PETER POTTERFIELD, Journalist
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From National Geographic Adventure
The on-line version of Peter Potterfield's May 2005 Cover Story for National Geographic Adventure.
"With so many tantalizing trails crisscrossing the globe, any serious adventurer needs to prioritize. Which routes off the biggest payoffs for time, effort and expense. After hiking more than 5,000 miles, over six continents, author Peter Potterfield has the answers. Here's his ultimate crib sheet for the top ten trails on the planet"
— National Geographic Adventure
From GreatOutdoors.com
Classic Hikes of North America Photo Gallery
GreatOutdoors.com editor Peter Potterfield has spent the last decade hiking all over North America to identify and report on the most interesting hiking routes on the continent...
The Skyline Trail is often called not just the most spectacular trail in Jasper National Park, but one of the most interesting backcountry routes in North America...
Come along as GreatOutdoors.com Editor Peter Potterfield takes us with him on rafting outfitter OARS' famous craft beer trip on Idaho's Salmon River...
The salmon fishing is called the best in the world here in Canada's most out there chain of islands, but there's much more...
The backcountry journey through Saskatchewan's Boreal Forest, the billion acre ribbon of trees stretching from one end of the continent to the other, takes you to the birthplace of Canada's conservation movement...
New York's re-purposed elevated railway has become the darling of Manhattan hikers. New Yorkers, starved for a place where one can walk block after block without stopping for traffic and stop lights, flocked to the High Line when the first, short, southern section opened in 2009 as a city park...
Peter Potterfield hikes the Yosemite Grand Traverse, a week-long backcountry journey through the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Yosemite National Park. The route often follows the unique drainage of the Merced River before reaching, eventually, the dramatic high country of Tuolumne Meadows. A side trip to the summit of Half Dome via the cable route is a standard feature of the journey...
From the glaciers of the Swiss Alps to the capitol city of Bern, we climb, hike, bike and raft along the turquoise waters of the river Aare from its mountain headwaters to Switzerland's iconic city...
Hiking Texas's Big Bend National Park
A backcountry journey through the High Chisos Mountains offers a glimpse down to the Rio Grande and into Mexico. When you spend some time here in Big Bend National Park, you discover lots of surprises, including world class hiking among the peaks. I made the journey way down here-it's not an easy place to reach-to hike in the High Chisos mountains...
Come along with GreatOutdoors.com editor Peter Potterfeld as he hikes the brand new Wales Coast Path, a bold vision combining scenery and history as it traces the wild coastline of Wales for more than 800 miles, passing foggy headlands, rocky beaches, and thousand year old castles. The trail opened in May of 2012, and Peter brings you one of the first reports...
Waterton: The Quiet Jewel of Canada's Rockies
Tucked between Banff National Park to the north, and Glacier National Park to the south, sparsely visited Waterton Lakes National Park sits astride a narrow waist of the Rocky Mountains, where the high peaks don't bother with foothills, where the bear mojo is more intense than even Denali, and there's more species of wildflowers than in Jasper and Banff combined...
Dreaming of summer hikes? Then dream big, because there's no backcountry fun to rival that of summer adventures in the Bobbie Burns and Bugaboo ranges of British Columbia. Come along as editor Peter Potterfield shares his recent adventure with Canadian Mountain Holidays where helicopters whisk you up into the high country for glorious ridge walks, rock climbs, glacier excursions and world class via feratta routes...
One of America's most iconic backcountry routes, the Teton Crest Trail takes backpackers into the heart of the spectacular Grand Tetons, and comes with enough route options to make for a weekend or a week-long adventure that will prove unforgettable...
Come along as GreatOutdoors.com joins forces with Columbia and Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides for an epic seven-day trek through the Sierra to try out the latest and greatest gear for 2010. Sixty miles on the Yosemite Grand Traverse proves a great experience and the ultimate gear test...
Hiking Utah's Cedar Mesa Country
This unique plateau in southeastern Utah soars to 7,000 feet but harbors dozens of canyons slicing through the layer cake of the Colorado Plateau. With the greatest concentration of ancient Anasazi ruins on earth, Cedar Mesa's landscape and artifacts make it a great place to kick off the hiking season...
Jordan's Jewel: A Trek to Petra
Everybody who goes to Jordan goes to Petra, but few people get there via a 50 miles trek that in six days travels from Dana Biosphere Reserve to Wadi Araba and into the Sharah Mountains before arriving at the storied city of Petra through the back door. Come along as GreatOutdoors.com shows you the way...
