Our friend Danny Bernstein has strong opinions about taking care of our public lands. A hiker, hike leader and outdoor writer, she is the author of several hiking guidebooks, including Hiking the Carolina Mountains and Hiking North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. We want to…
April showers bring May flowers, as the rhyme goes, and all of us in the Southern Appalachians expect the warm weather to arrive with those flowers. Most of the time it does, but it's also not uncommon, after the arrival…
One of the pleasures of residing in or near the woods of the Southern Appalachians is looking forward to the bloom of specific woodland plants as the year rolls by. Last year we missed the bloom of the small…
DuPont State Recreational Forest, commonly known as DuPont State Forest, or simply DuPont, was created in 1997 with a sale of over 7,500 acres to the state of North Carolina. Today DuPont comprises over 10,400 acres of permanently protected land…
It's a little bit sad to see a favorite old guidebook go out of print. After nearly 25 years, it can be hard to let go of piece of outdoor literature that has led the way to so many epic adventures, so…
At Milestone Press we're fortunate to work with a number of experts on outdoor adventure. Our authors are not just writers, they are active participants in what they write about, and they have strong, informed opinions. Recently Danny Bernstein, author…
Western North Carolina's Tsali Recreation Area is such a classic outdoor destination that anyone familiar with the trails of the Southeast likely knows of it, and countless outdoor adventurers have been introduced to mountain biking, hiking, or running on the trails there. That's why we're so…
It's been nearly 25 years since Jim Parham began his career as an outdoor guidebook author with the publication of his first book, Off the Beaten Track: A Guide to Mountain Biking in Western North Carolina. This month, Parham was…
If the prolonged power outage is rarer in western North Carolina than it used to be, perhaps it's because in the last decade the winters have been bringing us less snow. But last weekend we had a nearly perfect storm—for…
Long power outages aren’t as common as they used to be in the Smokies, but when they happen, we’re ready. Here in rural western North Carolina just four or five inches of heavy wet snow can be enough to cause the lights to…