with human feces. And not just contaminated, but the most heavily contaminated lake out of nearly 1,000 lakes surveyed across the United States.

Look up a picture of Lonesome Lake, and you may be surprised. It doesn鈥檛 look like a biohazard. At first glance, it seems like paradise. The alpine lake sits at around 10,000 feet in elevation, and is ringed by the 鈥攁 picturesque semi-circle of 12,000-foot granite spires that has long enchanted rock climbers and trekkers alike. It鈥檚 also a stone鈥檚 throw from the Continental Divide Trail听and a common stopping point for long-distance hikers. As a result, it is among the most heavily-trafficked backpacking destinations in the region. During peak season in August, as many as 400 hikers may visit the Cirque of the Towers each week.

In the spring of 2022, as part of the EPA鈥檚 , the agency collected samples of water from 981 lakes around the country, including Lonesome. The results, published last fall, show that Lonesome Lake contains 490,895 calibrator cell equivalents of the bacteria genus Enterococci for every 100 milliliters of water, the highest of any lake tested. The EPA鈥檚 safe limit for swimming鈥攏ot just drinking, mind you, but swimming鈥攊s 1,280 per 100 milliliters, meaning the contamination in Lonesome Lake is a jaw-dropping 384 times higher than the recommended limit.

As noted by local nonprofit news outlet , 鈥淎rguably, Lonesome Lake was the most spectacular, remote waterbody in the broad study examining lake health all around the United States 鈥� and yet the data also suggested that Lonesome Lake鈥檚 water was the most polluted by poop. That鈥檚 especially remarkable given that the assessment also looked at lakes and ponds in urban areas and agricultural regions more typically associated with feces-related pollution.鈥�

It鈥檚 worth noting that high concentrations of Enterococci do not necessarily equate one-to-one to high concentrations of feces. Researchers say more work still needs to be done. 鈥淎 single datapoint doesn鈥檛 necessarily tell us much of anything,鈥� the DEQ鈥檚 Ron Steg told WyoFile. 鈥淲e need to get some real data to understand if there is a problem. If there is, we鈥檒l react to the results of the data.鈥�

Enterococci is intestinal bacteria, and thus its presence in a water supply is a strong indicator of fecal contamination. The sampling at Lonesome was conducted through the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and when the results came in last fall, researchers from the DEQ and U.S. Forest Service went out to take additional samples at the lake, this time searching for another indicator of fecal contamination, Escherichia coli, but came up with nothing. Over the next two months, at Lonesome Lake and nearby Big Sandy Lake, another popular trekking destination, to get a more definitive picture of the degree of contamination.

But to those in the know, the study results come as no surprise. 鈥淚 tell people definitely do not swim in there, I tell people definitely do not drink the water,鈥� Brian Cromack, a local outdoor gear shop employee, told WyoFile. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been heavily contaminated for a long time, just via the negligence of outdoor recreation enthusiasts over the years.鈥�

Although they may look pristine, alpine lakes surrounded by granite peaks like the Winds can face higher levels of contamination, because the non-porous granite and thin soil create a 鈥渂athtub effect,鈥� offering no natural filtration for water. This, combined with the steep gradients, means that rain and snowmelt quickly wash fecal matter鈥攏ot just from humans, but from dogs and natural wildlife鈥攆rom the surrounding slopes down into the low-lying lakes. This problem peaks during spring thaw, when months of waste frozen in snowpack are often flushed into the water all at once, coinciding with peak visitation periods in the summer. At high elevations, cold water temperatures also allow dangerous pathogens like Giardia and E. coli to survive for longer periods.

It remains to be seen what the follow-up studies will reveal at Lonesome Lake, or what is to be done about it. Other high-traffic wilderness locales, like California鈥檚 Mount Whitney Zone, now require all visitors to pack their waste out in a 鈥渨ag bag.鈥� Currently there is no specific stipulation on how to dispose of bodily waste in the Cirque of the Towers, aside from following basic Leave No Trace principles鈥攂ury waste in a hole six inches deep, 200 feet from trails and water sources. But research is increasingly indicating that, taking into account the growing number of people recreating in the wilderness, these practices actually are no longer enough to prevent fecal contamination.

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A participant in Colorado’s Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run, known as the Hardrock 100, died on Friday, July 11, several hours after the race started.

According to a news release from the San Juan County Sheriff’s office, a 60-year-old runner named Elaine Stypula stopped running and then died in an area called Little Giant Basin. The area is approximately six miles into the 102-mile course, and it comes just after runners top out on Little Giant Pass, a 4,000-foot ascent.

A from the Silverton Medical Rescue Team said that first responders received an SOS call at 9:02 A.M. of a CPR in progress by members of the race’s safety team. The incident took place near Gold Lake on the Little Giant Trail, one of the numerous trails used by the race.

Rescuers had to drive up a series of backcountry roads in 4×4 vehicles and then hike less than a mile to the lake. Officials were unable to revive Stypula when the reached her, and pronounced her dead at 10:27 A.M. Both releases said that Stypula’s cause of death was unknown.

The race on its social media pages shortly after the incident acknowledging the fatality.

“We are deeply saddened to share that a beloved member of our Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run family has passed away during this year’s race,” the race’s Instagram post read. “Our hearts are with their family, friends, and fellow runners as we grieve this tremendous loss.”

Stypula was a veteran runner with a long list of finishes in ultra-endurance events. According to the website Ultrasignup, which tracks running results, she had finished California’s Western States 100 ultramarathon, Alaska’s Denali 135 run, the Badwater 135, and other races.

The Hardrock 100 is one of the most challenging trail races on the international circuit of ultramarathons, with a course that starts and finishes in the mining town of Silverton, Colorado, and loops around the San Juan Mountains. Participants tackle the loop in different directions each year, and both loops take in approximately 33,000 feet of elevation gain.

Participants must ascend long, grinding climbs that top out at 14,000 feet. The race was founded in 1992, and its list of champions includes some of the best in the sport’s history: Kilian Jornet, Courtney Dauwalter, and Karl Meltzer, among others.

鈥淧eople who鈥檝e never run this race or have been to the San Juans should know that the course itself, based on the remoteness of the San Juans and inaccessibility of the aid stations, is inherently wild,鈥� a runner named Yassine Diboun told 国产吃瓜黑料 in 2023. 鈥淎dd to that all the climbing over high peaks, and it鈥檚 very tough. The San Juans are more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. You have to see it with your own eyes.鈥�

This is a developing story.听

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I moved West single and starry-eyed. With and mountains to climb, I knew the area was going to attract people that liked the same things as me, and maybe even one who liked me a little bit too. In fact, I was pretty adamant that a mutual passion for the mountains was going to be the make-or-break facet of my future dating life.

Then I met Will and Laura. Will was a typical Pacific Northwest transplant, coming in hot from four years of college in Vermont with aspirations to ski, hike, bike, and kayak his way across the whole region, and then maybe the world. He had turned his purple Chrysler Town & Country minivan into a verified rolling gear shed and loved anything that got him into the mountains. He also loved Laura. She, however, could do without the peaks that called Will鈥檚 name, claiming to hate skiing and only camping if it involved an electronic music festival. To top it off, she revealed that , and that she had no plans to break that streak anytime soon.

I was floored. Here were two people who had been together for years that hadn鈥檛 done something that I considered a pre-req for any kind of longevity in the dating game. Not even a single hike? Nada. I assumed this wild admission must be some sort of relationship denial or communication breakdown, but what I learned was much more revealing.

