Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! Shira and I did a fun little tour of Red Rock Canyon for her first time there while we were in town for a music festival. Rather than go into significant detail about the four mini hikes we did, I’ll briefly touch on all of them. Calico Hills is a personal favorite of mine. It’s one of the first parking lots from the park loop road, but it can get quite crowded. It’s home to many climbing areas, like all of the other trailheads we went to. You can a ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! I have had my eyes on the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge Area for years. It’s so close to me, yet I always thought that the trail systems were too short to justify a trip to. Boy was I wrong. I started my journey along the shores of Mirror Lake, with the intention of walking until I could walk no more (as I am still injured). I took the Mirror Lake trail system until it terminated at a road. I saw that this road led to another trail system and I s ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! On a cloudy March afternoon, Shira and I wanted to get a few miles in on the way back to Worcester. As has been customary in recent months, we scoped a conservation area out that we had never been to. Delaney Flood Control is only about 15-20 minutes from where I grew up but somehow I had never been. There are a number of trailheads, but we picked one that had less foot traffic on the corner of Harvard Road and Finn Road. The trail starts off in ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! Red Rock Canyon, to me, has the best concentration of quality, accessible multi pitch climbing in the US. There are few major cities in the US you can hop off a plane and be 30 minutes or less from some of the best climbing in the world. For all of its sins, Vegas can sometimes breed beauty. I was joined by Harriet and Jeremy for this adventure. I was in town for a music festival with Shira, her brother, and my brother and his girlfriend. No trip ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! This tour of Sandwich Dome was the ultimate solo trail run of the fall. I loved every moment of this journey, and it was my last long, half marathon plus run of the year. Let me preface it by saying that hands down, my favorite area of the White Mountains is the Southern Whites, or more specifically, the Sandwich Range Wilderness. It’s an area I have spent a considerable amount of quiet time in over the years. As the weather has been crazy latel ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! It’s been almost five months since I competed in the Alterra Half Marathon World Championships, and given this is a hiking blog, I felt the need to write about it! Besides, I track all of my New England 4000 footer adventures and I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t reflect on this journey. I qualified for the race randomly. I raced twice in Arizona on two weekends that I was in Phoenix with my buddy Aaron, and the rest is history. Of ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! Crotched Mountain has long been on my to-do list of hikes. I’ve skied it a few times over the years and my uncle and aunt have a place near there, so it’s been on my radar for quite some time. I got the opportunity to do it when Shira was doing a ski lesson at the mountain. I decided to hike it from the other side and got a good 6 mile adventure in. I started in the Crotched Mountain Town Forest parking lot, which follows the Quarry Loop to the Lin ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! Shira and I wanted to get a quick hike in on the way home from a ski weekend at Killington. We scoped out Bald Mountain, which wasn’t too far from where we were staying. Bald Mountain is a gentle hike with some elevation gain at the start, but it’s generally pretty moderate. Once you turn on the Bald Mountain Trail from East Road, you climb through pretty pine forests. Eventually you come to the North Vista, which is the first viewpoint alo ..read more

Buy my novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! One of my favorite trail runs of the fall was along the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee while I was out there for a wedding in Nashville and climbing in Chattanooga. It required quite the round trip drive, but it was worth every moment. The trail starts at a huge parking lot and gently heads up a series of stairs. This is one of the longer uphill sections of the hike, but as soon as it levels out, the trail becomes amazing single track/wider grave ..read more

Buy my new novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44! One of the more obscure lists I have been working on in tandem with the others I've been working on is the NH 500 Highest. I'm not that far into it, but I hope to one day finish all of them. Who knows, maybe I'll write a book about them too. Moose Mountain is on this list, and I did the South Peak a few months prior. I'm also working on knocking out all of the trails in this area, so it seemed like a good hike given the variable snow conditi ..read more