Beaches of blinding white sand and turquoise water meet granite mountains and towering coastal cliffs on this two week odyssey from Bay of Fires and the Freycinet Peninsula to the remote wilderness peninsula of Tasman National Park...
Hiking Ireland's Wild West Coast
The whole point of this hiking odyssey is to experience the range of West Coast Irish walking terrain, from spectacular national parks to quiet rural backwaters. So we head for County Roscommon and the village of Cloonfad, where the local residents have taken a classic local walking route and mapped it and marked it so visitors like us might have a look...
Join GreatOutdoors.com editor Peter Potterfield as he ventures on a journey of discovery through the backcountry of Israel in search of adventure. Who would expect world class canyons to rival those of southern Utah, or a feature so grand it is called the Grand Canyon of the Middle East. Along the way, he discovers the civilized city of Tel Aviv, and the historical epicenter of Jerusalem's Old City.
Five days on the legendary Chilkoot Pass Trail, one of the premier backcountry routes in North America, inspires new respect for the physical stamina of the Klondike gold rush miners as it takes you from the Inside Passage through British Columbia and into the wilds of the Yukon.
Hidden Treasures of Anasazi Country
Thousand year old ruins and inscrutable rock art add interest and mystery to hiking the scenic canyons of Southern Utah's Cedar Mesa...
A thousand-pound polar bear ambles across the frozen surface of a tide pool toward the coastline of Hudson Bay. From the opposite direction, from Cape Churchill, another bear appears out of the overcast, following the rugged shore...
With a record of ascents unrivalled by any other rock climber, Lynn Hill adds the roles of mother, author and Patagonia ambassador to her climbing achievements....
A Utah rancher kept the remnants of a thousand-year-old village under wraps for 50 years until advancing age forced him to reveal his secret....
"For technical ski mountaineer Andrew Mclean, making a first descent of the Alaska Range's fearsome Mount Hunter can be seen as a logical progression in a lifetime spent seeking out "challenging" lines. Hunter, at 14,573 feet has been called "the most difficult 14,000 foot peak in North America" by Jonathan Waterman...."
On the Wings of an Angel: Heli-Hiking in the Cariboo Range
"When you're heli-hiking, the helicopter becomes an integral part of every day life, perhaps even the defining factor. That Bell 212 is for only one purpose: to take us on two or three hiking trips every day. It's like cramming a season's worth of backcountry travel into just four days..."
The Changing Role of Sherpa Climbers
"But what Lakpa Rita has done is, in his own quiet way, help change the very role of Sherpas. Possessing unparalleled expertise in the mountains, Lakpa is one of the only Sherpa working as a full-time mountain guide around the world..."
"This is Lappland, the remote northern region of Sweden, a place that harbors the last true wilderness in Europe... The Swedes have built a 450-kilometer-long hiking route known as Kungsleden through this big country. This "King of Trails"..."
From Gorp-Away-Outside.com
"Almost three decades have passed since I first succumbed to the irresistible appeal of wilderness. An early hike took me to a windswept ridge in Colorado's Sangre de Cristo Range. From camp, I looked south across September slopes golden with autumn aspen..."
From MountainZone.com
In the Footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton
"In the unearthly reality of the icy fog, the approaching apparition could be anybody, perhaps even the ghost of Ernest Shackleton himself, trudging forever across this wild interior of South Georgia Island, the scene of the explorer's greatest trial, and greatest success..."
"And everybody' s trek is different. Wind-swept monasteries, surreal vistas, a friendly indigenous population, strange travelers, debilitating dysentery, dissociative reactions, and potentially lethal hypoxia await all those who make this famous journey..."
"'Is it an accident I started climbing?' he asks, smiling. 'Well, in some ways, everything in life's an accident, right? It's just sort of the path you walk down and the things you stumble into that determines what you do with your life...'"
Anatoli Boukreev talks about Everest
"'What is guiding Everest?' asks Anatoli Boukreev. 'I don't know what being an Everest guide means. I am a coach, not a guide.' Anatoli Boukreev, wearing sandals and sweatpants, is sitting in the Gauri Shankar Hotel in Kathmandu next to a big paper sack of green grapes he's scored somewhere..."
"'It's a pretty simple thing. For all the complexities that exist in climbing, it's actually a very primal thing for those who do it. It's true that climbing meets some kind of basic need in me...'"