You see, Laura was totally down with Will鈥檚 mountain obsession. She talked openly (and quite candidly) about Will being more fun to be around when he came back from a hike or a day in the snow鈥攁nd that trading a few hours apart was more than worth it. Will echoed the sentiment. Laura was passionate about her art and pottery. That wasn鈥檛 really Will鈥檚 speed, but you know what was? The lit-up Laura that came back from her studio sessions.

Still in my early 20s, I had really only seen relationships as dusty mirrors. This, though, was the first time I watched partners support each other鈥檚 passions rather than share them. I鈥檓 pretty sure that鈥檚 when the Earth started shaking under my feet. It was uncomfortable, but refreshing, that kind of perspective shift you don鈥檛 really want but might kind of need. Since getting to know Laura and Will, I鈥檝e . While there were many pros and cons lists and plenty of overthinking, I鈥檝e met some great people, untangling a bit of my identity and the activities I love in the process. That last part is a continual journey, but it鈥檚 comforting knowing there鈥檚 plenty of connections to make off the beaten path. Hey, most will even tolerate me going off to do my own thing once in a while (if I ask nicely, of course).

I鈥檓 not saying I know a lot about a lot, but thanks to Laura and Will I find myself holding onto a simple truth: Standing on top of a mountain with your person is amazing, but finding someone who will let you be who you are鈥攈iker, potter, or otherwise? That one鈥檚 hard to top.

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Every time I try to book a campsite on , I end up closer to a mental breakdown than a backcountry getaway. I start off dreaming of a quiet weekend off the grid鈥攁nd end up rage-refreshing tabs like I鈥檓 trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets in 2022. Booking on Rec.gov feels like your camp neighbor is . while you鈥檙e wearing ski boots with no socks and getting a bug bite you can鈥檛 reach on top of a sunburn.

The user experience on this miserable site is like if Clippy and a CAPTCHA had a baby during a server crash. Dates won鈥檛 load. Pages disappear mid-click. Filters are fake. The whole thing feels like a trick quiz from 2004 Facebook. Just this weekend, I went to confirm a booking for an upcoming trip鈥攐nly to find out the site I swear I booked months ago wasn鈥檛 actually reserved. Instead, I had a confirmed spot 25 miles away.

For the uninitiated, Recreation.gov may sound like a government site鈥攂ecause it was supposed to be. But it鈥檚 actually run by a private contractor making millions off your desire to sleep on the ground. While national parks face record underfunding, Booz Allen Hamilton is raking in booking fees that don鈥檛 go to the rangers, the trails, or the land. That annoying $8 fee? It鈥檚 not helping a ranger buy new boots. It鈥檚 padding someone鈥檚 investment portfolio.

For context: is a giant consulting firm that sounds like a Succession villain and acts like one, too. In 2023, they paid $377 million to settle claims they illegally billed taxpayers for work that had nothing to do with the government. One of the largest fraud settlements ever鈥攁nd somehow, they鈥檙e still the ones running the site we have to use to go outside.

I wouldn鈥檛 mind the fees if they were helping patch trails, protect threatened ecosystems, or even went into the beer fund for our overworked and underpaid park rangers. But instead, it鈥檚 Ticketmaster for tents鈥攋ust another example of privatized inconvenience dressed up as civic infrastructure. (And if Tay Tay ever does come for that monopoly, maybe she can take down this one next.)

In the meantime, I know I鈥檒l keep using it鈥攂ecause sometimes the only way to get to the places that remind me to shut off my phone and breathe. Which, clearly, is exactly what I need after using their site.

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As a 36-year-old, white, biological female, I haven’t dealt with much discrimination on the trail. Though I consider myself a part of the queer community, I blend in pretty well. I present as straight. I’m not very eccentric. And there is a sort of safety in that, really.

During a recent trip to Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rainforest with a group of my queer friends, I begin to notice things听I never had before. “It isn’t always safe out here,” I heard one of my friends say on our climb. I could tell that they meant they were only comfortable because of the size of our group. Alone, when harassment is more likely, things feel different.

That comment made me think. I started to wonder: What resources were there to support and empower queer hikers to stay on the trails, and to educate other recreationists on how to better share them?

Here are six LGBTQ-safe hiking groups specifically created to do just that. Over the last few decades, these organizations have helped thousands of queer hikers explore鈥攁nd heal.

The Venture Out Project

鈥淎s queer and trans folks, we鈥檙e often on the receiving end of help,鈥� said Peter Cohen, the founder of 听, in a previous interview with 国产吃瓜黑料. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really empowering when one of us gets to be the helper.鈥�

Cohen, who came out as trans at age 38, started Venture Out in 2014, driven by a desire to connect folks in the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC spaces to outdoor job opportunities. The organization still remains a launching pad for entrepreneurs, but it also hosts backpacking and wilderness trips for queer and transgender folks and their families.

Venture Out is active mostly along the , but offers day-length events all over the .听You can volunteer to , browse the organization’s job listings, or check out other upcoming events.

Wild Diversity

is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon on a mission to help BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities connect to nature and each other. The organization equips young people as well as adults, offering summer programs to connect isolated teens to new peer groups.

Some of Wild Diversity’s offerings include:

• Single and multi-day backpacking and camping trips on the West Coast
• Environmental education workshops that teach topics on sustainable living
• Annual BIPOC Youth 国产吃瓜黑料 Media Summer Programs, which focus on documenting nature
• Nine–Week BIPOC & LGBTQ2S+ Youth Summer Camp Program that helps teens develop outdoor skills

Out There 国产吃瓜黑料s

Elyse Rylander spent a decade as an outdoor teacher and guide before she realized that the queer youth she worked were having a very different experience than other kids in her programs. Ultimately, that need for outreach and inclusion felt too great to ignore, so she went on to found听, in 2015. Elyse has chatted with 国产吃瓜黑料 a few times about her passion for helping LGBTQ+ youth who feel ostracized in their current peer groups and environments. “There is this need to connect and to find a community,鈥� she shared.

But that’s not the only way Rylander helps youth get outdoors. From her current role as the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Rylander runs day-length and short multi-day events for LGTBQ+ youth all over the country.

Queer Mountaineers

is a Washington–and Oregon-based rock– and ice–climbing club for LGBTQ+ folks. The organization has three core goals: to provide opportunities for queer people to connect, to offer technical training and discounts on gear, and to train up LGBTQ+ outdoor industry leaders.

Queer Mountaineers is known for being a hub for activists and artists, and it stands out as an organization that focuses on skill development for everyone鈥攆rom beginners to experts. You can browse Queer Mountaineers’ 听or offer up your expertise by

Gays of National Parks

was introduced to me by Mikah Meyer, an incredible human being whose recent award-winning documentary 听illuminates the reality of what it’s like to to grow up gay, and how intense the internal fight can be over whether or not to be visible in the world. Meyer spent three years visiting all 419 National Parks, driven by a hope that his presence alone would make the outdoor space more inclusive. “There were so many people out there who needed to see an openly gay outdoorsman to help them be that person and enjoy the outdoors,” Meyer shared on the 国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast. “This park’s journey taught me my life’s vocation, which is being that role model that I never saw.”

According to Meyer, Gays of National Parks is a great place to start for other LGBTQ folks who share a love for the outdoors, who want to share their stories, and strive to boost queer visibility. GoNP conducts (and in other countries). What started as an Instagram page has now grown to 20,000-plus queer folks enjoying community, and combating isolation and loneliness by getting outside.

LGBTQ+ Outdoors

is a massive network of inclusive outdoor spaces that all have the same central tenets:听safety, connection, and belonging. The organization has community-based chapters in 23 states and is looking to expand into the other 27. It offers “adventure trips” open to all, like a rep to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska this summer and a hiking tour through Glacier National Park in Montana.

