Winter Wonderland: Trails to Try This Season in the Cumberlands

The winter hiking season is upon us, a time when many folks hang up their hiking boots and enjoy the warmth of the indoors. If you’ve never been hiking during what many hikers refer to as the “leaf off” season, though, you’ve been missing out. Views through bare trees are more expansive, skies are clearer…

Backcountry Science: Staying Warm During Winter Hiking

This weekend is turning out to be one of the coldest periods of the season for the southern and central Appalachians. On top of the cold, several snow events are also bearing down on the region, creating a winter wonderland for outdoor activities. With cold and snow, though, comes the constant threat of high-elevation winter hiking: hypothermia….

Current Conditions in the Highcountry

It’s downright nasty outside this weekend as a full-on winter storm bears down across the Cumberlands and rest of the Appalachian chain. If you’re an outdoors enthusiast, though, you’re probably less interested in the weather forecast for your town and more interested in what’s going on across the higher elevations. After all, official weather forecasts…

Backcountry Science: Rime Ice

This past weekend formed one of the first major examples this season of a somewhat common winter phenomenon in the central Appalachian high county: rime ice. Often mistaken for “snow” in trees and other objects exposed above the surface, rime ice (sometimes shortened to just “rime”) instead occurs most often not in a snowstorm but…