About a month ago, Modern Hiker was named a finalist in USA Today’s search to find the 10 Best Hiking Blogs in the country. 20 nominees were selected and then it was a mad rush of 28 days of nonstop voting. Those who follow Modern Hiker on Twitter or Facebook got to know Emmy, the Modern Hiker Pitbull, who was both an adorable spokesdog for the site and an equally adorable way to bust through Facebook’s page-throttling demons.
Emmy the Modern Hiker #pitbull wants to remind you to vote. One day left in the poll! http://t.co/4dmD1jdLEf pic.twitter.com/eIbbNN7QLJ
— Casey Schreiner (@modernhiker) August 31, 2014
For a little while, Modern Hiker was in the lead, but over time we fell behind and came up just short of the number one position – but we are still very happy to announce we ended up in second place – or as I like to think of it, “The Silver Medal Position.” We were thrilled to be included with such other incredible outdoor writers – many of whom I’m even happier to be able to call my friends. If you haven’t had a chance, I highly recommend you take some time to poke around all of their sites soon.
2014 has been a pretty awesome year for us here at Modern Hiker – not only did we get a snazzy new site design, but we’ve had the chance to travel around the world, contribute to major L.A. documentary events, lead hikes, produce our own shirts and stickers, add some incredibly passionate outdoorspeople to our writing staff, and generally just take the whole site up 2 or 3 levels from where it was last year. On a personal note, I’m also very proud that something I started as way to share my love for L.A.’s hiking when no one else was doing it has grown into such a great community. Thank you, everyone, for reading, sharing, commenting, voting, and most importantly – telling other people about Modern Hiker.
If you’re new to the Modern Hiker family – welcome! Here are some ways you can have an active role on the oldest and most-read hiking blog in Southern California:
Follow us on Social Media
We’re all over the place! You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google+. We are also, of course, on Facebook – just make sure that after you LIKE Modern Hiker, you click the drop-down menu and choose to GET NOTIFICATIONS. Otherwise, all you’re going to see in your feed are the same Top Ten Things You Won’t Believe Until You Click Here To Change Your Life Forever your relatives keep posting every day.
Put us in your Inbox
If you’re more of a “just give me a synopsis” type of person, click here or use the signup form on the right hand side of the page to join the Modern Hiker Email List. We’ll send you an email once a week-ish with a digest of all our best posts from the week, including new hikes, news items, and usually one or two extra items ONLY for email types. We promise not to sell your email address or spam you or any of those other terrible things the internet does.
Share your Travels
Every week, we cull through reader photo submissions to highlight our favorites in a series called Photo Friday. It’s an awesome way to get your best outdoor photography out to an appreciative audience and sometimes we even give prizes away to the best shots! You can enter by tagging your photos on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #modernhiker or by adding them to the Modern Hiker Flickr Pool.
If you’ve got an itch to share more, we are always interested in guest posts from readers! Whether it’s a review of some beloved gear, a write-up of your favorite trail, a harrowing tale of survival, or a lesson you learned on the trail, just drop us an email with your idea. We’d also love to hear from you if you just want to say hi!
Get some Trail Ideas
Looking for someplace to get started? We’ve got a huge map of ALL of our hikes, divided into different difficulties. Scroll around until you find one you like – or use our drop-down menu to find your region and go from there. We also have some lists of our favorite hikes, like our Best Hikes in L.A. (which has 5 favorites in each region of the L.A. metro area!), or our Best L.A. Hikes for Beginners.
Wear your Support
We’ve also got Modern Hiker logo gear for sale – men’s and women’s tees, tanks, and hoodies in organic cotton and synthetics – for on the trail and off. We also have weatherproof vinyl decals that would love to be on your car bumper, water bottle, or bear canister. All proceeds go to help keep the site up and running!
And that’s it! Thanks again to everyone who voted and continues to support Modern Hiker. We’ve got some really awesome stuff planned for the future, so stay tuned and we’ll see you on the trail soon!
Tags: 10 Best Hiking Blogs, Modern Hiker, site news, USA Today