Check the to find an outing near you. If you don’t see anything close, consider signing up to be an LGBTQ+ . I’ve just applied to start a chapter here in Spokane. The commitment is one year and is mostly community building and advocacy work with the option to act as a guide for simple day trips.

My life hasn’t been easy. Getting outside has brought me so much healing. I want that for others. I want that for my friends. But not everyone is comfortable doing it alone as I have. I’m looking forward to receiving training on how to create community outdoors, so that there is support for all of us to heal and develop outdoor skills.

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A flurry of distress calls from a single hiking trail near Seattle prompted the local King County Explorer Search and Rescue (KCESAR) team to ask hikers to exercise better judgement and caution.

All of the incidents occurred on 4,841-foot Mailbox Peak.

On Monday, June 22, KCESAR , noting that five different people required rescue over the span of seven days in June. Another rescue group, called Seattle Mountain Rescue, posted that it responded to three different distress calls on June 19 on the mountain.

In the semi-satirical , KCESAR wrote that it had 鈥淥fficially Filed Change of Address to Mailbox Peak鈥� to make future rescues easier.

Both of the posts included a photo of the metal mailbox that sits atop the mountain.

“Sometimes, accidents just happen鈥攁nd we鈥檙e here for that,” wrote KCESAR.

Mailbox Peak is accessible by two trails: an older, steeper route, and a newer, slightly longer but more gradual trail, but neither requires any technical rock climbing or scrambling, and even the longer route is less than 10 miles round trip.听However, the path is quite steep. Hiking from the trailhead to the summit entails 4,000 feet of elevation gain, and even via the newer, gentler trail, hikers must ascend approximately 850 vertical feet per mile.

As the , 鈥測our thighs will feel the burn once you start climbing, and it won’t let up until you’re standing triumphantly next to the Mailbox.鈥�

In addition to the steep nature of the trail, Mailbox Peak is less than an hour by car from downtown Seattle. with local outlet KOMO News, KCESAR鈥檚 Natalite Patterson called hiking the mountain a 鈥渞ite of passage鈥� for locals, and noted that the majority of distress calls on Mailbox entail dehydration, leg cramps, falls, or becoming lost in the dark. Although five emergency calls in a single week is unusual, KCESAR says the peak is one of their 鈥渢op 5 most common SAR callout locations鈥� year-round.

Due to the high quantity of inexperienced and unprepared hikers who seem to find their way to the peak, the idea that Mailbox is inordinately treacherous or difficult has become a . On the Reddit page r/Mountaineering, commenters routinely to 8,000-meter mountains such as K2 and Mount Everest.

King County isn鈥檛 the only county in Washington struggling with an excess of search and rescue calls. In nearby Skamania County鈥攚hich saw a 400 percent increase in SAR incidents in May compared to last year鈥攍ocal authorities are considering an ordinance that will require rescued hikers to pay for their rescues, if their behavior is deemed to be negligent or reckless. Many rescue outfits, particularly volunteer ones, oppose this idea, arguing that punitive policies could deter hikers from calling for rescue.

In a follow-up post to their announcement of the five calls on Mailbox, KCESAR wrote, 鈥渁nyone can find themselves in trouble. Whether you鈥檙e a first time hiker or experienced guide, accidents happen, weather shifts, gear fails. Whatever the reason, KCESAR has your back!鈥� Their post goes on to advocate a policy of, 鈥淐ompassion first. Lessons second. Judgement never.鈥�

Taking a middle ground, some states, like Utah and New Hampshire, have implemented programs that encourage hikers to purchase search and rescue cards in advance of any wilderness trips, both to support the state鈥檚 search and rescue efforts and, worst case, offset the costs of potential rescue missions for themselves.

In its Instagram post, KCESAR included five tips to address common mistakes the crew has seen on the mountain:

• Bring a headlamp, even in summer. Phone flashlights don鈥檛 count 鈥� batteries die, and trail nights are darker than you think.
• Pack the 10 Essentials 鈥� including that headlamp! If you get injured, these items help keep you safe, warm, and dry while waiting for help.
• Choose hikes that match your current fitness and experience鈥攅specially early in the season.
• Don鈥檛 count on cell service. Many trails have spotty or unreliable service. Bring a backup way to call for help and navigate (download your maps!).
• Wear real hiking shoes. Crocs may be comfy, but they鈥檙e not made for steep mountain trails.

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My five-year-old daughter gazed skyward at the Milky Way, while nearby, my wife and I unloaded backpacks, a cooler, and an extensive collection of stuffed animals from our Subaru.

After a few “oohs” and “ahhhs,” we unzipped the safari tent, climbed into a comfy queen-sized bed, and passed out.

So kicked off our recent Memorial Day Weekend trip to Southern Colorado where we hiked, visited a national park, and (most importantly) caught up on our sleep. This last activity was made possible by our secluded glamping site.

That’s right: after decades of sleeping in ultralight tents or under the stars, I have recently embraced glamping (much like a few 国产吃瓜黑料 contributors before me). And after a handful of glamping trips under my belt, I’ve come to some conclusions about this supposedly luxurious activity.

For one thing, glamping is the ideal gateway drug for getting your kids hooked on camping鈥攃ue the s’mores and fireside ghost stories. And in some areas of the country, glamping is actually more accessible than traditional tent camping.

But my biggest takeaway is that glamping has an identity crisis, or at the very least a branding problem鈥攂ecause most people still think of the pasttime as a glamorous one.

And it’s not.

Most Glamping Ain鈥檛 That Glamorous

I still remember the first time I came across the term glamping almost 20 years ago in a New York Magazine story about supermodel Kate Moss and actor Johnny Depp attending Britain’s Glastonbury Music Festival. They slept in lavish canvas tents, were served gourmet meals and booze, and generally had a fabulous (if overpriced) time.

As the years rolled by, the word entered the American lexicon to define a new type of resort experience in which the wealthy paid a premium to tiptoe right up to the edge of bonafide camping without, ya know, pitching a tent. and other mainstream media outlets with five-star menus, massages, and even ornate tree dwellings that would make the Swiss Family Robinson drool with envy.

But today, glamping is no longer reserved for the affluent. To search “glamping” on the campsite finder Hipcamp is to come across a , from yurts, to TPU-coated听polyester tents, to cabin-tent hybrids. Half of Hipcamp’s glampsites sit on properties that also offer traditional tent camping.

On the high end, you can pay several hundred dollars a night. On the low, less than $75.

“People think glamping is luxurious and exclusive, and that is such a loss for the outdoor industry,” says Alyssa Ravasio, the CEO of Hipcamp. “People assume it’s going to be expensive, and think, ‘If I’m going to spend that much money, I’ll just go to a hotel.'”

I recently called Ruben Martinez, who operates a glamping trade organization called . He told me that the majority of the businesses in his network are essentially semi-permanent tents erected on private land.

Even within this group, there’s a wide array of accoutrements. There’s probably a bed, and maybe even a port-o-potty, but not always, and you can pretty much forget听about the massage.

“It’s not like a hotel or a bed and breakfast, where customers know exactly what they’re going to get,” Martinez said.” And right now, the wide range of experiences can cause confusion when people think about glamping.”

Glampsites Are Available When Campsites Are Not

I am a terrible planner, and this deficiency means that holidays and three-day weekends always听catch me by surprise. This is a huge no-no in Colorado, where reserving a traditional campsite is akin to scoring Taylor Swift tickets.

Every spring, thousands of would-be campers sit at their computers just before the booking windows open on and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife reservation pages. Within a few hours, most campsites are booked out for all the major summer holidays.

