Are you ready? We are... Meet the Ready Pack: It's everything you need!

Category Archives: Experience

Familiar Old Friends

There is a lesson to be learned. Accomplishment leads to confidence, and that leads to greater comfort, and from there complacency is a close neighbor. It’s a neighbor we can stumble onto quite easily if we’re not careful. We want to respect this neighbor and give complacency a wide berth. To remain aware of ourselves and the fragility of human life. The story below was penned […]

Read More

Smart Hikers Aren’t Lonely

We’ll call him John because, well, that’s his name. John is a Class 1 or All-Season Trip Leader for the Appalachian Mountain Club’s (AMC) distinguished New Hampshire Chapter. It’s a hard-earned and respected position, to be sure. John is also a “Gridder” — meaning he is hiking all of the 4000-footers of NH in every month of the year (48×12=576) — so, at being nearly 500 […]

Read More

Sensing the Whites

People who don’t get up-close and personal or tramp upon our mountains — or any mountains, really — will probably lack understanding. Understanding, for instance, that moutain weather is usually temperamental, colder, windier, and can even more dangerous. Or understanding of how it feels to exert oneself step after step for thousands of steps, digging deep within, then reaping the reward of the joy of arrival. […]

Read More

Preparing for Safety

Safety is No Accident As a general rule, people don’t venture forth into the woods on a hike looking for trouble. Trouble, in fact — if you ask many if not most victims of trips gone awry — is the furthest thing from their minds. And that is a problem in the mountains. Or can be. Ignorance may be bliss, as the saying goes, but in […]

Read More

Hiking NH’s 52 With A View

IMPORTANT NOTE: This page was updated in 2020 to reflect list modifications made by its creators. If you are looking for something less, something different, something under four-thousand feet in elevation, look no further. Though trust us when we add that sometimes less is actually more. In other words, some of the mountains on this list, while under 4000-feet, are really quite challenging featuring long hikes […]

Read More

Not Here, Not Now

The Epic of Dan McGinness… a True Story The following is a story of self-rescue. A tale of being involuntarily stranded overnight; forced to bivouac. A situation resulting not from injury, but from an unrecoverable navigational challenge. The time and place is near-winter on the Presidential Range — which is like real-winter everywhere else. It’s a tale of preparation, sound thinking, and courage spelling the difference […]

Read More

The Backpacker’s Fire

In The Beginning: Where We Have Fire Sometimes it’s nice to have a fire. It can be a source of comfort while keeping the night at bay and warming the soul. And it’ll warm us in other ways, too, from toes to fingers, from gathering the wood to sidling up to the blaze, just watch that you don’t burn your socks or melt the rand or […]

Read More

Anatomy of a Rescue

If you’re injured in the backcountry there are possible many scenarios with many outcomes, but most have one thing in common: Rescue will take longer than one may expect. To give a clearer understanding of why, this fictional tale describes a typical rescue from start to finish. Chapter 1: The Situation To begin our story, let’s consider this: It is early June and you’re hiking a […]

Read More

Metamorphosis of a Hike

It is here that I think of hiking as an almost religious experience. What follows is a 2013 article reprint by Mike Cherim detailing the various stages hikers often go through as they put mountains behind them. Aside from the never added “mindlessly driving there for hours on end” stage, you should be able to relate to at least some of this. After all, hiking is […]

Read More

A Healthy Fear

Have you ever been scared on a mountain? Frightened for your life — or for your fingers or toes? Have you ever wondered frantically which way to run from an alpine thunderstorm? Have the winds ever knocked you flat? Has the cold ever invaded your body so deeply that you had extraordinary difficulty with the most mundane tasks? These conditions and more can consume your mind […]

Read More

Three Systems for Hikers

Somewhere near the beginning of our Winter Skills course we discuss the “three systems” we rely on as hikers, backcountry skiers, climbers, and mountaineers. This triad of systems of which we speak refers to us, what we wear, and what we carry. Let’s discuss these systems, starting with the one we should know best: us. System One: We The Hiker… US This is the most important […]

Read More

It’s Your Ceremony

Brides and grooms, we have good news: you can do no wrong. If you’ve been worried, stressing about how your non-denominational wedding ceremony will proceed or the vows that you’ll recite, you cannot screw this up. Seriously. We offer a simple standard ceremony and vows, and most folks are okay with that, but we are here to tell you that you can have it basically however […]

Read More

Don't Wait Too Long!

Book today to begin your outdoor experience. Use the button to the right to go to our booking form page...

%d bloggers like this: