Trails Magazine - Issue 14
May 2026
Data Underfoot
The volunteer GPS Rangers survey thousands of miles of trails every year, gathering the data land managers depend on.
Mist shrouds the old-growth cedars towering above the jagged granite ridges and remote backcountry of Idaho’s Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. Tasked by the Forest Service with following Lewis and Clark’s route through the Bitterroot Mountains, the trail-surveying volunteers that make up the GPS Rangers have split into pairs to collect their data. Handheld GPS devices and durable cameras are fastened to the shoulder straps of their packs, their notebooks at the ready.
It's July 2024. The group’s goal for this weeklong trip in the backcountry is the same as always: Use GPSs to record all the trails and gated roads of the national forests, and collect photographs and written observations along the way.
With his partner, lead volunteer Jim Tomlin won’t see the rest of the team—an eclectic mix of school teachers, research chemists, accountants, oceanographers, and lawyers––for two or three days until the group meets back at camp to share meals and stories...
By Angie Stevens
Trails Magazine - Hiker Box
October 12, 2026
From Signpost Magazine to 60-Years of Trail Work in WA
In early August of 2021, lightning in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest about 20 miles west of Naches, Washington ignited a wildland fire that rapidly spread in the areas’s dry trees and shrubs. The Schneider Springs Fire expanded west and crossed into the William O. Douglas Wilderness, killing every tree in its wake and burning the soil’s organic material.
When the fire was fully contained later that fall, an area about half the size of nearby Mount Rainier National Park was affected, with 75 miles of impacted trails. A loss of vegetation made slopes more vulnerable to erosion, and with tree roots burned, some trails had collapsed or become blocked by fallen trees.
The Washington Trails Association (WTA), in partnership with the Forest Service, spent eight weeks through the summer of 2025 rehabilitating trails in the William O. Douglas Wilderness, with volunteers and paid seasonal trail crew staff digging new trail tread, removing just under 1,000 logs, and repairing drainage issues...
Profile by Angie Stevens
Trails Magazine - Hiker Box
September 14, 2026
Mina Guli is running the length of the Colorado River
On June 22, ultra-runner and global water advocate Mina Guli laced her shoes and set off, high in the Rocky Mountains. It was day one of her journey running the entire, 2000-mile length of the Colorado River––a vital water source for 16 million people and a $1.4 trillion economy. For Guli, running is her was to be at the front lines of the water crisis and experience first-hand the people that make up a place. She hopes it’s a mechanism to drive big change, and present decision-makers and business leaders with the stories and realities that can bring about solutions. More than 10 weeks and 1,500 miles in, having battled triple-digit heat and 2 a.m. starts day in and day out, Guli is set to end her run on September 18 at the Santa Monica Pier. Guli chatted with Hiker Box Editor Angie Stevens about her quest…
Q & A by Angie Stevens
Trails Magazine - Hiker Box
August 3, 2026
Design the Tent You Wished You Had, with Dan Durston
In 2009, back before most companies were working with Dyneema, biologist and thru-hiker Dan Durston began building the ultralight gear he wished was on the market. Flash forward a decade and his company, Durston Gear, now makes highly-sought-after tents and gear for backpackers. Dan prides himself on his direct engagement with the community he’s created through online forums and a Durston Tents Subreddit. In a recent Q&A, Dan and Hiker Box Editor Angie Stevens talked business origin stories, completing the first yo-yo of Canada’s Great Divide Trail, and holding onto customer connections….
Q & A by Angie Stevens
Trails Magazine - Hiker Box
June 8, 2026
Making Art in the Mountains with Emma Mary Murray
Emma Mary Murray’s Issue 13 story, Stitched Together, documents the work of the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project—a combined group of scientists and writers who spend weeks in the Washington mountains every summer researching and documenting, through art, the region’s glacial recession. Murray, an illustrator and embroidery artist (find her work as far back as the Cartograph of Issue 1), chatted with Hiker Box Editor Angie Stevens about her work, the project, the North Cascades, and the role art has in documenting them…
Q & A by Angie Stevens
Trails Magazine - Hiker Box
April 27, 2026
Behind the Story: Hiking Through Our Geologic Past
“Geology’s greatest contribution may be philosophical rather than scientific: the concept of deep time,” wrote Taylor Roades in her Issue 13 feature, Time Scales. “Hiking, then, becomes a way of moving through that scale. Like a walk through a library not authored by people but by Earth’s dynamic history.” ……
By Angie Stevens
