For My Birthday, Google Got Me "The Death of the Internet?"
Plus, a major outdoor road re-opens, the best camp stoves, a Death Valley vandalism mystery, a grizzly return, new trails, and lots more
howdy
Hey all!
This week I’ve been working on a few freelance projects and chasing some work, and that’s kept me pretty busy. I’ve got a great story about a very wet but also kind of magical camping trip on the Oregon Coast … I just need a little time to put it together for you. I’m going to take a slight detour from outdoor stuff in this section for a moment if you don’t mind. There’s still tons of outdoor news afterward, though—and also, here’s a little preview from the camping trip:
I mean, come on.
In the meantime, it’s my birthday this coming Tuesday, and like any milestone, it’s got me reflecting on a few things. For instance: I have now been writing for and running Modern Hiker for almost 18 years, and that is absolutely insane to me.
I have seen the way the web has changed so, so much since 2006. I was there before all the big social media launches, then all the social media throttling and pay-to-play nonsense that essentially turned them all into outrage factories and home shopping networks.
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to AI stuff as much as I have, but I did watch the roll out of new updates from Google and OpenAI this week with a lot of trepidation. Without getting too into the weeds on things in what is ostensibly an outdoor newsletter, here’s what worries me—Modern Hiker, like many medium to small niche websites, makes money primarily through Google ads.
I don’t make a ton of money. In fact, I have never actually paid myself for the work I do on Modern Hiker—all of it goes toward site maintenance and upkeep and paying the other great writers who have contributed to the site. But that money depends on users searching for something on Google and then clicking through to come to the Modern Hiker website.
Well, the new Google Gemini AI update’s whole slogan is “let Google do the Googling for you.” By which they mean their AI will scan pages for what they think you’re looking for, then summarize them for you without checking for accuracy or sending you to the pages themselves. Nobody knows exactly what this is going to do to publishers like Modern Hiker, but some advertising companies estimate overall losses at $2 billion, with some sites losing up to two thirds of their traffic.
Look, I know the internet (and especially social media) is 85% hyperbole these days, but I think it’s fair to say that if Modern Hiker loses two thirds of its traffic, Modern Hiker is going away. And you can rest assured it’s not the only website in that position. Which is all to say when techbros start yelling at you about how great AI is going to be for everyone, you may want to think twice. I sort of feel like techbros have us all in a speeding car racing toward an unclear horizon. And we don’t know if the horizon is a flat freeway or the edge of a cliff. And nobody installed brakes. And also, have you seen what happens when techbros design cars? It’s not pretty.
Anyway, this is a great time for me to thank the three new people who have upgraded to a paid subscription in the past week, bringing us back to our all-time high! (Still not enough to truly focus on this, but as PR people say, at least we’re trending in the right direction). Thank you so much for supporting this work and for keeping this newsletter project going. Hey, who knows—if AI keeps killing the internet, email may be all we have left!
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
OK, let’s get back to the outdoor stuff, amirite?
We’ve got some brand new trails up on the site this week, including a newly-accessible trail in Big Sur and a tough but rewarding climb near Palm Springs. I’ll have some a new trail from the Oregon Coast up soon, too!
Your Parks
Your Places
Highway One Returns
California’s Caltrans agency is set to re-open a collapsed section of Highway One this Friday, May 17, more than a week ahead of schedule. The road partially collapsed into the Pacific Ocean after a rockslide on March 30 took out a retaining wall beneath the roadway—and for almost the entirety of the Big Sur region, that’s really the ONLY road you can use to get in and out of anywhere. The road will temporarily use an automated 24-hour traffic signal while crews continue to work to make both lanes of the road passable, but this means now is a great time to finally explore the Big Sur region—which I truly consider one of the most beautiful spots in the world.
