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TrailGroove Blog

A Blog by the TrailGroove Team

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  • Aaron Zagrodnick 156
  • Mark Wetherington 36
  • Susan Dragoo 6
  • HikerBox 5
  • Steve Ancik 4
  • George Graybill 4
  • JimR 3
  • Kevin DeVries 2
  • Jen 2
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  • MattS 2
  • Grace Bowie 1
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  • mgraw 1
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  • Doug Emory 1
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Entries in this blog

Trips

A Day Hiking Weekend in Cuyahoga Valley National Park

My childhood best friend moved to Akron, Ohio right after she graduated high school to attend the University of Akron. Being from Virginia and having lived there all my life, I had never really heard of the city aside from its connection to Lebron James (but even about this my knowledge was severely limited due to my lack of interest in basketball). That was seven years ago, and I realized recently that I still had yet to visit despite her open invitation. Feeling guilty and quite aware of how l
Grace Bowie

Grace Bowie in Trips

1
Trips

Rugged and Remote: Backpacking the Ferris Mountains WSA

For years and usually while driving to go hike or visit some other place, a small mountain range in southern Wyoming had always caught my eye from a remote stretch of highway in south-central Wyoming – a range that sharply rises up above the dry sagebrush plains in a place nearly without a name. The consistently jaw-dropping views of these obscure peaks from north of the range and a unique row of limestone fins on the south side of the range led to further research, and I eventually learned that
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

3
Trips

Springtime Solitude - A Wyoming Red Desert Overnight

The Red Desert of Wyoming holds a unique appeal no matter your approach – it’s a country just as suitable for backpacking as it is for exploring and camping beside your vehicle off a rough and long forgotten dirt road. Either way, you’re likely to be in the middle of the nowhere. Adding to its allure, to begin the year the desert can only be comfortably explored for a short time each spring after the roads have sufficiently dried from melting snow to make passage by vehicle (just to g
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

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Trips

Backpacking in the Needles District, Canyonlands National Park

On this trip, I was able to return to Canyonlands National Park, but this time stayed on the opposite side of the river from the Maze to join up with Ted Ehrlich and Christy who drove in from Colorado to backpack through Salt Creek Canyon and the Needles. The Needles offer a near endless array of unique rock formations to find and routes to explore. Into the Needles Our respective drives late on a Thursday night resulted in a noon-ish start from the Cathedral Butte trailhead
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

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Trips

Backpacking in the Maze, Canyonlands National Park

A few years ago and to follow up on a previous Utah hiking trip, Ted Ehrlich and I spent a few days backpacking in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. The Maze is frequently referred to as one of the most remote spots in the lower 48, and though I’m not sure how exactly it ranks on that scale, it did require some significant amounts of off-highway driving to reach. The Maze is located in southeastern Utah, west of the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers and bordere
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

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Trips

Hiking Buckskin Gulch: A Trip Report and Guide

During an April trip several years ago, Ted Ehrlich and I spent a few days hiking and camping in southern Utah – one highlight of that trip had to be our hike through Buckskin Gulch, one of the longest and deepest slot canyons in the world. With a snowy drive through Wyoming and then a whiteout in Colorado, the drive wasn’t a fast one and I met Ted at a deserted trailhead near Grand Junction around 10pm. From here we’d carpool into Utah. We drove west in the night, eventually moving past the sno
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

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Trips

Overnight Ski to Section House at Boreas Pass, Colorado

They say fire warms the soul, better yet when that fire is in a potbelly stove set inside a historic cabin atop the spine of the continent burning wood you didn’t have to chop! Rachel and I decided to celebrate my 31st birthday and our recent move to Colorado by booking an overnight stay at one of the over 30 backcountry huts for rent in Colorado through the 10th Mountain Hut Association and the above scenario is exactly what we found. Based on some advice from fellow TrailGroove writer @PaulMag
HikerBox