But that’s not the case with glamping sites. In 2024 I started my search just one week before Memorial Day weekend,听and I quickly found two open glampsites near Great Sand Dunes National Park.

This year I was even lazier. On the Wednesday before the holiday weekend, my wife and I made the rash decision to return to the Sand Dunes. After a brief search, we found a glamping site on a farm near Salida, Colorado. This setup was even more bare bones鈥攏o bathroom.

Why are glampsites available when traditional campsites book out months in advance? My experts listed a few reasons. For starters, there’s the perception problem I mentioned above.

“Some people just don’t want to be associated with the word ‘glamping,’“ Martinez said. “The branding is still a hurdle for them.”

And yet, the inventory of glamping sites is rapidly expanding. Martinez told me that he receives about five calls each day from private landowners who want to pitch a tent and start a glamping operation. Ravasio said the number of glamping sites on Hipcamp increased by 25 percent from 2023 to 2024.

“Unfortunately we’re not building many more traditional campsites on public land right now,” Ravasio said. “I wish that wasn’t the case.”

Of course the price tag also keeps competition lower. I’ve paid between $65 and $100 a night for glampsites, double or triple the cost of a traditional tent campsite. But it’s still half the cost of staying at a hotel or an Airbnb. And I also didn’t have to buy a tent to replace the 35-year-old one in my garage.

“If you don’t already own all of the gear, glamping is the most affordable and accessible way to get outdoors,” Ravasio added.

A Way to Hook Kids on Camping

Some parents can take their toddlers on long backpacking trips deep into the wilderness. And then, there are the rest of us.

My wife and I learned early on that we are in the latter group. So, when it came time to finally take our daughter to sleep outdoors, a glamping setup, with a bed and sturdy tent, seemed enticing.

Martinez, who has two older children, said he and his wife took their oldest daughter tent camping when she was just six months old.

“It was an absolute disaster,” he said. “It got colder than we anticipated, so my wife took her into the car and they tried to sleep there. I wondered, ‘Are we ever going to camp again?'”

Giving parents an easy entry point to camping is perhaps the most alluring attribute of glamping. According to Ravasio, families are the biggest group booking glamping vacations on Hipcamp, and the number of family glamping trips on the site has tripled since 2020.

“If you are leaving town Friday after school and arriving that night, not having to set up a tent is a huge improvement to your experience,” Ravasio said. “For a lot of families, that’s the best way to give it a try.”

Our 2024 glamping trip fit this description. Our daughter reveled in roasting marshmallows and staring at the stars.

Our glamping tent included a thick comforter and even a propane space heater. These accoutrements saved our weekend when a late-May tempest blew across Colorado’s San Luis Valley one night. The temperature plummeted, and fierce winds buffeted the tent walls. Rain bucketed down and thunder echoed through the valley.

Squeezed between us in the bed, my daughter listened wide-eyed to the storm before drifting off to sleep. When it was light, the two of us strolled around the campsite inspecting the damage that the storm had caused to those with traditional tent setups: tarps and rainflies were strewn about, and some campers hung their rain-soaked sleeping bags on car hoods. People were bleary-eyed and grumpy.

My daughter, meanwhile, skipped through the parking lot toward the port-o-potty, a stuffed animal under each arm.

What About the Name?

I recently came across written by former听国产吃瓜黑料 contributor Chris Solomon. In the piece Solomon wrote that glamping is “the worst thing to happen to public camping since poison ivy.”

“Not one fire ring should be cordoned off only for those who can pay triple-digit rates to sleep under the stars,” he wrote.

While I agree with Solomon’s sentiment, I feel like the contemporary glamping landscape no longer reflects the luxurious and pampered industry he was raging against a decade ago. And as I’ve quickly converted to glamper status, I’ve often wondered if the outdoor industry needs to either redefine the experience, or at the very least ditch the “glam” part of the word.

I posed this question to both Ravasio and Martinez, and it turns out they were both way ahead of me.

Martinez said his membership base has kicked around a few different terms, such as “Unique Structure” and “Direct Access,” but thus far, nothing has replaced the term.

Ravasio said Hipcamp has tried to loosely define the activity under the title “Structures” and “Outdoor Hospitality,” but that everyone eventually comes back to the 20-year-old word.

Even I have been unable to break free from the word’s clutches. During my call with Ravasio, we both attempted to come up with a new name. After a long pause, we were both stumped.

“Glamping鈥攊t’s like this jingle that just sticks in your brain,” Ravasio said. “It’s just too catchy.”

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Many hikers set out to hike all 58 of Colorado鈥檚 14ers鈥攕ought-after summits above 14,000 feet in elevation鈥攂ut only one Coloradan, 27-year-old Erin Ton, is doing it in high heels. So far, Ton has knocked out 24 of the peaks in her three-inch sandals and plans to tick off the rest over the coming summers. At first, the project was just for fun. But over time, it’s become a statement about defying stereotypes.

Ton hiked her first-ever 14er, Mount Elbert, back in 2018. 鈥淎t the time, it was the hardest thing I had ever done,鈥� she says. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. 鈥淭here’s something so satisfying about challenging yourself to go through a hard time, and then [experiencing] that overwhelming sense of satisfaction once you get to the summit. I was hooked.鈥� An avid trail runner, she started doing them faster and faster, concocting new linkups and chasing speed records. In 2023, she very nearly notched an overall 14er record, bagging 57 summits in just two weeks. (However, her decision to skip 14,053-foot Culebra Peak cost her the record鈥攁nd sparked .)

The heel thing started well before that, though, as a joke between Ton and her friends. They hypothesized that the leverage of a high heel could help counteract the incline of a steep slope, alleviating strain on the feet. Theoretically, it would be similar to using a heel riser while backcountry skiing, or a trail shoe with a very, very high midsole drop. In 2020, Ton put this hypothesis to the test, paying homage to her first ascent of Mount Elbert by doing it again鈥攂ut this time in high heels.

It was never Ton鈥檚 intention to turn her ascents into a social movement for women in the outdoors. 鈥淚 thought Mount Elbert would just be one and done, but my sister, Hannah, was intrigued by the idea, and joined me for a couple of popular summits in heels, and we just had so much fun doing it.鈥� Ton decided to make it a goal to finish all the 14ers again鈥攂ut this time in heels. She started working her way down the list, bagging a few summits each summer. Typically, she’d hike the ascents in her heels and dress, snap a photo at the summit, and then change into a pair of trail runners for the descents.

Then the media took notice. A in The Gazette ran a photo of Ton in high heels and a short red skirt, and it kicked off a wave of criticism. 鈥淚 got some not-so-positive feedback, mostly from a male audience,” Ton says. Commenters questioned her competence and her sanity.

“It lit a fire under me,鈥� Ton said. 鈥淚 don’t need your input on what I should be doing with my body when I feel completely safe out there.鈥� So, Ton continued making high-heeled ascents and posting about them on social media.

鈥淚’ve had numerous women reach out to me saying it’s inspired them to wear what they want in the outdoors. All too often, women are siloed into one category, but being outdoorsy and feminine aren’t mutually exclusive,鈥� she explained. 鈥淚’m showing you can be both as a woman.鈥�

As for the original hypothesis? Hiking in heels likely doesn’t make mountaineering any easier, Ton says. And it does have the potential to be hard on the lower legs.

鈥淎t first I thought I was going to roll my ankles, but I really haven’t had that big of an issue,鈥� Ton says. In fact, she thinks all the high-heeled hiking has helped boost her over time. The blisters, on the other hand, aren’t so easy to shrug off. Often, she’ll hike with socks beneath her heels. She also takes Band-Aids and other first-aid supplies with her on every ascent.

