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Year: 2015

America’s 10 Most Visited National Parks of 2015

Chances are, you visited one of the 59 National Parks that are scattered around the country. America’s National Park’s have never been more popular, with 2015 seeing 300 million visitors to National Park Service lands. Around the country, numerous parks shattered visitation records and gave wilderness experiences to many who had previously not seen the …

Unwrapping a White Christmas in the Olympic Mountains

I never expect a White Christmas, and if you are a resident of Western Washington, you shouldn’t either. Over the last century, the city of Seattle has only had four Christmas Days with snowfall. In outlying areas, the total is higher, but not much. In the Pacific Northwest, snowy holidays are what we see on Instagram or …

The National Park Service is Watching Your Instagram

Most days, Instagram looks like the wild west of Leave No Trace Principles and proper stewardship rules in the wilderness. On nature pages across the app, scenes of rule breaking are shared and loved. Remote areas in the wilderness become shutterbug shrines, luring scores of outdoor enthusiasts. Birds are fed, signs are ignored and laws are …

Olympic On Pace to be 7th Most-Visited National Park: November 2015 Visitor Stats

As the year winds down, so do the number of individuals who head outdoors to Olympic National Park. What started as an endless onslaught of wilderness lovers flooding Washington State’s most popular National Park has slowly turned into a trickle. In November of 2015, when large retailers like REI encouraged everyone to #OptOutside, Olympic saw …

Snowboarders Rejoice as Powder Returns to Olympic National Park

Winter snows have finally arrived at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, and local snow-sports enthusiasts couldn’t be happier. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, enough powdery goodness fell on the ridge, allowing for snowboarders, skiers and snowshoers a chance to frolic in one of the greatest winter playgrounds in America. …

Weather Closes Staircase and Other Areas of Olympic National Park for the Weekend

After what has felt like a decade’s worth of bad weather hitting us over the past seven days, the effects of the storms are continuing to wreak havoc on travel plans around Washington State and in our National Parks. Across the state, numerous roads are closed, with many more damaged and/or flooded. Rivers are flooding and spilling …

Tips for Hiking During Bad Weather Around Olympic National Park

Let’s be real for a minute. The weather on the Olympic Peninsula can be downright nasty. It isn’t unusual or out of the ordinary to have a storm dump over an inch of rain a day. You can leave your house any month of the year and find yourself caught in a deluge of rain. …

Three Amazing Backpacks for Day Hikers

I love backpacks. In fact, I love backpacks so much, I have an entire collection of them. I have so many backpacks, I have backpacks where I put my other backpacks. It is ridiculous. When I walk into REI or any of the other outdoor shops around the Seattle area, the first place I walk …

Wolf Population Increases in Yellowstone National Park

Things are looking up for the wolves of Yellowstone National Park! Despite a handful of local ranchers poaching wolves that they view as dangerous to their way of life, the wolf population is thriving since they were nearly eradicated in the early 1900s until the 1990s. While once extremely rare to see, wolves have returned in …