HikerBox in Trips

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Trips

Biking the Burr Trail, Utah

The last two winters I’ve spent living in the American southwest, and before I left I planned to take a long bike ride. I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go, but I was leaning towards somewhere way out in the desert. I changed my mind many times in the months before the trip, but eventually decided to leave sunny California, and drive further inland, to Utah. I had driven this highway once before, a scenic route through the southern part of Utah. Highway 12, “The All American Road
michaelswanbeck

michaelswanbeck in Trips

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Trips

Backpacking in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, Montana

Hiking from one beautiful place to another on pleasant and well-maintained trails is a great way to spend five days. Doing so with a good friend and cooperative weather makes a great experience even better. Throw in a few synchronous strokes of good fortune and you end up with an incredibly rewarding and memorable adventure. Neither John nor I had been on a four-night trip since March 2011 when he, myself, and my girlfriend at the time did a trek through the Chiricahua Mountains in so
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Seeking Solitude: Backpacking in the Bitterroot Mountains

With backpacks loaded and my friend Drew in the passenger seat, both of us eager to head to subalpine lakes with hungry trout, I turned the keys in the ignition and proceeded to break one of my cardinal rules of backpacking: don’t start in a trip in the middle of a holiday weekend. As advantageous as having an extra day off work to extend a backpacking trip is, if you’re spending that time on a crowded trail only to end up at an area where all the best campsites are taken the “victory” is at bes
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Hiking the Mariscal Rim Trail: A Return to Big Bend

Last fall, my sister, Melissa, and I visited Big Bend National Park in west Texas (see TrailGroove #56). As we left, we decided that we needed to return in the spring – unfinished business! One of the main reasons was to hike the Mariscal Canyon Rim Trail, which we didn’t hike last trip as the temperature was going to be too high. While our previous trip (detailed here) involved more extensive hiking and some backpacking, during our latest trip, we hiked several shorter hikes and drov
Steve Ancik

Steve Ancik in Trips

1
Trips

Lakes, Peaks, & Bugs: Hiking the Beaverhead Mountains

Although lacking wilderness status or the “brand name” recognition of Glacier National Park, the Beaverhead Mountains in western Montana are a remarkably scenic landscape with few crowds and plenty of lakes with trout in them. In other words, they contain all the prerequisites for a great backpacking trip. The Beaverhead Mountains, which are at the southern end of the Bitterroot Mountain Range, are also notorious for having millions of voracious mosquitoes which makes early season trips here a f
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Summit Serenity: Climbing Mount Saint Helens

Sitting atop the summit of Mount Saint Helens, with views of over a hundred miles in every direction, a passage from a novel came to mind as I sipped a cup of coffee and gazed at distant peaks. Seemingly appropriate when applied to an exceptionally clear autumn day observed from atop a mountain, an experience that makes one feel full of life. It felt like the “most beautiful day in a thousand years. The October air was sweet and every faint breath a pleasure.” As Annie Proulx wrote in the book,
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

An Outlaws' Retreat: Hiking in Robbers Cave State Park

The forested slopes of southeastern Oklahoma’s ironically named Sans Bois Mountains provide the backdrop for much of the excitement in “True Grit,” a novel by Charles Portis and two major motion pictures (1969 and 2010). You wouldn’t know it though, for the mountain peaks shown in the films suggest places farther west. Indeed, the movies were filmed in Colorado and New Mexico, but pursuing outlaws in post-Civil War Indian Territory, as the main characters are portrayed as doing in “True Grit,” w
Susan Dragoo

Susan Dragoo in Trips

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Trips

Ancient Wanderings: Hiking in the Ventana Wilderness

I collect hidden places of refuge in the wilderness. At least once a year I retreat to one of these havens to renew my spirit. These spots have a few things in common: They are off trail, deep in the wilderness, difficult to get to, and a delightful surprise when first discovered. And, when I am there, being alone feels exactly right. Deep within one of California’s coastal mountain ranges in the Ventana Wilderness, one such location is a sandstone cave at the base of a large rock outcroppi
George Graybill

George Graybill in Trips

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Trips

Solitude in the Sapphire Mountains of Montana

I’ve always placed a premium on solitude when planning my outdoor activities and, with some planning and luck, have never found it to be particularly difficult to obtain. However, with trails across the country being more crowded than ever the past few years, it’s taken a bit more effort even in sparsely populated western Montana to have that lake, peak, or meadow all to yourself. Fortunately, with a bit of flexibility and research I was able to turn a short-notice opportunity for an overnight t
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

3
Trips

Shenandoah National Park: Hiking Back East for a Change

It’s almost as if the Pacific Ocean is a magnet, pulling me west each time I venture out to explore. While I take full advantage of the natural wonders offered by my home region in the central U.S., if I am traveling very far to hike, it is usually somewhere west of Oklahoma. As a result, I have hiked very little in the eastern United States, though I’ve managed to walk short sections of the Appalachian Trail on trips to Vermont and Maryland. Not much to brag about. Recently, I was in
Susan Dragoo

