https://fieldlantern.co Slow notes from the trail. en-US Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://fieldlantern.co/post/river-otters-on-the-trinity/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/river-otters-on-the-trinity/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tomas Lendvai wildlife A morning with a small volunteer otter survey on the upper Trinity River of northern California, where the species' return continues to outpace official monitoring. https://fieldlantern.co/post/insulated-puffy-jackets-three-hundred-nights-southern-andes/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/insulated-puffy-jackets-three-hundred-nights-southern-andes/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece gear-tested Imogen Reece spent two seasons in the Patagonian and Aysén regions with four insulated jackets in rotation. Down won the warmth-to-weight contest. It did not win every contest. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-prairie-strips-of-howard-county/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-prairie-strips-of-howard-county/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss conservation Across a single Iowa farm, twelve narrow strips of native prairie are filtering runoff, holding soil, and slowly persuading the neighbours. https://fieldlantern.co/post/pressure-trends-and-the-altimeter/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/pressure-trends-and-the-altimeter/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira weather A barometric altimeter is also a small weather station. A short guide to reading it that way. https://fieldlantern.co/post/river-crossings-and-the-three-questions/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/river-crossings-and-the-three-questions/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece skills Before crossing the Hollyford in late autumn, Imogen Reece spent twenty minutes on the bank asking three questions she has asked at every crossing for fifteen years. https://fieldlantern.co/post/a-fortnight-in-a-shepherds-hut-on-skye/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/a-fortnight-in-a-shepherds-hut-on-skye/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb field-notes Two weeks above Glen Brittle in late May, with the Cuillin Ridge across the glen and a cast-iron stove burning birch from the croft below. https://fieldlantern.co/post/northumberland-coast-path-april/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/northumberland-coast-path-april/ Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb trails A short national trail from Cresswell to Berwick. A walker covers it in five days at the cool end of spring and finds the castles emptier than the beaches. https://fieldlantern.co/post/fog-navigation-in-the-smokies/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/fog-navigation-in-the-smokies/ Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb weather Twelve months of fog reports from one ridge, and what they suggest about reading the cloud you are inside. https://fieldlantern.co/post/shoulder-season-route-planning-cairngorms/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/shoulder-season-route-planning-cairngorms/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira maps-and-routes Between the snow and the midges, the Cairngorms offer a narrow window each May for long walks on the high plateau. Planning a route for that window means reading the maps for ground that the maps do not quite describe. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-art-of-the-rest-step/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-art-of-the-rest-step/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tomas Lendvai skills On the steep upper third of Mount Hood's south side route in late May, Tomas Lendvai climbed for ninety minutes without stopping. He used the rest step on every footfall. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-shepherd-and-the-cliff-the-pembrokeshire-grazing-trials/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-shepherd-and-the-cliff-the-pembrokeshire-grazing-trials/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece conservation On the coastal cliffs above the Pembrokeshire path, a small flock of Hebridean sheep is doing the work that machines and herbicides could not. https://fieldlantern.co/post/salamanders-of-the-mountain-bridge/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/salamanders-of-the-mountain-bridge/ Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira wildlife A May night census of plethodontid salamanders along a high-elevation seep in the Mountain Bridge Wilderness of upstate South Carolina, where one of the world's densest amphibian assemblages quietly persists. https://fieldlantern.co/post/four-days-in-a-cabin-without-power-on-isle-royale/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/four-days-in-a-cabin-without-power-on-isle-royale/ Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece field-notes At the McCargoe Cove shelter on the north shore of Lake Superior's largest island, with wolves audible somewhere across the harbor at 2 a.m. https://fieldlantern.co/post/south-downs-way-three-day-section/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/south-downs-way-three-day-section/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira trails A retired headmaster walks from Eastbourne to Lewes in May, covering twenty-one miles of England's most-walked national trail in unfashionable weather. https://fieldlantern.co/post/two-knives-on-the-pacific-crest-trail-three-hundred-miles/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/two-knives-on-the-pacific-crest-trail-three-hundred-miles/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tomas Lendvai gear-tested Tomas Lendvai carried a small folding knife and a fixed-blade bushcraft knife for 300 miles of the southern PCT. One did most of the work. The other paid for its weight on a single afternoon. https://fieldlantern.co/post/wind-foehn-katabatic-valley-breezes/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/wind-foehn-katabatic-valley-breezes/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece weather The wind a walker meets is often a local wind. A short guide to the three that matter most. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-cartography-of-the-fire-perimeter/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-cartography-of-the-fire-perimeter/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb maps-and-routes Wildfire perimeter maps look definitive on the page. The cartographers who make them know they are provisional documents, drawn in conditions that change faster than the ink can dry. https://fieldlantern.co/post/weather-reading-from-a-ridgeline/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/weather-reading-from-a-ridgeline/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss skills From a small summit in the Bridger Range one afternoon in late May, Wendell Foss watched a thunderstorm form, mature, and dissipate over the course of seventy minutes. He made the decision to descend at minute twelve. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-watershed-keepers-of-the-upper-clinch/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-watershed-keepers-of-the-upper-clinch/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb conservation On a slow river in southwest Virginia, a four-person watershed group is monitoring water quality, sediment, and the freshwater mussels that depend on both. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-foxes-of-suburban-richmond/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-foxes-of-suburban-richmond/ Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb wildlife A long-running study of red fox behavior in the residential neighborhoods of Richmond, Virginia, where the species has become more visible without becoming better understood. https://fieldlantern.co/post/five-mornings-at-a-blind-on-the-platte/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/five-mornings-at-a-blind-on-the-platte/ Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece field-notes Sandhill crane staging on the central Nebraska river in late March, from a Rowe Sanctuary blind, with a thermos and a notebook. https://fieldlantern.co/post/wind-rivers-twenty-eight-mile-loop/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/wind-rivers-twenty-eight-mile-loop/ Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss trails A solo walker covers a small loop in Wyoming's Wind River Range over three days in early June, while the high lakes are still half ice. https://fieldlantern.co/post/sleeping-pads-r-value-actual-three-pads-one-cold-spring/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/sleeping-pads-r-value-actual-three-pads-one-cold-spring/ Fri, 22 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira gear-tested R-value on the package is a lab number. Astrid Pereira tested three popular pads in a Welsh barn at 0C and a North Pennine bothy at minus 4C. The gap between marketing and morning was not always where she expected. https://fieldlantern.co/post/lightning-on-the-alpine-ridge/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/lightning-on-the-alpine-ridge/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tomas Lendvai weather What lightning actually does on exposed terrain, and the small set of practices that reliably reduce the risk. https://fieldlantern.co/post/two-nights-in-a-bothy-on-rannoch-moor/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/two-nights-in-a-bothy-on-rannoch-moor/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira field-notes At Loch Chiarain, three peat-dark miles from the West Highland Way, with one box of matches and a slate roof that does not entirely keep out the rain. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-fishers-of-the-southern-greens/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-fishers-of-the-southern-greens/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece wildlife A small reintroduction project in the southern Green Mountains of Vermont is producing the first confirmed fisher kits in the region in four decades. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-bog-buyers-of-county-mayo/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-bog-buyers-of-county-mayo/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece conservation A small Irish charity has spent four years buying turbary rights from individual farmers in order to restore the raised bog at Bellanaboy, one cutting at a time. https://fieldlantern.co/post/what-gpx-files-leave-out/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/what-gpx-files-leave-out/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tomas Lendvai maps-and-routes The GPX file format has, in twenty years, become the universal currency of digital route sharing. It also flattens the experience of a route into a thin sequence of points that omits most of what a good route description would carry. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-bowline-and-three-other-knots-you-actually-use/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-bowline-and-three-other-knots-you-actually-use/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira skills After a decade of teaching knot classes, Astrid Pereira concluded that most hikers need four knots and that one of them is not the one they think. https://fieldlantern.co/post/long-trail-mud-season-vermont/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/long-trail-mud-season-vermont/ Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb trails Vermont's Green Mountain Club closes the higher trails each April and May. A volunteer steward walks her assigned section on the day it opens. https://fieldlantern.co/post/backpacking-stoves-tested-shoulder-season-cascades/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/backpacking-stoves-tested-shoulder-season-cascades/ Fri, 15 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss gear-tested Wendell Foss spent twelve days in the North Cascades in late May with four stove systems and a kitchen scale. The canister system won fewer rounds than expected. https://fieldlantern.co/post/three-days-alone-on-a-twenty-eight-mile-loop-in-the-wind-rivers/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/three-days-alone-on-a-twenty-eight-mile-loop-in-the-wind-rivers/ Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira field-notes The Cirque of the Towers from the Big Sandy trailhead in the third week of July, a route some walk in a day and others should not walk at all. https://fieldlantern.co/post/wolverine-tracks-at-the-base-of-rainier/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/wolverine-tracks-at-the-base-of-rainier/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss wildlife Three weeks with a small camera-trap crew confirming what biologists had begun to suspect: wolverines have returned to Mount Rainier National Park after a century's absence. https://fieldlantern.co/post/what-the-ladder-does-the-penobscot-salmon-retrofit/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/what-the-ladder-does-the-penobscot-salmon-retrofit/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss conservation A 14-month retrofit of the fish ladder at the Milford Dam was finished in October 2025. The salmon counters are still waiting to see what difference it makes. https://fieldlantern.co/post/lapse-rates-explained-for-trail-walkers/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/lapse-rates-explained-for-trail-walkers/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss weather Why the summit is colder than the trailhead, and exactly how much colder, on a typical day. https://fieldlantern.co/post/pembrokeshire-coast-path-february/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/pembrokeshire-coast-path-february/ Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira trails A walker covers fifty-three miles of the Welsh coast path between Tenby and St Davids in mid-February. The path is hers, mostly. https://fieldlantern.co/post/reading-a-topo-for-water-sources/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/reading-a-topo-for-water-sources/ Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss skills Before a four-day route through the Glass Mountains of west Texas, Wendell Foss spent an evening at his kitchen table identifying every dependable spring on a 1973 USGS quadrangle. Six of seven were still flowing in May. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-trail-association-mapmakers-who-arent-paid/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-trail-association-mapmakers-who-arent-paid/ Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece maps-and-routes Across the United States, the practical maps that hikers carry are not made by the government. They are made by trail associations, mostly by volunteers, often by retirees with cartography software and a willingness to argue about line weights. https://fieldlantern.co/post/rain-shells-after-one-pacific-northwest-season/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/rain-shells-after-one-pacific-northwest-season/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece gear-tested Imogen Reece spent a winter on the Olympic Peninsula and the western Cascades in five hardshell jackets. Two of them held. Two of them did not. One surprised her. https://fieldlantern.co/post/dawn-at-image-lake-north-cascades/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/dawn-at-image-lake-north-cascades/ Wed, 06 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb field-notes A single morning at 6,050 feet in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, with Glacier Peak reflected in nine acres of still water at 5:42 a.m. https://fieldlantern.co/post/lost-path-to-abandoned-sierra-ranger-station/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/lost-path-to-abandoned-sierra-ranger-station/ Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss trails A long-disused trail leads through second-growth pine to a 1937 USFS cabin nobody officially maintains anymore. A retired ranger walks it once a year. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-last-commercial-cartographer-in-maine/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-last-commercial-cartographer-in-maine/ Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb maps-and-routes In a converted barn outside Brunswick, Maine, a sixty-one-year-old man draws topographic maps by hand for clients who still pay for them. He is, by his own reckoning, the last full-time commercial cartographer working in the state. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-owl-at-quinault/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-owl-at-quinault/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb wildlife A field season with the northern spotted owl recovery crew on the western slope of Olympic National Park, where the species' decline has continued in spite of two decades of careful intervention. https://fieldlantern.co/post/pulling-the-olives-out-of-belair-park/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/pulling-the-olives-out-of-belair-park/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Imogen Reece conservation Outside Adelaide, a volunteer crew has spent eleven years removing African olive from a single 838-hectare park, and they are not finished. https://fieldlantern.co/post/when-to-bail-off-a-peak/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/when-to-bail-off-a-peak/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb weather The decision to turn around is almost always made too late. A field guide to making it on time. https://fieldlantern.co/post/packing-a-30l-for-shoulder-season-backpacking/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/packing-a-30l-for-shoulder-season-backpacking/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Margaret Holcomb skills For three nights on the Long Trail in early May, Margaret Holcomb carried thirteen pounds in a thirty-litre pack and slept warm every night. The list is shorter than most. https://fieldlantern.co/post/headlamps-tested-over-200-hours-of-caving/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/headlamps-tested-over-200-hours-of-caving/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira gear-tested Astrid Pereira took five headlamps into the wet limestone of South Wales and the deeper, drier caves of the Yorkshire Dales. After 200 hours underground, only two were still working as advertised. https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-ridge-as-a-handrail/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/the-ridge-as-a-handrail/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira maps-and-routes Among navigation techniques taught at British outdoor centres, the ridgeline handrail is one of the simplest and the most consistently misunderstood. Used well, it removes most of the decisions that get walkers lost. https://fieldlantern.co/post/spring-on-the-long-trail-day-by-day/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/spring-on-the-long-trail-day-by-day/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Wendell Foss field-notes Eleven days northbound on Vermont's spine in the second week of May, with mud to the knee and the first wood thrush of the season. https://fieldlantern.co/post/new-ridgeline-route-cairngorms/ https://fieldlantern.co/post/new-ridgeline-route-cairngorms/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Astrid Pereira trails A small mountaineering club proposes a thirty-one-kilometre traverse across the Cairngorm plateau. Two members walk it in late April to see what it asks.