Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain on the Oregon Coast is a popular hike with rewarding views. This trail crosses over the mountain making a point-to-point hike possible with a shuttle vehicle. Most will just hike it as an out-and-back from one of the trailheads. Either way, if you make it to the summit you’ll have views to the […]
Topographic maps of mountains typically don’t change much over the years. Even volcanoes are unlikely to change for thousands of years (with the exception of receding glaciers these days). Mount St. Helens is a different story. When it blew on May 18th 1980, the topography of the mountain and the entire landscape around it changed […]
The National Park Service just released visitation figures from 2015. In total, our national parks saw 307,247,252 recreation visits, up nearly 5% over 2014. Total overnight stays in park campgrounds and the backcountry were up 6% over 2014 and tent camping in particular was up 13%. Here are the top 10 most visited parks. All […]
Here is a map of the volcano that is currently erupting in the Eastern Aleutians region of Alaska. As of March 28th it was spewing ash 37,000 feet into the atmosphere. This ash cloud is affecting air traffic through the region. Pavlof Vocano Topographic Map
It’s hard to find a more majestic mountain anywhere on this planet than Mt. Rainier. It might not be the highest mountain in the world or in the United States, but it rises up to over 14,000 feet and starts closer to sea level than all the mountains in the Rockies. It’s volcanic history and […]
February 11, 2016 Yes, it’s being reported that the GPS giant is buying the historic state atlas publisher. Delorme has recently dived deeper into technology with it’s inReach product which communicates with satellites and is used as a backcountry SOS device similar to the Spot device. It’s that technology that interests Garmin the most. We […]
We stumbled on an interesting map that appears to show an old water park. After some investigation, we discovered that it was a popular summer-time destination called Crystal Lake, located in a rural part of Irwin County Georgia. The postcard below shows the pavilion and beach, as it looked in 1964. Apparently, the lake would occasionally dry […]
California is dealing with one of the worst environmental disasters the state has ever seen. Depending on when this huge natural gas leak is finally stopped, it could be one of the worst the world has seen. It started on October 23, 2015 and has been leaking for over two months already. Experts are saying […]
News outlets including CNN are reporting that an armed group is in a standoff with federal agents in a building on the grounds of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural southeast Oregon. The authorities plan to wait the group out and are hopeful for a peaceful end to the situation. It started as a demonstration […]
Geologists from the University of Washington have just published an article documenting their analysis of the 2014 landslide near the small town of Oso, Washington. They determined that many slides have occurred along the North Fork Stillaguamish River over the last 10,000 years with several in the last 500 years. This high frequency of slides […]
NASA is reporting that the end is near for the Larson B Ice Shelf in Antarctica. A huge portion of it fell off in 2002 and its glacial retreat has continued to accelerate since then. Below is a most recent satellite image of the shelf. As you can see compared to the image above this […]
The world lost a great conservationist on December 8th. Doug Tompkins, the co-founder of The North Face clothing company, died after a kayaking accident in Patagonia, a region he was very familiar with and had fought to protect. Sadly he met his fate on this large and beautiful lake on the border of Chile and […]
Oil prices are a factor of supply and demand. And with the price of oil dropping towards historic lows, there is no better evidence of the surplus of oil than Cushing Oklahoma. With a capacity of 85 million barrels, Cushing is the largest oil storage field in the United States. So what does 85 million […]