Ultralight Hiking Blog

Hiking Japan’s Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Route by Dave Stamboulis

Hiking Japan’s Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Route by Dave Stamboulis

The Kii Peninsula of Japan’s Wakayama Province contains some of the country’s most remote terrain, home to endless mountain ranges, deep cedar forests, wild bears, and some excellent trekking. It’s...

Adventure Needed but Denied by Andrei Turró

Adventure Needed but Denied by Andrei Turró

As a person who works a full-time job I have always kept a kinda timetable of adventures and places I want to visit and when to visit them. I check the upcoming year how many extra public holiday d...

Rocky Mountain National Park Trip Report by Monica Stapleton

Rocky Mountain National Park Trip Report by Monica Stapleton

Back in 2022, I spent a summer working at Rocky Mountain National Park as a Wilderness Ranger. The work was enjoyable, largely in part due to the group of people I worked alongside and the post-wor...

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 4 by Nicole Smedegaard

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 4 by Nicole Smedegaard

My personal opinion of his trip is that actually, it was a success in many ways, although we were not able to complete the run. I also believe that an objective analysis of both incidents can attri...

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 3 by Nicole Smedegaard

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 3 by Nicole Smedegaard

This is where the final deciding accident of our trip occurred. Getting to shore felt like a must-make move since we could not see how much of the tree was in play in the class IV rapid below us. T...

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 2 by Nicole Smedegaard

Upper North Fork of the Smith River, Attempted Headwaters Run Part 2 by Nicole Smedegaard

At our chosen put-in location, there was a nice eddy at the confluence. I inflated my kayak in a bear's sleeping nook. There were rotten salmon fins and bones scattered about next to bear scat and ...