Cody Townsend’s day job requires him to fly down mountainsides, occasionally touching skis to the surface to prevent plummeting to certain death. The other day he posted this way-cool video of one of his adventures, which required three hours slogging…
Author Archive for tom
Devil’s Path, one mean-ass place to camp in the Catskills
by tom • September 24, 2009 • 3 Comments
Gear Junkie Stephen Regenold had much more fun writing this piece for the New York Times than he had hiking the 27 miles (and 14,000 feet of elevation gain) in the notorious Devil’s Path west of *West Saugerties, New York.…
That old gray GPS ain’t what it used to be
by tom • September 23, 2009 • 4 Comments
Posting GPS mash-ups of my hikes at EveryTrail has been an education in the law of unintended consequences. Consumer GPS units came to market to do for all Americans what they once did only for the military: help navigate unfamiliar…
New Guides feature at EveryTrail.com
by tom • September 22, 2009 • 0 Comments
I’m posting because, ahem, I wrote most of them (and Stuart of Trailspotting wrote the rest, on his favorite Hawaii hikes). It was an ambitious project: Joost Schreve, EveryTrail’s CEO, hired me to write 25 guides to Bay Area hikes…
Excerpts from “The National Parks” on PBS
by tom • September 22, 2009 • 2 Comments
Bryce Canyon National Park, 2006 I just spent an hour watching previews and excerpts from the latest Ken Burns magnus opus, “The National Parks, America’s Best Idea,” which opens Sept. 27 (this coming Sunday) on PBS stations nationwide. If you…
Waterfalls of Hanging Rock State Park
by tom • September 20, 2009 • 3 Comments
Funny what happens when you show up at a popular state park when it’s not a holiday weekend: no weddings, no crowds, only one pack of noisy Cub Scouts on a camp-out. All of this (plus the weather forecast predicting…
New book on stories of the Great Smokies
by tom • September 17, 2009 • 0 Comments
A new book by William A. Hart Jr., “3000 Miles in the Great Smokies,” recounts the tales he collected in 40 years of hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains. A sampling was posted in the Citizen-Times of Ashville, NC: The…
Touching tribute to a lost hiker
by tom • September 16, 2009 • 2 Comments
I found this on Vimeo. It’s called “Wait for Me.” Wait For Me (3 Minute Documentary) from Red Light Films on Vimeo.
OK, class, tell us about your summer vacation
by tom • September 16, 2009 • 8 Comments
OK, after three address changes and one (probably permanent) career change, it’s time to get back to this business of blogging about hiking. Main motivator: Two Heel Drive has slipped to No. 2 in the “hiking blog” rankings on Google…