Take it Easy in the Sierra
Although warming temperatures and spring blooms may be pulling you Southern Californians toward the Sierra Nevada right now (and look, I GET IT), you may want to wait a little bit or at least make sure you’re still prepped for winter conditions and dangers. The Inyo County Sheriff’s Office has just issued a warning to people looking to enjoy the outdoors in “early spring conditions” after three people died in a week.
The three hikers were killed near Mount Whitney, where, the Sherriff’s Office wrote, they encountered “treacherous steep snow, loose rock, and variable weather.”
Death Valley Damage
National Parks Traveler reports a more than 100-year-old tram tower in Death Valley National Park was recently discovered toppled over. The tram tower was built in 1911 by the Saline Valley Salt Company, and it was part of a 13-mile aerial tramway to haul salt to the Owens Valley over 7,000 vertical feet. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Evidence near the toppled tower, which was discovered near the end of April, suggest a motorist may have used the tower as an anchor after their vehicle got stuck in the mud while driving off the legal roadway.
If you have any information about who may have been responsible for this, Park rangers ask that you call the Park Service-wide tip line at 888-653-0009 or at the National Park Service Investigative Services online tip site. Tips can be anonymous, and I can tell you from having worked with the Investigative Services branch of the NPS before that they are extremely professional and take their jobs very seriously.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Camp Stove Season
With the cold, wet weather clearing, now is the time to dust off all your dry-season camping gear … and maybe invest in some new stuff, too. One of the most important items for any good overnight is the humble camp stove—giver of hot coffee in the mornings and filling, warm dinners in the evenings. Our friends at Gear Junkiehave an in-depth guide, as the different types of stoves really do have different pros and cons depending on what you’ll be doing on your trip. This list goes deep, including stoves powered by leaf and twig debris, batteries, and even the sun!
Wildlife Crossing
Wildlife and the Outdoors
Return of the Grizzlies
North Cascades National Park hasn’t had a grizzly bear sighting in almost 30 years, but that’s about to change. Last month, federal officials agreed to begin a reintroduction of the apex predator to the region. While most people may balk at the idea of bringing grizzly bears back, thinking of vicious attacks and huge hulking monsters, apex predators like grizzlies generally prefer avoiding contact with humans and have beneficial effects on the landscape, helping to disperse seeds and till soils, as well as distributing other nutrients from their diet. Officials will begin with a reintroduction of 25 grizzlies, and expect some 200 to be around within a century.
Via The Oregonian.
Leafing Out
Plants!
Leave Up Your Dead!
If you’ve got a dead or dying tree on your property, I bet your first idea is “how do I get rid of that thing?” And I get it! In Portland’s ice storms, we had a redbud come down and although it didn’t cause much damage, it definitely could have. But the founder of a tree-car company in North Carolina has a different approach: leave the trees. Assuming there is no danger to people or buildings, letting a dying tree become a snag can have a huge benefits for the ecosystem. And if you do need to take a tree down, leaving the stump or cut pieces as nurse logs will restore soil nutrients and give new plants a chance to thrive.
Check out this New York Times feature on the owner of Leaf & Limb (UNLOCKED) for more info and a free e-book (or at-cost printed copy) of some of the principles and do’s and don’ts.
As for our redbud? Most of it became nurse logs in my shade garden. Now they’re covered in moss and even have a few ferns growing on them—and that all happened on its own!
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
OK, I can’t stop thinking about this story I read in the California Sun—a really great daily newsletter that I highly recommend if you happen to live in the Golden State. A man in Seaside, CA (near Monterey) kept his boat in his driveway, and last summer he received a letter from the city saying he had to build a 6-foot fence to block the view of the boat.
So he did.
And then he hired a his neighbor to paint a life-sized portrait of the boat parked in the driveway on the fence. Which, honestly, is exactly what I would do in this situation.
So far, the city hasn’t responded, although he does very much appear to be following the letter of the ordinance, if not the spirit. As a bonus, the painter has now received lots of inquiries from other neighbors to paint boats on their fences, too.
Gotta love it.
OK, until next time,
Happy Trails.