Susan Dragoo in Trips

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Trips

Hiking, Biking, and Climbing to Three Fingers Lookout

We had been warned that the Three Fingers Lookout wasn’t for the faint of heart. But that didn’t take away from the shock of first seeing it. The hut was just a speck in the distance, perched precariously on a jagged spire of rock rising up above a crevasse-riddled glacier and a low sea of clouds. From our vantage, it seemed impossible that the wooden hut could balance there for another night, let alone that there would be a passable trail to reach it. My partner, Emily, and I had got
mgraw

mgraw in Trips

2
Trips

Hiking in Yosemite: Waterfalls and Winter Solitude

It's an early December afternoon in Yosemite National Park, and I'm watching a bobcat padding down the trail in front of me. In his mouth is a lifeless gray squirrel, so large that he drops it several times. He turns and surveys me with the lazy arrogance of a house cat who's proud of his kill. I'm unsure if I should be following this wild creature down the trail. I think of how animals are protective of their food. Still, the large cat and I are headed the same way, so I continue at a distance.
Allison Johnson

Allison Johnson in Trips

8
Trips

The Crossing: A Hike Across Olympic National Park

Chris, Randy and I sat at a local brewery, a map of Olympic National Park spread across the table. We had climbed in the Olympics for decades, but now we were attempting something different – a thru hike from one side of the park to another. You might have thought planning to cross using established routes would be simple, but it was proving anything but. “Even the freaking rain forest is on fire.” Chris traced a route with his finger. The Pacific Northwest was suffering through one of its
Doug Emory

Doug Emory in Trips

4
Trips

Backpacking the Pioneer Mountains of Montana

As a backpacker, I’ve found few things more enjoyable than hiking over a nameless and trail-less mountain pass to beautiful subalpine lakes with trout swimming in their frigid waters. In the mountain ranges of Montana, this isn’t too difficult a feat to accomplish, at least logistically. However, the physical challenge of gaining nearly a thousand vertical feet in well under a mile of horizontal travel is nothing to scoff at, regardless of your conditioning. With millions of acres of public land
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Arizona Wonderland: Hiking Chiricahua National Monument

Along with towering mountains and alpine lakes, awe-inspiring rock formations are one of the quintessential landscape features of the American West. From Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, to Delicate Arch in Utah, to Half Dome in California, iconic formations draw hikers and sightseers to far-flung public lands to witness the majesty sculpted by nature. In the Southwest, rock formations are by and large the main attraction. National parks, monuments, and other public lands contain enough arches, canyons
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Olympic National Park: Backpacking the Quiet Corner

From beaches to rainforests to glaciers, Olympic National Park provides hikers with access to a stunning variety of landscapes. Although I’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to do in the park’s 922,650 acres, I have had the privilege of soaking in its hot springs, swimming in its alpine lakes, and walking among the giant trees in its rainforest. The extensive trail network of Olympic National Park allows for memorable backpacking trips of all lengths, from overnight outings to week
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

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Trips

Backpacking the Maroon Bells: A Shoulder Season Weekend

We shuffle off the bus and melt into a crowd of tourists, all headed for the perfectly framed view of the Maroon Bells surrounded by bright yellows and greens. Just a minute from the parking lot and we’re already sold on our three-day adventure. More commonly a four-day trip, the Four Pass Loop is one of the most popular – and most photographed – backpacking routes in the United States. The 28-mile trek takes hikers over four mountain passes, ascends and descends over 7,800 feet, and
SarahLynne

SarahLynne in Trips

0
Trips

Hiking the Slough Creek-Buffalo Fork Loop in Yellowstone National Park

Wolves, Red Dogs, Grizzlies, & Outlaws A tiny “red dog” – a fuzzy, reddish bison calf – was all but glued to its mother’s side as she fought off a half dozen wolves near Yellowstone’s Slough Creek. The mother had strayed from the herd, and wolves were attacking from all sides in an attempt to separate her from her baby. The stiff-legged little calf wheeled and turned with its mother as best it could, but the outcome seemed inevitable. The standoff was visible to the naked eye
Barbara

Barbara in Trips

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