Adam's Cool Website

What I Wrote in 2024

Wild bears, deaths in the national parks, one of the biggest public lands fights of our time--and a couple of very personal adventures.

An on-trail shot from the 2023 Fjallraven Classic Sweden

I've been putting off writing this post, because I feel like I've written enough for one year. Somehow, even though I took off three full months for paternity leave, I've written upwards of 90 posts for Backpacker in 2024. While that number isn't quite as impressive as it sounds—-it includes a lot of workmanlike "Deal of the Week"-style posts, plus my fractional contributions to a lot of group efforts--it's still a metric fuckton of prose, and that's without counting all of the display text, edited copy, notes, emails, reports, Slack messages, Tweets, and the like that I need to put together in a normal year. I have four blessed days off before the calendar turns over, and I'd like to spend them hiking, playing with my kids, reading the approximately 500 Warhammer 40K novels I've hoarded, or doing basically anything else that isn't putting fingers to keyboard.

Still, I'm doing it. Partially because, well, there are four days left in the year. I've always been a believer in marking time as it passes, because my personal supply of it is limited, and it's only getting more so. If I don't acknowledge it, it feels, somehow, like my time and all the things I've done with it are slipping away behind my back. So: Here are some favorite stories that I wrung out of 2024. Here's hoping I can find at least as much juice to squeeze in the year to come.

The Death and Glory of Fat Bear Week 2024

Fat Bear Week has grown from a niche Park Service meme for wildlife watchers in the know to a legit phenomenon, with even mainstream outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times covering the action from Katmai. This year, however, dedicated live cam viewers got more than they might have expected, as one fan-favorite bear went MIA and another two engaged in a fatal scuffle on camera. I covered the events as they unfolded, and asked whether it was high time for the bear-loving public to get a reality check.

Joro Spiders Move Into the Great Smoky Mountains

I love spiders, I love hiking, and any chance I get to find the crossover between those two subjects, I take. This year, when news broke that Joro spiders, a species of large, imported orb weaver with a reputation even bigger than their 3-inch leg span, had moved into Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I contacted an expert to find out what that could mean for the local environment, and tried to bust some myths about the (totally harmless, at least to people) arachnids along the way.

Danger in the National Parks

Humans tend to be lousy at estimating risk in the outdoors--we vastly overestimate the chance of death from animals like bears or snakes, and drastically underestimate how easy it is to die from factors like heat or cold. When the National Park Service released more than a decade of systemwide visitor mortality, I took the opportunity to ground-truth some of our assumptions on outdoor hazards, and break down for readers where the real dangers lie.

In Defense of the Pee Bottle

Is there anything to personal for me to write about for work? The further I get into my career, the more the answer seems to be "no." Earlier this year, I went long on the magic of the pee bottle (try it in a blizzard and tell me it isn't better than pissing in a storm) and made an argument for why letting go of some of our physical taboos in the wilderness might be just what we humans need.

Adam's Swedish Adventure

Last year, I was lucky enough to get invited on the Fjallraven Classic Sweden, a 68-mile, multi-day trip through the river-split tundra of the Swedish Arctic put on by the brand of the same name. The members of my multinational group--12 different countries, by my count--varied in experience level but coincided in the purity of their vibes. I liked it very much (and, judging by the fact that the 2025 editions all sold out in minutes, I'm not the only one). I bet you would too.

Bears Ears Redux

Besides following the battle over Dartmoor in England, I did relatively little political reporting this year. But after the election, I returned to one of the hot button issues of the past decade, Bears Ears National Monument, to figure out what the incoming Trump administration, which shrunk it 8 years ago, means for its future. Speaking with experts and activists, I got a picture of a fight that could genuinely go either way, and an endangered cultural and outdoor resource whose future is very much still up in the air.

The Ugly Trails I Love

Finally, one of the last stories I wrote in 2024 happened to be one of my favorites, too. I grew up hiking unremarkable trails in forest preserves across Chicagoland, and for every Kungsleden or red rock desert I've hiked, there's a forgotten local trail that's changed my life. In December, I wrote about how a day trip on one of the more maligned sections of the Appalachian Trail reminded me that a good day on the trail doesn't have to start with an objectively good trail.