The model of shoe she chose was equally calculated. She started in a pair of sturdy $25 heels from Target, until an Italian shoe brand, , reached out and created a custom heel for her. 鈥淢y current pair has lasted me the past two summers, and I took them on some pretty technical peaks, including Capitol Peak,” Ton says. Fortunately, they’re also cute enough to do double-duty.

“I’ve gone to a couple of weddings in recent years where I don’t have any other heels to wear,” she laughs. So, she wore her dirty, beat-up hiking heels.

Ton is proof that you really can do both. And, apparently, so can your shoes.

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A summer hike on New Hampshire鈥檚 6,288-foot Mount Washington became a fight for survival for a 55-year-old woman on Friday, June 20.

from New Hampshire’s Fish and Game Department, the woman required a rescue after temperatures plunged and gusting winds began to batter the peak. The woman, identified by officials as Caroline Wilson of Austin, Texas, became hypothermic and unable to move or communicate on an exposed ridge just below the peak’s summit.

Officials received a distress call from Wilson鈥檚 husband at 5:00 P.M. He said that his wife 鈥渨as unable to move or communicate鈥� and needed help, the release stated. Wilson was hiking the Gulfside Trail, a popular route leading to Mount Washington鈥檚 summit from the north flank.

Rescuers from the Fish and Game department responded, as did volunteers from three local search and rescue outfits, and by 7:00 P.M., the first team of lifesaving personnel was ascending the mountain on the famed Mount Washington Cog Railway, an alpine train that ascends the peak. The rescue was made easier by the fact that Wilson鈥檚 position on the Gulfside Trail was located near the railway’s track.

At the time of her rescue, the weather station on the peak鈥檚 summit was recording winds up to 120 miles per hour and temperatures at 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

鈥淭he Cog has always been willing to help in every rescue situation,鈥� said NHFG, 鈥渁nd this time they provided a train, which saved rescuers from having to hike over three miles up the Jewell Trail in rainy, windy conditions鈥� to access the stranded hiker.

Even with the help of the train, rescuers hiked a mile along an exposed ridgeline above 5,000 feet, encountering high winds and freezing temperatures, to reach Wilson. She was then carried back to the train in a litter, and later transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. But she wasn鈥檛 alone in her predicament. On the same day, officials received multiple other calls concerning hypothermic hikers throughout the Presidential Range, which includes Washington and other nearby peaks.

Located in New Hampshire鈥檚 White Mountain National Forest, Mount Washington is the tallest peak in the northeastern United States. Although it鈥檚 only 6,288 feet above sea level鈥攕carcely higher than the city of Denver鈥攖he area surrounding Mount Washington is very low in elevation. It rises over 6,100 feet above the surrounding terrain, making it one of most topographically prominent mountains in the United States.

Mount Washington has long been known for its ferocious and unpredictable weather, and particularly high winds. For nearly a century its summit, which is home to a weather station, held the world record for the strongest wind ever recorded (231 mph). To date, the only faster winds recorded on earth have been inside of tornadoes or tropical cyclones.

The rescue is another reminder that鈥攅ven in the middle of summer鈥攈ikers underestimate Mount Washington at their own peril. Even in summer, the peak is prone to dangerous winds and sub-zero temperatures. The mountain averages 25 rescues a year, and has since record-keeping began in 1849. Check out 叠补肠办辫补肠办别谤鈥檚 on how to hike the peak safely.

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The good news is that you can now see the Nolichucky River sooner.

Since my first thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2019, I鈥檝e often thought about a cliff edge just above Erwin, Tenn., where the woods open to reveal the Nolichucky rushing from a gorge below. It is one of the AT鈥檚 pure postcard moments, a spot for which I even advocated . More than once, I鈥檝e seen it in my dreams.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was dropping into Erwin along the AT in April and saw the wide brown river roaring through the valley floor nearly a half-mile ahead of that memorable vista. I shouldn鈥檛 have been shocked: In the last 140 miles since leaving Newfound Gap in I had seen hundreds of ways that Hurricane Helene had altered the trail. So many trees had fallen between where I stood and Erwin that less of them simply blocked the view. It was gorgeous, and it was sad.

But that was, after all, why I was there, to see how the trail had changed and was still changing after Helene. Before the flood waters even receded from Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee last fall, handwringing about the state of the trail in 2025 and the concomitant thru-hiking season were rampant. In the days after the catastrophe, I saw videos about how 500 miles of the trail were 鈥渙bliterated鈥� and read reports about how people intended to forego the AT in years to come.

In the months since, though, I had read very little about how the trail was doing and how passable it might be come spring. I lived for many years along the parts of the trail that Helene hit hardest and consider the area one of the country鈥檚 most wondrous expanses. So I asked the trail family I formed back in 2019 if they wanted to have a reunion, to walk 140 miles together and see how our old friend was faring. Two said yes鈥攎y wife, Tina, and our best friend, Ben. They joined me for the first three days, or until we reached Hot Springs, NC. I continued to Erwin solo, hoping to cross the Nolichucky and then go home.

So how is the AT right now? The short answer: As of April 2025, the AT in the Southern states is like a horrific multi-car pileup on the interstate that happened hours ago, just long enough that the wreckage has been moved to the side of the road to allow for cars to pass. The way is mostly clear, but the work is far from done. The very long answer follows, in the form of my trail diary for those six days.

Wednesday, April 2 (Northbound Mile 208.0鈥�223.7)

On a northbound trek of the AT, there鈥檚 no early landmark as critical as Newfound Gap, on the Tennessee border. When hikers reach it, they鈥檝e arrived at their third state line, crossed the 200-mile mark, and passed the halfway point of one of the journey鈥檚 most arduous stretches through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The weather can be terrible, the climbs severe, the resources limited. At Newfound Gap, folks often hitch northwest down U.S. 441, toward their first day off in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Some get lost in that tourist trap town and never return to trail.

Newfound Gap, then, felt like the natural start of our journey. After reading so much about and consternation about whether or not the season would happen, I knew it would offer an instant read on the trail and how Helene had changed people鈥檚 plans. Would there be hikers there at all?

Before we could even park the car, we saw two of our kind鈥攁 tandem ripping open Priority Mail boxes of groceries atop a stonework fence and stuffing them into their already-swollen Hyperlite packs. Tourists stopping for pictures at the cloud-shrouded pass peppered them with questions about when they had started and when they might finish. Elsewhere, families posed with a sign that read, 鈥淜atahdin Maine 1972.0,鈥� grinning like that was the silliest fact they鈥檇 ever seen. Yes, it seemed, thru-hiking season was on.

Our original itinerary involved an ambitious first day: 23 miles from Newfound Gap to Cosby Knob Shelter, with several thousand feet up and back down. But a park ranger had warned us against it: A five-mile expanse of fallen trees had slowed even the , the trained professionals who shuttle along the trail to (sometimes overzealously) educate hikers about safety and Leave No Trace practices. 鈥淵ou should do a shorter day, 15 miles,鈥� she said. 鈥淪pend the night at Tri-Corner Knob.鈥� We agreed, deferring to the expert.

Perhaps it was the sheer adrenaline of three thru-hikers reuniting on the AT, but we soon knew we鈥檇 make our destination long before sundown. We raced through the first 10 miles, the air perfectly cool as the clouds closed in tight on the thin ridges the trail follows through the Smokies. The trees on trail first seemed like a nonissue, only slightly worse than any other year. There were a few blowdowns and freshly busted logs, their splinters cast across the trail like confetti. A few dead trees were suspended high above the trail, too鈥攖oo high for a saw to get, a problem for the future. Maybe twice during those first 10 miles, we had to navigate somewhat tricky sets of blowdowns by stepping a few feet off trail, climbing down and then up to avoid some imposition. Still, if it slowed our pace, I didn鈥檛 notice.

