How To Create A Successful Hiking Route

by Sean McLachlan on


A couple of years ago, I spent six enjoyable days hiking the East Highland Way and wrote a series about it for all you fine folks. Back then this trail through Scotland had only just been established by devoted hiker Kevin Langan.

I felt like a real pioneer when I did this route. The 82-mile journey from Ft. William to Aviemore was unmarked and there was no guidebook yet. Kevin was kind enough to email me PDFs of the page proofs. I never saw anyone else doing the trail and only heard of one other hiker, a German who was a day ahead of me.

Now the East Highland Way is fully established. The guidebook is not only in print now, it’s on its third edition. Kevin’s website is getting tons of hits, and his publisher has added some stuff for the techies in the form of a free Android mobile phone app for the route, which is now available on the Google Play store. GPS (.GPX) and Google Earth (.KMZ) route files are available to download from the website free of charge, as is a new amenities brochure, which includes maps of each location and places of interest.

The trail has also received markers. When I did it I had to rely on generally trustworthy Ordnance Survey maps. It’s nice to have confirmation with trail makers, though.

I caught up with Kevin and asked him how he went about building this new trail and what’s new after two years.

%Gallery-163506%What made you decide to establish a new route in the highlands and what made you pick the Ft. William-Aviemore line?

After walking the world-famous West Highland Way, I noticed that hikers can engage with a whole other network of interconnected trails such as the Great Glen Way, the Rob Roy Way, the Kintyre Way, and the Cowal Way. It was by exploring these routes that I then became aware of a satellite group further east. The Speyside Way, Dava Way and the Moray Coastal Trail seemed to be cut-off and isolated by a series of lesser-walked glens. It occurred to me that strategically, a new connection at this point could theoretically fuse together the various national trails and create a much larger path network to explore. The missing link in question ran between Fort William and Aviemore, two towns already drenched in outdoor culture and heritage. This was entirely theoretical at first and was never anticipated to become a mainstream long distance trail.

How did you go about researching and establishing the route?

In the years to follow I explored the area many times both physically and virtually, trial-blazed various routes and took more notes than I knew how to compile. It was through detailed analysis of the terrain and distances that I finally settled on the East Highland Way route as it stands today. Three websites and three guidebooks later, the route is becoming more popular with each day.

How did you get markers for the route? Were those put up by the government?

The waymarking has been done by building up relationships with various landowners. There are also various existing sections that use locally waymarked trails already, which is great – mainly the Badenoch way and the newly waymarked Loch Gynack trail. The EHW waymarking so far has been done very organically from the ground up. The new orange East Highland Way markers have been distributed to land owners and strategically placed at their discretion. These will include the forests of Inverlair and Corrour and also the full length of Loch Laggan past Ardverikie.

How has the route changed since I walked it (when the first edition was still in production)?

Since you walked it the route has changed immensely. Almost 10 miles of reduced road walking:

1: The route now leaves Fort William via the old Ben Nevis access path past the Alcan smelter, rather than the tarred cycle path to Torlundy.

2: The route uses a new Forest trail approaching Spean Bridge, which bypasses the road section.

3: A new forest route through the Ardverikie estate, which reduces the road walking along the Ardverikie driveway by a few miles.

3: The road walking through Laggan village has been chopped in half with a shortcut over the moor to Glen Banchor.

4: A new high-level route has been introduced between Newtonmore and Kingussie, which replaces the old tarred cycle path.

5: A new route waymarked through Invereshie House estate towards the Frank Burce sculpture park.

What’s next for the EHW?

I think the East Highland Way is growing steadily and I would be happy for people just to continue walking and enjoying the route and that over the years further waymarking is introduced and further road walking eliminated. It’s quite a simple project with a simple agenda. The most important thing for me is the quality of the product. I need to stay focused on finding the best quality paths and attractions along the route and everything else will sort itself out.

Are you planning to establish more routes?

I’ve got various projects, which are ongoing and take up lots of my time. There will hopefully be other long distance routes in the future although this isn’t something I’m actively pursuing at the moment. They are extraordinarily time consuming and need a lot of effort and hard work not to mention free time to be produced properly and with a high quality output in mind.

[Full disclosure: I contributed several photos to the original edition. I didn’t ask for payment, and I don’t receive any royalties. I gave Kevin free photos because I believe in promoting this trail. I don’t know if they’re in the third edition.]

Hantavirus In Yosemite National Park Results In Two Deaths

by Kraig Becker on

The National Park Service is scrambling to deal with an outbreak of the deadly hantavirus in Yosemite National Park after two people who recently visited the region contracted the disease and died. So far there have been three confirmed cases of the virus and a fourth suspected case. Park officials fear that potentially hundreds of visitors may have been exposed, however, prompting them to release a statement on NPS.gov earlier this week.

