Anyone spending time hiking, cycling, or skiing, has experienced chapped lips. The condition of dry, chapped lips often starts as a minor annoyance. Left untreated, it can lead to painful and unsightly cracking and bleeding. A more severe condition called angular cheilitis (also called perleche) is a fungus that causes painful splitting at the corners of the mouth. Chapped lips are caused by a lack of moisture when the layer of oil naturally produced by the body to coat the lips dries up. Exposure to cold and dry air, intense exposure to the sun, and indoor heating are all major […]
Life
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Knee problems are common because they are one of the most used and abused joints in the human body. If you frequently experience knee pain during descents or resulting soreness afterward, chances are you need to improve your form or pack weight. Excess weight adds more strain to the knees Your knees and hips are vulnerable to injury because they bear the most weight of your body. A force of three to six times your body weight is exerted on your knee with each level step you take. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, a force of 450 – 900 […]
Autumn is a spectacular time of color in many areas of the Earth, and the U.S. Appalachian Mountains are no exception. From radiant reds to mustard yellow, the vibrant display of color is short-lived, earning leaf-peeping a peak priority. What causes such brilliant displays of leaf color this time of the season, anyway? Think you already know? We thought so, too. Here are a few things we learned after some quick research. Here is what we found – Leaf Foliage Fall foliage is a byproduct of chemical changes when deciduous trees prepare to go dormant for winter. The difference in […]
Sound is a signature of our environment, a narration of the scenery around us. The familiar clamor of vehicles, sirens, leaf blowers, and dinging phones is characteristic of living in populated areas. While the city soundscape can become mundane and unnoticeable, it can be a deafening annoyance to others. Part of the wilderness experience is to escape this cacophony of man-made sound and serenaded by wind and wildlife. The streetscape noise fades away once in the wilderness, but the skies overhead have become less quiet. The echo of aircraft propellers from cargo jets, military jets, commercial airliners, private recreational planes, […]
It is a common scenario: when we get lost in the wilderness, we wind up walking in circles. Much to our dismay, at some point we’ll revisit our tracks and feel despair that we’ll never make it out of this loop and back to civilization. The German research scientist, Jan Souman’s empirical data confirms that humans have a tendency to not only walk lopsided but to self-navigate within a loop when lost. Favoring Loops in Poor Visibility In the study, participants were instructed to walk straight from two different starting positions (marked as red dots). The blue line represents the […]