Blue Ridge Outdoors - The best, free, outdoor magazine of the southeast! Travel, Hiking, Biking, Camping, Skiing, Environment and more...

May 2007

Featured Stories: Urban Whitewater: Big Waves in the Big Cities

Urban whitewater�it sounds like an oxymoron. But when you�re stuck in the city with a boat and a paddle (hey, it happens), you�ll do anything to get a quick fix.

Featured Stories: Total Vertical Feet

Hang on to your paddle! Southern Appalachia is home to the world�s steepest, scariest creekboating competition.

Featured Stories: Creek Walking

On the map, they have many names: streams, rivulets, branches, tributaries, runs, and brooks. In spring they can be labeled freshets. But when you are talking about playing in a �small body of running water,� only �creek� will do. And when you hop across stones or hunt crayfish in a creek, you call that creek walking.

Featured Stories: Life on the Rocks

Misadventures of a Twenty-Something on the Trail

Featured Stories: The Best of the Fests

Our top 50 festivals in the Southeast include rowdy river rages, traditional bluegrass festivals, hippie hoedowns, beer-based bashes, and green gatherings.

Featured Stories: A. T. Journal: Follow in the Footsteps of an Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike

Follow in the footsteps of Leonard and Laurie Adkins on an Appalachian Trail thru-hike.

Switchback: Are visitor quotas needed for national parks in the Southeast?

Reader Forum

News of the Wood: Inner City Outings: Urban Teens Explore New Turf

Deshawn Mayfield gazes across the vast view from Spy Rock. Though he�s only a couple hours from home, he feels worlds away from his rundown neighborhood on the East End of inner-city Richmond. The seventh grader, who comes from a low-income household, had never before been given the opportunity to hike in the mountains.