It was the wind that finally made the peril clear. All day long, the breeze was intense, even blowing the usually surefooted Tina off a rock and to her knees. A half-dozen times, the wind gusted, and we noticed the earth heave from the trail, gaps of several inches sometimes appearing near our feet. Just below the catwalks we traversed, dozens of trees had been lifted out of the ground on all sides but one, a quarter of their root balls clinging on for dear arboreal life. As the wind roared and they swayed, you could watch their connection get evermore tenuous, like a piece of wire you repeatedly bend until it breaks. These were not our problem at the moment, but after a few severe summer thunderstorms, they would become a hazard for other hikers. It wasn鈥檛 hard to imagine the AT sliding off the face of, say, Raven or Katalsta ridges.

When we reached our shelter around 5 p.m., we again saw that thru-hiking season was indeed on. Tri-Corner Knob has two wide sleeping levels, meaning it can hold two-dozen hikers each night. The park prefers that thru-hikers stay in shelters to minimize impact and bear encounters. Folks had started claiming space for the night three hours earlier, hoping to escape the wind and threat of rain, and we were the last three to find some room that wasn鈥檛 just the ground. People traded tales of their first 200 miles like baby stories, proudly detailing the origins of their trail names or what gear they鈥檇 already sent home. Every now and again, someone would pass a video of a tree 鈥測awning鈥� in the day鈥檚 wind鈥攖hat is, the roots separating from the soil. It was wild to see, maybe even funny, but I couldn鈥檛 help but wonder how much post-Helene damage had still yet to manifest itself, more than six months after the storm had passed.

Thursday, April 3 (Northbound Mile 223.7鈥�244.1)

Boy, did I eat it.

When you leave the Smokies, you drop 3,500 feet in less than 7 miles, setting up a racecourse of sorts to Standing Bear Farm, a famously rowdy hostel with fridges full of cold beer for hikers who have just endured one of the AT鈥檚 great gauntlets. I love elevation changes in either direction, so I was locked in with the work of my quads as I began the great descent. And then, the sensation of my ankle twisting too far to the left jolted me from that flow, followed in short order by the thud of my body hitting the ground.

After more than 11,000 miles of hiking, I believe , able to reorient myself just before impact. But this year, the AT鈥攆orever and always, a series of roots and rocks stretching out to trip you like the feet of a grade-school bully鈥攆eels different. Just yesterday, Tina, who once patrolled these woods as a park ranger, called it 鈥渏unky.鈥� The water moved so fast during Helene that the roots and rocks now feel more ubiquitous, making each step a negotiation. That鈥檚 compounded by shattered logs and fallen branches, debris too small (or too new) for any trail crew to fix. The trail simply seems more hazardous right now, and my ankle wanted a brief word鈥攚ith me or with the trail, I can鈥檛 really say.

This morning, at least, the obstacles were a little more conspicuous. When we left the shelter, the clouds still cloaked the ridges, reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. But it didn鈥檛 take much to see the graveyards of trees that lined and occasionally still covered the AT. Only an hour into the day, we encountered a section where a hundred trees seemed to have fallen in a few hundred yards. Some leaned cattywampus across the trail, root ball and all, while others jutted shattered-end first onto the treadpath like swords. Climbing up, over, and through a thicket of damage, I caught a shin on several branches that had turned into natural shivs and spent the rest of the day trickling blood from my war wounds.

The ranger鈥檚 warning that this would slow us down, though, felt like a cautionary dose of old-fashioned AT fearmongering; this looked like fallout from meteorological microbursts, not the aftereffects of a sustained storm marching up the trail. The larger concern, once again, were the trees alongside the trail whose roots had largely been ripped from earth and now pointed down the mountain, ready to slide given the right squall. We made a sport of climbing into some of the city-bus-size craters those hulks had left behind.

Just before you begin the big drop that leads out of the Smokies, there is a final steep climb, like the last boss of the video game, from an intersection with the aptly named Low Gap Trail to the top of Mount Cammerer. It was the day鈥檚 most dangerously mangled expanse, with a dozen trees and innumerable branches crowding an already-thin bit of trail bordered by a rather precipitous drop. In 2,200 miles, the AT offers little in the way of rock-scrambling, but this felt like tree-scrambling, as I held onto branches while looking for places to plant my feet.

Just as I made it over the last hurdle, I spied a , three pale yellow flowers balanced above three brilliantly speckled leaves. A few miles later, I met a hiker from Indiana who, while taking a smoke break, spotted two morels, some of the first of the season. 鈥淭hese won鈥檛 be showing up at home for a few weeks,鈥� he said, holding them in the palm of his hand. 鈥淚t鈥檚 cool to be here. I鈥檓 going to try to go all the way.鈥� He鈥檇 have more logs to climb than I did in 2019, but I assured him he could, then headed north again.

Friday, April 4 (Northbound Mile 244.1鈥�267.8)

Soon after I turned 21, I participated in a collegiate bacchanalia called the Hillsborough Hike. It was an end-of-semester bar crawl for students at N.C. State, all stumbling from one end of our university鈥檚 main drag to another. I don鈥檛 remember how the night ended, but I do remember my phone waking me up sometime early the next afternoon. I was four hours late for my Saturday morning record-store shift, but I was there, green and groggy, 15 minutes later.

鈥淕rayson! Well, how the hell are ya?鈥� the store鈥檚 owner, Mike Phillips, said to me with a smirk later that afternoon. 鈥淚 heard you were out a little late, son.鈥� Twenty years later, the tone of voice he used that day still stings from memory.

Imagine my terror, then, when I heard the exact same sound a mile south of , one of the most iconic balds in the Southern Appalachians and arguably the most beautiful place in all of North Carolina. 鈥淕rayson! Is that you?鈥� a man in a tennis ball-colored shirt exclaimed from beneath the low brim of a baseball cap. 鈥淲hat the hell are you doing, son? Are you doing this shit again?鈥�

It was, indeed, Mike Phillips, who retired long ago from record-store life to manage triathlons and eventually join the , a largely volunteer-powered nonprofit that maintains 94 miles of the AT. I鈥檇 actually been thinking about Mike all morning, wondering if he was responsible for any of the sawdust I鈥檇 seen on trail. Not long after we slipped out of last night鈥檚 creekside campsite, I began to notice that the trees that had fallen on the trail had been cut so recently that the air still smelled like pine or poplar. Deep Gap had looked like a log graveyard, pines spilling across and above and alongside the trail in every direction. But the trees had been bullied aside enough to make room for whoever passed that way. Thanks, Mike and friends.

鈥淚t hasn鈥檛 been too bad,鈥� said Ron, the first member of the Carolina Mountain Club I saw that morning, minutes before I encountered Mike. He鈥檇 put down his axe (labeled 鈥淩ON鈥�) to cut a little rut for runoff, hoping to prevent more topsoil from washing far below the trail. 鈥淚t will get really bad when you get just south of Erwin, though. For every one tree left standing, you鈥檒l see 20 that are down.鈥�

All two-dozen members of the Carolina Mountain Club I saw in a 2-mile stretch were digging in the dirt. Mike was shoveling a rut like Ron. Two other men sat directly in the trail, cutting errant roots with oversized shears. That was a good sign, as Mike told me: 鈥淲e just finished clearing our 94 miles of trail of trees. There were a lot,鈥� he told me. Now it was time to tend to the trail itself, to manicure and maintain it like they would do every year.

