Mar 06 2022
Rising over the palms and the Pueblo Revival and “desert school” building designs of the city of Phoenix, Arizona, are the desert peaks that form the Phoenix Mountains. This winter I got to explore the second highest peak of the Phoenix Mountains, Piestewa, during my Christmas/New Year holiday. Winter is a lovely time for exploring …
Feb 28 2022
It is nothing short of a tragedy to find just how little appreciation is given to the momentous feats of the souls who came before us, upon whose legs and backs our country came into its rightful greatness. The Lewis & Clark expedition of 1804 – 1806 is one such feat. In our world of …
Feb 28 2022
In the deep heart of the Rocky Mountains, just south of the alpine town of Leadville, a mountain known locally as the “Gentle Giant” overlooks snow-capped ranks of lesser peaks and hills. This is where she has lived for about thirty million years, and with any luck, the next thirty million years isn’t going to …
Feb 28 2022
They say you are who you hang out with. For this reason, it is difficult to get a true sense of a mountain until you spend some time with its neighbors. Sometimes the character of one peak may be better appreciated after having explored others in the same range. You know what you’re looking at …
Feb 28 2022
Sitting in the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean lounges the Italian island of Sardinia. Throughout history, whichever tribe or nation had control of Sardinia was considered a bellwether for the power dynamics of the Mediterranean. One of the things that made Sardinia such a strategic point, aside from its relative size as the second-largest island …
Feb 12 2022
If you spend as much time as we do thinking about mountains, then there is a good chance that you have asked yourself the most pressing question that there is about any mountain, which is, quite simply, How Big is it? Our fascination with mountain landscapes is no doubt due to the sense of majesty and …
Feb 12 2022
There runs through the heart of our country a mighty spine of rock … a jagged 3,000 mile wonder that separates the Great Plains from the Western Plateau, and the deserts of New Mexico from the woodlands of Canada. Truly, this is the Purple Mountain Majesty that we sing of, and the Rocky Mountain High that has …
Feb 05 2022
The summit of Sierra Negra is a special place. It is an extinct volcano with bragging rights as the fifth-highest peak in Mexico. Its prominence is just 1,770 feet (540 m), but its location in the higher altitude neighborhood of Pico de Orizaba, the summit of Sierra Negra reaches a maximum of 15,030 feet (4,580 …
Feb 05 2022
The mountains hold so much wonder. I feel a billowing sense of wonder whenever I stand on a giant rock which was forced up by energy deep within the Earth to soar above the crust many millennia ago. A mountain top is a place to look around and gain a deeper understanding of the fascinating …
Nov 28 2021
Mount Ritter When the electrified chaos of the city becomes too loud, it is necessary to escape to nature. John Muir waxed poetic on the subject, and I would tend to agree with his waxings. A visit to Mount Ritter, whose jagged profile can be seen from his eponymous trail in the Sierra Nevada Mountains …
