The hiker was on the Bell Pass Trail, a roughly 6.6-mile out-and-back near Scottsdale, when a saguaro fell over in strong ...

How Backpacker reported this story: Writer Sam Anderson spoke with the Forest Service program manager for Shasta’s climbing rangers and the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office to learn about how two ...

What to know: A search and rescue helicopter picked a 16-year-old hiker off of British Columbia’s Crown Mountain after the teenager became stuck on a cliffside. While initial comments from rescuers ...

The presents are presented, the dishes are cleaned up, the family is entertained. And when we wake up, bleary-eyed, on January 1, all that will be left to do is to confront the inevitable holiday ...

One of the fantastic perks about backpacking is that you have a free license to eat almost anything you want. The key word is almost. The number of calories you actually burn in the backcountry ...

Improvising your own firestarter is a quintessential camping experience. DIY starters are easy to make, the materials are cheap, and—because so many household items are incredibly flammable — they ...

Make sure you can identify a plant with 100 percent certainty before touching or consuming it. Hone your skills by attending plant walks with an expert, studying basic botany, cross-referencing ...

For hikers who have made the trek through Pennsylvania’s notoriously rough section of the Appalachian Trail, the 501 shelter and the Eckville shelter are notable landmarks. Unlike most of the AT’s ...

In her monthly column, The Survivalist, Jessie Krebs writes about staying alive in dangerous backcountry scenarios. Krebs is a former Air Force S.E.R.E (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) ...

Bearpacker is Backpacker’s annual celebration of bear safety, science, and stories. The story of Cocaine Bear starts with a body in a driveway. Andrew Carter Thornton II had been a paratrooper, a ...

Perfect for a day hike or longer out-and-back, this 6.1-miler rolls through mid-Atlantic woodlands then descends into Harpers Ferry, the merging point of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

After several decades on the trail, there’s only one water bottle brand that I come back to time and time again: the inimitable Nalgene. Is it the lightest? No. The flashiest? Also no. But the most ...