Our trio rendezvoused on Max Patch in time for lunch, the bald rimmed perfectly by stratus clouds in every direction. As we ate, families crisscrossed the mountaintop, easily accessible from a parking lot a mile below, while two young lovers made out on a picnic blanket. A string of thru-hikers said hello as they ambled past. And when we finally left, we ran into four men in their early 30s鈥攁ll wearing all-camouflage everything, like they鈥檇 just raided an Army surplus store鈥攚ho were a day away from finishing their first section of the AT. 鈥淲e鈥檝e loved it,鈥� one of them said. 鈥淚鈥檝e never done anything like this.鈥�

We made camp that night in a grove of rhododendron bushes, having climbed 6,000 feet and descended 6,000 feet in 23 miles. The sun had set long before we sat down to eat in a semicircle amongst our tents. It struck us how normal our day had seemed, how much of it mirrored what we鈥檇 done on our first AT thru-hike. In fact, the whole day鈥攆rom the trail crew tending to the dirt to the section hikers who seemed so supercharged by their new hobby, from our big miles to the long lunch in the sun鈥攆elt like it was trending toward normalcy, a welcome commodity on the AT in 2025.

Except seeing Mike. That was weird.

Saturday, April 5 (Northbound Mile 267.8鈥�281.1)

A decade ago, turned me into an AT hiker. It was June 2014, my first wedding anniversary. I鈥檇 started running to shed pounds for the ceremony and accidentally become obsessed with endurance. The idea of climbing mountains had become a long-distance daydream. So when Tina and I found ourselves in a remote cabin near Hot Springs, NC, one of the few towns the trail bisects, we had to get on the AT, on top of its old mountains. On our last day there, we climbed into a dirty van outside of Bluff Mountain Outfitters for a nauseating, hairpin shuttle to the top of Max Patch, then hiked 23 miles back to town. It felt like climbing K2. Four years later, we moved to Hot Springs; a year after that, we thru-hiked the AT.

It felt like a personal tragedy, then, seeing Bluff Mountain Outfitters on the national news, its rugged old brick frame ripped open by the rise and rush of Spring Creek, just feet away. It also made me worry for budding thru-hikers, since it鈥檚 an essential depot for supplies and intel from Wayne Crosby, who landed in Hot Springs after bailing on his own AT trek decades ago. How would newbies fare without him?

Turns out, they wouldn鈥檛. After a gargantuan breakfast at the steadfast Smoky Mountain Diner, which rode out the storm like biscuits atop a raft of gravy, I was shocked to see the Bluff Mountain Outfitters insignia atop the old library building. I was more surprised to see how fresh and inviting it was inside, the cramped but lovable old store transformed into an airy space chockablock with more shoes and hiking food than I remembered at the former location. Crosby showed me how little bits of the old building, likely slated to be demolished, had been incorporated into the architecture鈥攖he salvaged counter used for storage, the rescued dressing room door. He鈥檇 spent the winter building this new space and reopened only in mid-March, just in time to usher the Class of 2025 northward. He exuded the pride of a single parent who had found a way to make life work.

That is the spirit I encountered time and again in Hot Springs, a town I left two years before the floods but feels sacred to me, nevertheless. There was the library, tucked temporarily beneath a former Methodist church, and the artisanal grocery store and sandwich shop in a pine outpost next door. There was Vinyl Pies Pizza, where a construction crew worked on rebuilding inside until they lost their Saturday evening daylight. Spring Creek Tavern had left its Halloween decorations clinging to the building where its porch once stood, before the waters swept it away. 鈥淒amn鈥e miss you,鈥� read a note in the window of the Iron Horse Station, where I鈥檇 inhaled a mountain of fries after that formative 2014 hike. Like so much of Hot Springs, that message felt like an act of resilience, a promise to come back.

When Covid-19 decimated the 2020 thru-hiking season, the worry was that potentially sick hikers could overrun a town like Hot Springs, where resources are low and hospitals are an hour away. That is not the worry now. Every business owner or employee I spoke to said some variation of the same thing, from the bartender at the recently reopened Big Pillow Brewing to Big Kat, a thru-hiker who is running the hostel this year: Send everyone, and tell them to bring their money. That鈥檚 what we need to continue rebuilding.

Sunday, April 6 (Northbound Mile 281.1鈥�302.1)

There was little rush to get out of Hot Springs on this stormy Sunday morning; overnight, the wind whipped the rain so hard that Left Field, the one hiker who had opted to spend the night camped on my hostel鈥檚 porch, retreated inside just before sunrise. Indeed, one of the hardest lessons that first-time thru-hikers must learn, especially somewhere as perpetually moist as the AT, is when to forge through the rain and when to take a day off. Today, at the start of two days of expected downpours, almost everyone decided to take the latter option.

Not me: I was too eager to see how the trail functioned after to sleep in, so I caught a ride to Tanyard Gap above Hot Springs just after 8 a.m. The AT is almost always rooty or rocky, uncountable footsteps during the last century having kicked away much of its topsoil. Helene inarguably made that worse, turning parts of the trail into a rushing little river and sweeping whatever dirt remained into gaps and creeks and streams. While moving uphill, as I did leaving Tanyard Gap bound for the Rich Mountain observation tower, that was barely a problem.

Dropping down into the aptly named Hurricane Gap, though, I proceeded with extra caution, grabbing the occasional rhododendron branch to balance myself on particularly onerous sets of roots and sometimes trying to find the edges of my Topo shoes like they were downhill skis, slowing my slide . Someone had passed that way on horseback the night before, it seemed, the horse鈥檚 hooves exposing just how vulnerable the trail remains鈥攅ach print resembled a crater, especially along the softest shoulders.

As with my march into Hot Springs, the trail itself was remarkably clear of debris, thanks to the Carolina Mountain Club鈥檚 recent efforts. Trees, though, don鈥檛 fall only during a storm; they fall for months or even years afterward, compromised roots finally giving way with time, wind, or rain. The volunteers hadn鈥檛 gotten to some new ones.

And that鈥檚 the real danger when the trail is wet鈥攃limbing over, under, or around fresh deadfall when going downhill on slippery ground. More than once, I grabbed a branch, clambered over a fallen tree, and simply let my feet give way until my rump met the dirt, almost like I was creeping down a slick snowfield without spikes. Given the way the AT winds around valleys and gaps in slow semicircles, one side often offers a long drop into the woods below. Avoiding those took a little forethought.

The folks who stayed in town made a mistake, though. After the overnight downpour, occasional showers drifted through the hills, keeping the trail skiddy but not making the day miserable. It was cloudy and cool, perfect for big miles into and over several steep gaps. Indeed, in one such gap, a neon pink paper sign pointed to the Southern Cookie Lady, a retired Ohioan named Peggy who settled into these woods three years ago. Most days, she sits on her porch and listens to hiker tales while serving up bagged apricot cookies and warm cobbler. The first cookie is free, but money from anything else goes to the , still in the process of rebuilding after losing thousands of volumes in the flood. Peggy only lost power and a few trees in Helene, but she was using the good fortune of her relatively calm quarters to help her community, tucking all donations into a Cool-Whip jar.

