Southern Indiana Trails

Travel Alaska Alaska Backcountry Adventure Tours Ride off into Alaska’s wilderness with Alaska Backcountry Adventure Tours. Offering Alaska vacations, packages, and day tours. Experience Alaska like a local and let us show you all that Alaska has to offer.  Learn More Explore Fairbanks Chase the Aurora Borealis or bask in the Midnight Sun. Request a free Fairbanks Visitors Guide or Winter Guide. Imagine Yourself Here. Explore Fairbanks Responsibly.  Learn More Gustavus Visitor Association Dreaming of hiking, fishing, kayaking, whale watching or nature viewing? Visit Gustavus and Glacier Bay. Come for your adventure, leave with your memories. Gustavus is the Alaska of your dreams.  Learn More Mat-Su Convention & Visitor Bureau Get a free guide to start planning your Alaska adventure. Mountains, glaciers, wildlife and Denali experiences – the Mat-Su Valley has it all, just 40 miles north of Anchorage!  Learn More Visit Anchorage Visit Anchorage. Di...

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Past versions of me have taken great pride in the myriad ways I’ve suffered to enjoy life outside. Like the many times I’ve been soaked by leaks through my truck shell when I lived in my vehicle. Or the rafting season I spent sleeping on the ground because I didn’t want to travel with a pad. I felt like suffering was an important buy-in, my ante to earn a seat at the table as an outdoorsman. But now, as a family man, I need to strike a balance—to make camping both fun and accessible for the whole family, most important our four-year-old daughter, Jojo. So last summer I did what a previous version of myself would have found unthinkable: I became a glamper. The radical shift in my mindset happened after I used the  Life in Tents Stella Bell tent ($1,699) as a beach house of sorts for five weeks. It was our family of three’s main shelter, a 16-foot diameter amusement park for Jojo and her buds, a place to escape the oppressive smoke that choked our hometown in southern Oregon, and...

Before I ever surfed, I wiped out. A lot. Any shame I might have felt was tempered by the fact that surfing is what you might call a “failure intensive” pursuit. We were not born to stand astride thin wedges of composite material on a turbulently stochastic ocean. If you get it the first time, you’ve just cashed in a big tranche of your beginner’s luck. There’s a whole taxonomy of wipeouts. You can nosedive, or “pearl.” You can go “over the falls” or get “axed.”  You can get swept off your board by an unpredictable wave. You can sideswipe another surfer. You can even wipe out on land, as I learned during one humiliating occasion, by getting tangled up in your own leash. As a species, we don’t really like wipeouts. Every sport has them, often graced with their own particular slang: endos, yard sales, slams, whippers, face plants. You pack, you biff, you crater, you peel. They seem to happen, more often than not, in the presence of other people, and in this day and age, your epic...

1. Become a Junior Ranger The park’s excellent Junior Ranger program teaches kids (and adults—there’s no age limit) about Rocky Mountain’s history, geology, wildlife, and plants through fun activities. Children who complete the minimum number of activities earn an official Junior Ranger badge and a round of applause from real park rangers. Pick up a free Junior Ranger activity booklet at park visitor centers. In summer, don’t miss a stop at the Junior Ranger headquarters at Hidden Valley. 2. Go Horseback Riding Hop in the saddle to see the most beautiful parts of the park the way early explorers and pioneers did. Several outfitters run guided horseback rides in the park and the surrounding national forest ranging from short, easy strolls to all-day adventures. Two outfitters are based inside the park— Glacier Creek Stables and Moraine Park Stables —while several others operate from Estes Park and Grand Lake. Children as young as two can ride with an adult, and kids five and older ...

One Tyler George stood up in the 132-year-old building he was raised in, surrounded by what is typically one of the most dangerous snowpacks in America, and stared at a roomful of backcountry skiers who were there to learn how not to die in an avalanche. It was Friday night, January 4, 2019, the first day of a three-day advanced-safety course taught by the Silverton Avalanche School (SAS) in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The course was based at the St. Paul Lodge , a backcountry refuge owned by George’s family that sits just above 11,018-foot Red Mountain Pass. George, 40, was working as the hutkeeper that weekend, but he knew the snowpack intimately and had taken his first snow-safety course as a teenager. His father, noted British mountaineer and avalanche educator Chris George, started teaching for SAS around 1980, and Tyler grew up in its midst. Sandy Kobrock, the lead instructor, often called him to get a read on local conditions, and had asked him to address the Level 2 clas...

