Amazon Prime members: It’s the first of the month again. Could I suggest a hiking book that you can upload on Amazon Kindle for free? Why? If you are like me, you select your reading material looking for something that could be life changing in some way, shape, or form. Outdoor narratives have the potential to carry the reader far and wide, giving a perspective–perhaps even fortitude–one theretofore lacked. Bill Walker is the...

http://www.rgj.com/story/life/outdoors/recreation/2014/10/27/hiking-pacific-crest-trail-winter-adventure-safety/18012573/ Folks, I know you get bombarded with a lot of material on the internet. But this article above really is worth reading about two hikers planning to thru-hike the 2,663 mile Pacific Crest Trail this winter. Just to give you a taste of what they are attempting, I traversed the renowned High Sierra in the latter part of June....

Bill Walker, author of the Skywalker series of hiking books, is offering his popular Appalachian Trail book, Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail, for free upload on Amazon Kindle this weekend, October 25-26 only. This is the story of his thru-hike of the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail which runs from Georgia to northern Maine through fourteen states. Walker is also the author of Skywalker–Highs and Lows on the Pacific...

“A trail of the masses.” Now that’s a loaded term. And the Pacific Crest Trail–isn’t the Appalachian Trail (AT) America’s ‘trail of the masses’? Yes, the AT is. However that doesn’t mean the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) can’t be one also. The good news is that it rapidly is. Of course part of it has to do with the phenomenal success of Cheryl Strayed’s PCT memoir, Wild–From...

Folks, let’s hope for no more drama. Last year three hikers were rescued by helicopter, and another outright cheated death by developing an escape plan from an early blast of snow in the northern Cascades, which PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) hikers traverse to complete the trail at the Canadian border. How about this year? There has already been one helicopter rescue for injury. And the Dinsmore hostel located in Skykomish–about 175...