It wasn鈥檛 the only thing that reaffirmed the trail鈥檚 spirit for me today. With a new wave of storms expected overnight, I stopped at Jerry鈥檚 Cabin, a shelter perched in an idyllic clearing at 4,000 feet. In 2019, it was the first place my class of thru-hikers encountered Sovereign, a man who went on to stab a fellow hiker to death a few hundred miles up trail. I was feeling anxious until Thunder Lizard鈥攁 25-year-old musician from Vermont who forages for ramen garnishes while he walks鈥攂egan playing a few songs on his ukulele. He did some serviceable Dead and Vampire Weekend before playing by an old friend of mine called the Mountain Goats. It鈥檚 a song that鈥檚 kind of about the last tendrils of desperate hope in very desolate hours. Thunder Lizard鈥檚 shouted rendition felt a little like a hug and a lot like the kind of necessary magic the AT can deliver with suspicious regularity.

Monday, April 7 (Northbound Mile 302.1鈥�327.7)

Today, a tree almost fell on top of me.

I was 10 miles into an aspirational trail marathon, my start slowed by torrents of rain that kept everyone in their sleeping bags until the hour started to feel absurd. I worried that I鈥檇 run out of daylight, and I had also run out of water. I climbed out of Devil鈥檚 Fork Gap鈥攊n spite of the name, an absurdly bucolic patch of farmland and forest on the North Carolina/Tennessee border鈥攗ntil I reached the last point where the trail crosses Sugarloaf Branch, just above its first little waterfall. I was dumping electrolytes into a bottle of perfectly cold water when the woods ruptured.

My first thought was that some wild animal was bounding through the branches. But as I scanned the brush, I watched a tree 20 feet away explode, its 20 feet of solid wood bursting into a half-dozen bits on contact with the earth. I had a little moment of gratitude for sitting here, not there, kept drinking and then continued climbing.

There is no real way to know, of course, if that tree had been damaged by Helene, hanging around through six months of limbo, just waiting to interrupt my water break. Trees fall, and blaming each one on the last big storm is like blaming every summer rain on climate change. But it did reinforce the vague feeling I had so many times during these 140 miles鈥攖hat the woods were slightly more dangerous now, from the broken branches that snagged my bare calves to the extra patches of exposed roots that threatened my ankles. I made an extra note to check above my tent for any potential deadfall (always the right idea, anyway) and, in the meantime, to move swiftly, staying aware of big falling sticks.

That rain stuck around all day, bands shuttling across the ridges and into the gaps every hour or so. But I was heartened to see a group of a half-dozen hikers with daypacks, smiling as they climbed out of the gap while I descended into it. I wondered if perhaps AT guru Warren Doyle was around, leading them through a that allows beginners to knock out a chunk of trail efficiently. Doyle was fiercely critical of early efforts to keep people off the trail after Helene, insisting that reports of damage were overblown. (He was, I believe now, at least half-right.) I knew that Doyle himself would be near the trail come hell or, well, high water. But if others trusted trail conditions enough to join him, I thought it must be another sign that the trail was coming back online.

That鈥檚 not to say, of course, that everything was copacetic. I passed several spans where the sawdust of the Carolina Mountain Club was again fresh, relics of their work to bring some order to the chaos Helene had left behind. What鈥檚 more, I encountered a half-dozen dead trees in the span of a few miles that bore the AT鈥檚 signature white blaze, a 2-inch-by-6-inch strip of white paint. A hiker, it seemed, was carrying a Sharpie, maybe to turn roadside trash into hitchhiking signs every time they needed to get to town or graffiti their names onto shelter walls. On the blazes that belonged to those fallen trees, they鈥檇 drawn little frowns, black eyes peering up from the side of some wounded oak. The first time I saw it, I chuckled; I鈥檓 not ashamed to admit that, the sixth time I saw it, I got all verklempt.

I finished the marathon, rolling into Bald Mountain Shelter鈥攁t more than 5,000 feet, a relatively high one for the East Coast鈥攋ust after 7 p.m. I鈥檇 crossed Big Bald, an exquisite bit of trail, in a cloud, the wind whipping against my headphones as I listened to Godspeed You! Black Emperor鈥檚 first album. Some bit of political news had inspired the choice, and I鈥檇 wanted to hear its spoken-word prologue:

It felt good to know, at least, that people were taking care of the Appalachian Trail, whether or not they were being paid to do so. As I fell asleep that night, I thought about how lucky I was to be there, nestled in bed alongside a half-dozen other hikers. It is the country鈥檚 trademark trail and, I think, still its best鈥攁 resource worth all the work.

Tuesday, April 8 (Northbound Mile 327.7鈥�344.5)

I began this 140-mile sprint with one very specific goal: to cross the Nolichucky River in Erwin, TN. During my first thru-hike, in 2019, my mother-in-law scooped me and my wife outside of , the legendary hostel along that wide river鈥檚 banks, for a funeral in Indiana. She dropped us off several days later on the bridge across the Nolichucky; that was the last time we鈥檇 see family for months, and I always saw it as a pivot point in our hike, the moment we cut the cord of possibility that we could just head home.

Helene decimated that bridge, sweeping it downriver in gargantuan slabs that are still stuck there like roadblocks. When people spoke of the potentially dashed chances for a 2025 hiking season, that was a point of consistent concern: How would hikers get across the river? There was the promise of a long road detour or the prospect of a dangerous railroad crossing. And then, as Uncle Johnny鈥檚 worked to rebuild, they hatched a plan alongside the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to , operated by river guides out of work due to Helene鈥檚 aftermath. It鈥檚 how hikers in Maine cross the Kennebec River, anyway, so why not here?

But there was no boat to be found beneath the vinyl 鈥淎.T. Hiker Ferry鈥� banner, its schedule disrupted for the day by a river that was raging a little too hard. When I asked Terry Wise, the long-distance hiker who bought Uncle Johnny鈥檚 in 2021, about the ferry, he vented about the U.S. Forest Service鈥檚 refusal to put the launch pad on their land, a parcel that offered a safer ride even on rough days. A cavalcade of dump trucks doing road repairs rolled by constantly, making it clear how perilous the road walk was. The best thing hikers could do, he thought, was wait until tomorrow.

But my trip was done, and my ride was waiting in the Uncle Johnny鈥檚 parking lot. As I moseyed toward an old friend鈥檚 car and, in turn, to a , I realized there were worse fates for the AT hikers of 2025 than waiting for tomorrow. That morning, I鈥檇 passed through the most severely damaged sections of trail I鈥檇 encountered, half-mile spans in which the Carolina Mountain Club had cut hundreds of trees and forced the remnants just off the trail. It often felt like walking through endless cords of firewood, the gap between the logs barely wide enough to offer safe passage.

When I first saw the way the trail wove through those seemingly endless debris fields, especially above the deep drop of Spivey Gap, I thought of it as a miracle, an act of divine intervention. And then, of course, I realized that such an idea undermined the exhausting and dangerous work of the volunteers, like my old boss Mike, who had done what no government or god had bothered to do: save the 2025 AT season by putting their own lives on pause.

The feeling was reinforced several miles later at Temple Hill Gap, a relatively high slit in the ridge. In every direction, the trees were scattered like carcasses in a slasher film, covering nearly every square inch of the holler below. I had just left the jurisdiction of the Carolina Mountain Club, and I suddenly saw what Ron, that volunteer I鈥檇 met nearly a hundred miles earlier, meant when he said, 鈥淔or every one tree left standing, you鈥檒l see 20 that are down.鈥�

Here was that scene of near-total devastation, where the woods were a little more than a jumble of matchsticks. I stood there for a long time, trying to remember that wonderful bit of forest as it had been in 2019 and trying to imagine it as it would become鈥攄ebris at best, landslides and forest fires at worst. I was thankful for the present passage and anxious for what was to come. I turned and headed for Erwin and the Nolichucky, toward a river I would not be able to cross, at least not today.

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