Spring is a few weeks away, and the trails will be melting out before you know it. But conditions at the parking lot do not necessarily tell you what the trail looks like up ahead. Even well into summer, snow can cling to high mountain passes. Lingering cornices and deep snowdrifts can be onerous and present obstacles. Plus, mountain weather can turn on a dime. A warm, sunny day can quickly escalate into a freezing cold whiteout blizzard. Thankfully, you can use Gaia GPS to help eliminate this guesswork of whether the trails will be sunny and snow-free. In this guide, you will learn how to use recent satellite imagery (FreshSat—Recent and Cloud Free layers), snow depth total estimates (Snow Depth layer), actual snowfall data (Snow Stations Daily layer), and Precipitation and Snow Forecasts to get a sense of how much snow may be on your hike or overlanding trip. You’ll also learn how to use these maps in conjunction with the best community resources to make informed decisions about w...

Let’s start with some assumptions: 1) You’ve seen the 1993 film Aspen Extreme , and 2) You agree it transcends cult classic status and has settled into its rightful place as the greatest ski movie of all time. Like many skiers, I have long marked the beginning, middle, and end of ski season with a viewing of the one-hour and 58-minute film following our celebrated heroes T.J. Burke and Dexter Rutecki. For decades, we’ve held them up as the golden gods of ski-town lore. And for good reason. They had the cojones to do the thing many of us say we will do, dream we will do, and ultimately never do: leave it all behind to move out west and go skiing. They are ambitious, loyal, charming, and handsome, and they make a damn good case for being the best skiers on the mountain. As the head of the Aspen Ski School reminds T.J., “Part of the job is fulfilling the fantasy: you are the fantasy.” He’s not wrong. But this is where I tell you that it is no longer T.J. Burke and Dexter Rutecki sellin...

Fellow hikers invariably laughed when I told them I was going to tackle the Florida Trail early this year. Some friends had vowed never to make the 1,100-mile trek, which is infamous for long walks on asphalt, startling wildlife encounters, and dogs that love to give chase. Those who had done it chuckled and sighed before recalling “the swamp”—the 30-mile stretch  through water at the trail’s southern start, often labeled one of the toughest hikes in the United States. I might hate it, they told me. Undeterred, I set out last month with my wife, Tina, from the trailhead due west of Miami, at the edge of the Everglades and a swampy expanse called Big Cypress. After 15 minutes on the trail, I came to understand what the veterans had warned of: during the first mile, the trail hooked right around a tiny airport, then wound left through a footpath of standing water—the safe artery of earth suddenly hidden beneath stewing brown mud. Tina and I looked for a route around the muck to ...

Welcome to Tough Love . We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman , dogsled racer and author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube . Have a question of your own? Write to us at  toughlove@outsideinc.com . I’ve been on a sort of life-long quest to learn to love the body I’m in. While I’ve made a lot of progress, I think there’s still one main problem holding me back: I don’t trust my own body. I never have. As a kid, I never learned to ride a bike. I never climbed trees. I could never jump a fence, or run a mile without stopping, or do a handstand. I have never broken a bone because I’ve never taken risks.  I am currently trying to become more physically active, especially outside, because it feels good, but I feel like my disconnection with my body is preventing me from really enjoying it and reaching my full potential. Any tips for how to connect with myself and become more physically aware/confident?...

The first ski jacket I ever owned was an anorak, a pullover shell with a three-quarter zip down from the collar and a big kangaroo pocket on the front. I loved it. It was bright and two-toned and captured a specific period of ski fashion that can only be summarized as “loud and of questionable taste.” Ah, the early ’90s.  Anoraks disappeared from the ski fashion landscape at some point later that decade. They were all the rage for a few years, and then suddenly they were gone, replaced by jackets that—get this—zipped all the way down . It’s as if the world collectively decided that anoraks weren’t the best option for performance. And the world was right. Pulling your shell over your head is a pain in the ass, especially if you’re wearing a helmet. Ditching one large pocket for several smaller pockets makes sense if you’re stashing a phone, wallet, a flask, and a burrito. Maybe the advent of the jacket was spurred by our need to carry more stuff. Who knows. The author wearing ...

My favorite quote about the suffering that runners experience during races (and hard workouts) is from legendary ultrarunner Scott Jurek : “Pain only hurts.” In other words, as intense as it may be, the discomfort we experience when running to our limit does no harm beyond being uncomfortable. Sure, it might feel like you’re dying, but you’re not. Some runners, including the pros (who wouldn’t be pros otherwise), have a higher tolerance for this sort of discomfort than others do. Those who maintain a pain-only-hurts attitude toward their suffering have the highest tolerance for it—and consequently get the most out of the physical fitness they bring to each race. What does it mean to have a pain-only-hurts attitude? At its core, it’s about not making race discomfort out to be more than it really is. To say that pain only hurts is to accept the pain as a necessary part of the racing experience instead of wishing it away as though it were an indication that something has gone wrong. Fo...