May 24 2024
Mountain lions are among North America’s most impressive predators, yet most hikers will spend a lifetime exploring mountain country without ever seeing one. Also known as cougars, pumas, catamounts, and panthers, mountain lions (Puma concolor) are secretive animals that generally prefer to avoid people. Still, hikers, trail runners, campers, and mountain bikers traveling through cougar …
May 02 2024
Mount Sinai, known in Arabic as Jabal Musa or Gebel Musa—“Mountain of Moses”—is one of the world’s most culturally significant mountains. Rising to 2,285 meters (7,496 feet) in Egypt’s southern Sinai Peninsula, the rugged granite summit has been revered for centuries as the traditional location of the biblical Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Tablets …
May 02 2024
Mount Rushmore is one of the most recognizable mountains in the United States. Four enormous presidential faces—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—look out from a granite cliff in the Black Hills of South Dakota, creating a landmark that combines mountain geology, monumental sculpture, American history, and a far older Indigenous cultural landscape. …
Apr 23 2024
Mount Kazbek Rising above the high valleys of northern Georgia, Mount Kazbek is one of the great peaks of the Greater Caucasus. Its broad, glacier-covered summit reaches 5,054 meters (16,581 feet), placing it among the highest mountains in both Georgia and the Caucasus as a whole. Kazbek is more than an impressive high-altitude summit. It …
Apr 22 2024
Kabru Kabru is a spectacular high-altitude mountain massif in the eastern Himalayas, rising along the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim. Immediately south of Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, Kabru forms part of one of the most impressive concentrations of giant peaks anywhere in the Himalayas. Kabru is more complicated …
Apr 22 2024
Kangchenjunga Rising to 8,586 meters (28,169 feet) on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, Kangchenjunga is the third-highest mountain on Earth, surpassed only by Mount Everest and K2. Yet height alone barely captures the importance of this enormous Himalayan massif. Kangchenjunga is a mountain of immense physical scale, with sprawling glaciers, …
Mar 11 2024
Phoenix Mountains Rising abruptly from the floor of the Salt River Valley, the Phoenix Mountains form one of the most distinctive urban mountain landscapes in the American Southwest. The range runs through the heart of the Phoenix metropolitan area, placing rugged Sonoran Desert ridges, rocky summits, cactus-covered slopes, and miles of hiking trails within minutes …
Jan 20 2024
Matterhorn 🏔️ Overview The Matterhorn is one of the most recognizable mountains on Earth. Rising to 4,478 meters (14,692 feet) on the border between Switzerland and Italy, its nearly symmetrical pyramid towers above Zermatt in the Swiss canton of Valais and Breuil-Cervinia in Italy’s Aosta Valley. Known as Monte Cervino in Italian and Mont Cervin …
Jan 12 2024
The Presidential Range is the highest and most famous mountain group in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, stretching across a rugged landscape of exposed ridges, glacial ravines, dense spruce-fir forests, fragile alpine tundra, and some of the most severe weather in the eastern United States. At its center rises Mount Washington, the 6,288-foot (1,917-meter) high point …
Jan 12 2024
The Southern Presidential Traverse is one of the finest high-elevation hikes in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, linking a succession of exposed summits along the southern half of the Presidential Range. Unlike the much longer full Presidential Traverse, which typically begins around Mount Madison and crosses the entire Presidential ridge, the Southern Presidential Traverse focuses primarily …
