Skills

Strengthen your legs for early-season hikes, which often involve postholing in lingering snow up high and crossing run-off swollen rivers down low. Author: Jenessa Connor Publish date: May 22, 2019 Updated on May 22, 2019 Assisted Pistols This squat variation demands balance and core strength, building stability to navigate thigh-high snow and turbulent waters. Sets 3 Reps 8 (each leg) 1. Stand with your back to a chair or bench (or log) as if about to sit. 2. Standing on your right leg, push your butt back and hinge at the hips, keeping your back straight, as you lower yourself toward the chair. Simultaneously float your left leg (keep as straight as possible) out in front of you. Sit lightly and with control. 3. Immediately return to a single-leg standing position by engaging the core, pressing through your right heel, and straightening the right knee. Bring your left foot to the ground. 4. Complete all reps on one side before switching legs. … [Read more...] about 3 Leg Exercises to Jumpstart Your Hiking Season

Out of every 100 people who attempt to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, 73 will give up. Beat the odds—and save your budget—by following these rules from a gear shop owner who sees thousands of hikers every season. Author: Morgan McFall-Johnsen Publish date: May 21, 2019 Updated on May 21, 2019 Georganna Seamon knows a thing or two about thru-hikers. Every AT northbounder passes through her gear shop—Mountain Crossings in Blairsville, Georgia—after 31 miles of trial and error. The ones whose errors include starting with the wrong shoes get new ones at Seamon’s store and leave the old ones in the oak nearby. Here’s her advice for avoiding that fate.  1. Break in your shoes. Forget day-one blisters; the last thing you want is to realize your boots don’t actually fit three days in and have to buy a new pair to continue. 2. Pack light. If you don’t, Mountain Crossings’s staff will give your pack a … [Read more...] about The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Thru-Hikers

Use these tips and trips to find backcountry peace and quiet, no matter where you live. Author: Lindsay Warner Publish date: May 20, 2019 Updated on May 20, 2019 1. Hack the Permit System Ground Zero: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN/NC If you can find solitude here, you can find it anywhere. Great Smoky is the nation’s most crowded park, with more than 11 million visitors last year. But escaping the masses is easier than you’d think. The secret: a real-time online reservation system. The system lets you see exactly where the crowds are on any given night—so you can go elsewhere. (And always avoid the ever-popular Appalachian Trail, which traverses the highest ridgeline across the park.) The reservation system is easy to use: All of the available backcountry campsites show up as color-coded numbers on a map of the entire park, making it simple to plan a multi-night itinerary. Click on a red number for a hiker-only site (as opposed to … [Read more...] about The 10 Rules of Solitude

Don’t let dehydration be the thing that keeps you from sending. It was one of the first hot days of the year—one of those bright spring days when you’re painfully reminded of the power of the sun, and how it can suck the moisture and the life right out of your body. Five of us climbed together on a variation of The Green Spur on Redgarden Wall in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado. A party of five means a slow slog upward with a mess of ropes, carabiners, and logistics, all while baking in the sun. It had been cool in the morning shade on the west-facing wall on the early pitches, but now that the sun had come around I regretted leaving my water bottle at the base. Stepping out onto the knifeblade of Rebuffat’s Arete to lead the final pitch, with an ocean of exposure beneath my feet, I felt groggy and lightheaded, like my body and brain couldn’t keep up with my will to climb. Every athlete has felt the symptoms of dehydration—headaches, muscle cramps, … [Read more...] about Staying Hydrated: The Key to Climbing Harder

Author: Kevin Corrigan Publish date: Apr 30, 2019 Updated on Apr 30, 2019 Unsent /un-sent/ 1. To have failed so badly on a route you had previously climbed that you negate your redpoint. 2. A humor column. Training is hard. In order to improve, you need to do a lot of stuff, and then when that works, you need to do even more stuff to get better again. It sounds like a scam. I’d rather pay someone to inject me with gorilla DNA than go to the gym three nights a week, but so far my Darkweb searches for unethical doctors have only returned extra human kidneys, which, it turns out, don’t improve performance at all. Luckily, I’ve figured out some hackz for getting swole for less work and even less money. Training The three proven training methods below are hard, boring, or require expensive, specialized equipment. Here’s how to hack ‘em: Hypergravity Training What it is Climbing in a weight vest to increase your training load to build power. … [Read more...] about Unsent: 6 Training Hackz for Maximum Sendage