That statement warned visitors who may have stayed in Yosemite’s Curry Village campsite to take extra caution in dealing with the symptoms, which can be easily mistaken for the flu. Early warning signs include a fever and muscle aches throughout the body, but the Park Service memo says that those symptoms can quickly escalate into a more life-threatening illness. Anyone who has visited Curry Village between mid-June and the end of August is advised to seek immediate medial assistance if they exhibit any of the symptoms.

The hantavirus is typically carried by rodents, such as mice, rats or squirrels who initially contract the disease from fleas. It can be passed on to humans through bites, although it more commonly spreads when people are exposed to locations in which the rodents have left urine and droppings. Particles of those waste products can sometimes be breathed in, resulting in possible exposure. The virus can appear anywhere from one to six weeks later.

In response to this outbreak, park officials have implemented rolling closures of the cabins at Curry Village so that they could each be given a thorough cleaning. They’ve also started trapping more deer mice, a common rodent in the area, to check for elevated levels of the hantavirus in the species.

Anyone who has questions or concerns over the virus are encouraged to call 209-372-0822 for more information. The number is staffed 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily.

[Photo Credit: Ben Margot/Associated Press]

Camping With Kids On Cape Cod

by Dave Seminara on

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can put up a tent and those who cannot. I’m not proud to admit that I’m part of the later group. I’m the youngest of six children and by the time I was born, my parents had given up camping for good. I wasn’t exposed to Boy Scouts and never learned a thing about camping, fishing, survival skills or the Great Outdoors.

So when my wife and I found ourselves shopping for camping gear at REI in preparation for a camping trip to Cape Cod, I was ready to pay $70 more for a tent that had only 11 setup steps, compared to 15 on a cheaper model. But my wife, who was a science major in college, is good at putting things together, so we bought the cheaper, Big Agnes Big House 4 tent, and I quietly hoped not to be exposed for the pathetic tent-setup guy that I am.

In a year when my family has been traveling nonstop since April 1, we’ve stayed in almost every type of accommodation, save a tent. We used to enjoy camping, years ago, but haven’t ventured out into the great outdoors for an overnight stay since our first child was born in 2007.We’ve always wanted to visit Cape Cod, but when I looked into room rates a few weeks ago and saw that even mediocre quality hotels on the Cape were charging two, three and even four hundred dollars per night, I figured it was time for our kids to get their first taste of the camping lifestyle.

So we bought some new sleeping bags, the Big Agnes tent, and some REI self-inflating camping pads, and piled our two little boys and all our gear into the family trickster for the drive to the Sweetwater Forest Campground in Brewster, a graceful little town on the north (bay) side of Cape Cod. We wanted to camp at nearby Nickerson State Park, but since they charge just $12 per tent site, they tend to fill up fast and we couldn’t get in. Sweetwater charges $35 per tent site, which is pricey for camping, but it sure beats paying $300 per night for a hotel room.

We were given a choice of two sites, and spent more time debating which one to take than Union and Confederate generals spent preparing for the Battle of Gettysburg. One site had far more privacy but also had lots of protruding tree branches on the only level ground suitable for a tent and both of us were reluctant to make a call for fear of being scapegoated for a bad night’s sleep, either from noisy neighbors or the protruding branches.

Eventually we settled on the more private site and my wife methodically went to work putting the Big House up. I stood around and did what I was told but contributed essentially nothing to the endeavor, though my wife was kind enough to pretend as though I wasn’t completely useless.

“Here, use your strength to pull that through,” she’d say. Or, “Why don’t you hammer these down?”

But we all knew that if I had to put the thing up, it would have taken hours, with several failed attempts, plenty of cursing and a bit of soul searching. If I can’t figure out how to put something together upon first glance, without consulting instructions, it probably won’t get done. My wife had the tent up in about 25 minutes flat, and before we knew it the boys were wrestling in the tent.

We made some S’mores at our campfire, but James, my 3-year-old, insisted on eating the chocolate bars a la carte.

At bedtime, he seemed comfortable enough in his kid’s sleeping bag, but was still a bit confused by the whole endeavor.

“Is this our house?” he asked, perhaps wondering if we were planning to live in the tent permanently. “Where is our hotel?”

As we tried to get the boys to settle down and go to sleep, my wife noticed a bunch of unused tabs on the ceiling of the tent and we wondered what on earth they were for. No matter how good you are at tent assembly, there will invariably be some unused parts that cause you needless panic.

