Joe and Kelly Ryan
A father-daughter story
by Sam Demas
Joe Ryan built his huts to provide people an affordable backcountry journey to enjoy nature, to learn outdoor skills, and to benefit with health and healing. A generation later his vision is a reality — beyond what he had imagined — and continues to evolve in partnership with his daughter Kelly Ryan.
By Ben Dodge, Executive Director, Tenth Mountain Division Hut System
[Editors note: Many hut systems struggle with clunky online reservations systems. Tenth Mountain Division Huts designed their own and have successfully upgraded it to handle online reservations. Thanks to Ben for this first piece in a series of “Operational Notes” to share hut management practices and innovations. — Sam Demas]
Tenth Mountain Division Huts decided in late 2013 to add the capability to book hut trips online, in addition to booking by phone. This decision was based on feedback received from hut visitors who stated their preference to book online because they were familiar and comfortable with online commerce, and to book anytime they wanted including evenings and weekends.
More hut-to-hut hiking in USA?
Part 1: Benefits
By Sam Demas, hut2hut.info
Lets have a national conversation about huts
Americans love to hike their 167,00 miles of trails located on federal and state lands. We are building new trails to meet demand, and trail use is projected to continue increasing. But how do Americans feel about placing hut systems on some fraction of their trails? How do we feel as a nation about hut-to-hut hiking, skiing and biking? No one knows. It’s worth talking about.
Book notice of “Hut in the Wild” by Dianne Johnson, with a link to chapter one “Hut as Inscape“.
Dianne Johnson’s quirky, delightful, and inspiring book Hut in the Wild (http://www.loveofbooks.com.au, 2011) explores the hut as an archetype, “a cabin of the imagination, and inscape, it is redolent of a lost paradise regained, a gleaner’s bliss….and sometimes a place of hospitality.” Dr. Johnson, an anthropologist, has compiled a series of essays as homage to the hut as a powerful “inscape”, or idea and archetype. Johnson wrote books on many topics (including Aboriginal social justice and indigenous astronomies), and this little book (97 pages) is a flowering of her love affair with huts and wilderness.
The World Trails Network (WTN) has published the first issue of “World of Trails”. Robert Searns, editor, states in his welcome note:
This publication is the first global resource of its kind, serving trail advocates, designers, planners, trail managers, tourism industry professionals, national economic development agencies and, of course, trail enthusiasts from around the world. Our goal is to offer, on a regular basis, with this digital magazine, current information about trails, featured trails in many nations, access to trails development resources, a forum for exchange on trail matters and much more.
Check it out for an international perspective on the WTN’s movement to bring advocates and experts together around the world and to promote high quality trails worldwide.
Authors Kim Smith and Matt Kirby published the results of their investigation of what the concept of wilderness means to people born after 1980. They were interested to learn how factors such as anthropogenic climate change and a decline in exposure to the outdoors may have changed the meaning of wilderness for 21st century Americans. They wanted to know: does the wilderness tradition still speak to Millenials? Their paper “Wilderness 2.0: what does wilderness mean to the Millenials?” was published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, April 2015.
Click here to read the article: Wilderness 2.0
The American Hiking Society has issued a valuable overview report on the status and future of our hiking trails. Here is the description from their web site:
American Hiking Society is pleased to announce it’s publication of Hiking Trails in America: Pathways to Prosperity, a report that answers the need for a one-stop source for readily understood information about America’s hiking trails and the myriad of benefits these trails offer the nation. Hiking Trails in America provides information about the evolution of hiking trails in the U.S., the trails community, the benefits of trails, and in the 2015 inaugural issue, the economic benefits of trails, which are surprisingly significant.
Take note of interesting opinion piece “Leaving only footprints? Think Again” reporting on research the impact of walking on wildlife. Published as an opinion piece in the New York Times on February 15, 2015 by Christopher Solomon, this piece will make you think again about the impact of humans in the wilderness.
By Lis Nielsen, President European Ramblers Association (ERA-EWV-FERP)
Walking is a very popular and growing pastime worldwide. Europe is no exception! All over Europe more and more people tie their bootlaces and set out during their holidays and leisure time to discover a variety of natural beauties on foot. Indeed, Europe offers thousands of kilometers of amazing trails enjoyed by the locals and tourists alike.
By David Hooke, Vershire, Vermont
[Editors note: To me, this story demonstrates how an excited group of young people can inspire others to join them in establishing an extensive trail and cabin system. The Dartmouth Outdoor Club (DOC) was an expression of the amazing conservation movement in the USA in the early 20th century. This outbreak of environmental fervor — led by John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and many others — inspired the development of the National Parks System of the U.S. and fostered greater environmental activism and consciousness in the U.S. population. This conservation movement also inspired a large-scale collegiate Outing Club movement that started at Dartmouth. In one generation the DOC developed a system of over 35 huts on trails leading from the Connecticut River in Hanover, N.H. into the heart of the White Mountains. I am grateful to David Hooke, author of Reaching That Peak: 75 Years of the Dartmouth Outing Club (1987), for kindly agreeing to write a brief summary of the origins and development of this collegiate cabin and trail system. — Sam Demas]
Dartmouth College, in Hanover New Hampshire, was a successful but quiet and remote outpost of North American higher education by the first decade of the 1900s. All-male from its founding in 1769, the college of 1909 was a lonely, even unhealthy place. Fall and spring dances were the only times that women were invited on campus; as result, winter was dismal, characterized buy “stuffy rooms, hot stoves, card games and general sluggishness resulting from lack of exercise.” Students and faculty alike were bored and looking for new possibilities.