After moving to upstate New York a few years ago, hiking has become a major part of my life. While I love this activity, there’s one thing that’s a constant nuisance: breaking in new hiking boots.

Spring snow is flittering outside my office window, and I am meticulously weighing gear, charting paths across topographical maps, and preparing for hiking the Colorado Trail this summer. Backpackers ...

I did not grow up in an outdoorsy family. We spent the occasional summer road-tripping through Colorado, sure, but I was just as likely to spend an entire school break playing Super Nintendo in my ...

The sun shone brightly above us and the red canyon walls shimmered below. Somewhere in between the blue sky and chalky dirt, we hiked along the West Rim Trail in Zion National Park. Soft, loamy dust ...

Participation in almost all forms of outdoor recreation and physical activities increased dramatically during the pandemic, but in some sports those gains have lasted, and one of the most profound ...

Add Outdoor Life (opens in a new tab) More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. It ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Regularly heading to a park can be quite the stress reliever! As enjoyable as hiking can be, however, you may not even know how or ...

Apologies to anyone who encountered me on the Pacific Crest Trail in July 2021, rabidly racing in circles through the wondrous Marble Valley in the northernmost reaches of California. Indeed, had you ...

Hiking in the off-season can often come with great benefits — quieter trails and atmospheric, seasonal landscapes, in particular — however, it can also mean treacherous conditions. Here’s how to stay ...

I first encountered the ideas of ultralight backpacking in 1994, in an article in now-defunct (and much-missed) Backpacker magazine. It was titled “Less is More,” by Mark Jenkins. (I still have a PDF ...