Prior to the trip, I had nightmare visions of the boys keeping us up all night with requests for water, bathroom breaks, and God knows what else – but amazingly, I was the only bonehead that didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I’d left the cap on my sleeping pad open and all the air had seeped out of the bloody thing, so I woke up 18 times in the night with a sore back and a cranky neck.

The kids were sprawled all around the tent, half over my wife and me, and not remotely inside their sleeping bags, but they did fine. On our second night, I was battling a bad stomach – and you don’t really want to be a fourth mile away from the nearest bathroom in that circumstance, but with a little Pepto, I got by. That night, I made sure my pad was inflated properly and I slept like a log.

In the morning, we were awakened by a chorus of birds, frogs and crickets, and the day’s first light that crept in through our tent. Ordinarily, I consider noise and light unwanted intrusions in the morning, but greeting the day from my tent, both seemed pleasing. Even better, I enjoyed rolling over and seeing the three people who mean the most to me sprawled in and out of a jumble of sleeping bags in our Big House.

Is it possible to get a decent night sleep in a tent with two toddlers? Believe it or not, yes it is. My 5-year-old son, Leo, told us he was hooked on the camping lifestyle.

“I want to sleep in a tent every night,” he said, right before asking us if we could download a kids movie on my wife’s Kindle.

Exclusive First Look At John Muir Trail Documentary

by Kraig Becker on

The John Muir Trail is the quintessential American hiking route. Located in California, the 211-mile-long trail runs from the summit of Mt. Whitney in the south to Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley in the north. Along the way it passes through some of the most pristine and spectacular wilderness in all of North America, including Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

In July of last year, a group of five friends set out to hike the entire length of the trail, documenting the journey as they went. Their trek lasted 25 days and culminated on the 14,505-foot summit of Whitney, where they were joined by an interesting assortment of characters that they met along the way. That same group of backpackers is now preparing to release a documentary about the trail and their experiences on it. They call the 87-minute long film “Mile… Mile & A Half” and as you can tell from the trailer below it looks fantastic.

The filmmakers hope to put the finishing touches on the film in the weeks ahead and get it ready to be shown in adventure film festivals across the country. With that in mind the team has launched a Kickstarter page to help raise funds to complete their project. With a little over a month to go, they’re about halfway to their goal and could use a little help getting over the top.

Thanks to the entire Muir Project team for giving Gadling an exclusive first look at this trailer.


MILE… MILE & A HALF (trailer 2) from The Muir Project on Vimeo.

Damnation Creek: Hiking Old-Growth To Ocean In Redwood National Park

by Laurel Miller on

There are few places on earth I love more than Redwoods National Park, located 325 miles north of San Francisco. Growing up, we used to drive up the coast every summer, and a few nights camping in the redwoods was always on the itinerary.

The Redwoods are actually several parks within the national and state system, all of which are managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and California Department of Parks and Recreation. Together, they comprise nearly half of the remaining old-growth redwood forest in the state.

Last month, while driving down the coast from Seattle to San Francisco, I decided I was long overdue to sleep amongst the world’s tallest trees. I booked a site at Mill Creek Campground in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, just south of the dreary fishing port of Crescent City.

When I camp, I want to stay in a place that smells of wood smoke, and has sites covered in moss and ferns. I desire a forest canopy overhead, ranger talks, trailheads and wildlife lurking in the undergrowth. I do not want to see functioning cellphones, tour bus-sized RVs or swimming pools. I may be in a campground instead of the backcountry, but I have my standards.

Mill Creek, as well as Jedidiah Smith Campground (located 10 miles east of Crescent City, in Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park), both meet my criteria. I’ve stayed at the Smith campground in the past, and at either place, I’d be perfectly content to sit on a stump all day, inhaling the scent of burning wood and watching the banana slugs go by.

That said, I camp so I can hike, which is why I was thrilled to discover one of the Redwood’s best trails – one of only a few with old-growth forest-to-beach access – just down the road from Mill Creek. Damnation Creek was originally used by the region’s Yurok Indians, who went to the beach to collect shellfish and seaweed.

The trail drops 1,100 feet in two miles, switchbacking through Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, ferns, and huckleberries. It’s a steep drop, but utterly breathtaking due to the cathedral-like shroud of ancient redwoods that tower over everything. Damnation Creek runs near the bottom of the trail, just before you emerge onto a bluff overlooking the sea stacks of the Pacific. If the tide is out, you can walk down to a patch of rocky beach overlooking Damnation Cove. Take a deep breath. Realize cellphones and civilization are overrated. Linger. It’s a steep hike back.

Getting there
Located eight miles south on Highway 101 from Crescent City; the Damnation Creek Trailhead and pullout is at mile marker 16, on your right. Don’t leave any valuables in your car.

[Photo credit: redwoods, Flickr user goingslo]