Matt DiPietro’s blog, sierrajournal.com has debuted a new look and added functionality. Sierra Journal started as primarily a backcountry skiing website, but has grown nicely into a source of broad news and features on the Sierra year-round. And of course, you’ll also find regular inspiring reports from yet another cool climbing or skiing trip that Matt has failed to invite me to join.

Matt’s goal with the new design is to emphasize community building. Sierra Journal adds a new forum space, plus other interactive goodies intended to get visitors involved in the site’s evolution. For more info, see Matt’s latest webcast, which walks you through the highlights.

The Sierra Club has launched a new wiki called…Sierra Club Trails. The goal is to create a comprehensive library of trails in which community users add, edit, and update content. SierraClubTrails still has a beta tag on it, but appears to be up and running. Actual content, as you’d expect, is still in its infancy. Only 101 trails are listed for all of California, for example. And the Whitney Portal trail entry is not exactly in-depth. The site is trying to offer more than just hiking trail entries, however, including a photo gallery and contest, audio interviews with naturalists and Sierra Club leaders, plus a blog and tips section.

SierraClubTrails seems a little loose in its nichey-ness to me. It’s not exactly clear why you should browse here, for example, as opposed to that crowdsourcing juggernaut, SummitPost. Still, I like the concept, and the site has a nice retro look. With a little time, it might just grow into a valuable hiking resource.

Good news in the online backcountry media world: Backcountry Magazine and SierraBackcountry.org are in the process of making major updates to their sites.

Backcountry Mag is already up and running, with an emphasis on facilitating user-provided content. You’ll find it much easier to share your own stories, videos, and pix on the Backcountry Mag site. Another welcome change is the addition of Backcountry Mag’s print edition content, including current gear reviews. The Backcountry Mag site was kind of a ghost town for a while on this front. It looks like they’re finally putting together a worthy effort to build up their web presence.

Also noteworthy is the return (by Christmas, hopefully) of SierraBackcountry.org, which inexplicably went into decline a season or two ago. The site’s creators have a new Eastern Sierra Backcountry Skiing guidebook coming out, and they’re promising a complete retooling of the site to correspond with the book launch at the end of the month. I’ll keep an eye on this one: this could be a solid new resource for Sierra eastsiders.

Andrew McLean has a new blog online: straightchuter.com, filled with an abundance of McLean’s ski mountaineering tips and techniques.

As content goes, Straightchuter is lean and focused: you get tips and gear and more gear from McLean (author of The Chuting Gallery). Much of McLean’s skiing and mountaineering adventures take place at a level well beyond the mere enthusiast, but you’ll find invaluable information regardless of how hardcore your outdoor aspirations are. Check it out!

See Also:

SierraDescents Interview: Andrew McLean

One of the blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis is SierraJournal.com, run by Matthew DiPietro, a Bay Area tech and communications specialist.

Matt seems to have a knack for finding interesting and news-worthy backcountry tidbits to write about, and does a far better job staying on topic than I ever could.

He also runs occasional climbing and backcountry skiing trip reports, like skiing Matterhorn Peak’s East Couloir.

Matt’s site used to be called sierra-alpinist.com, but he wanted to branch out to cover environmental and alpine news as well as offering climbing TR’s, so he nabbed the SierraJournal domain and hit the ground running.

From the mission statement:

Sierra Journal was born of a passion for mountain climbing, backcountry skiing and wilderness travel in the Sierra Nevada. Sierra Journal’s mission is to provide great outdoor-related content in the form of trip reports, mountain adventure narratives, environmental news, local and national mountain-related news, gear reviews, and other outdoor tidbits.

SierraJournal is one of a very few active Sierra-themed blogs I know about. If you haven’t already visited, browse on over and check it out.

If you’ve searched the web for information on a trail or peak, chances are you’ve come across a listing from Trails.com, a subscription-only website offering trail information and topo maps. For $49.00 per year, Trails.com claims to give you unlimited access to over 40,000 trail guides and topo maps for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Generally I prefer my websites free, so I always ignored Trails’ ubiquitous listings—though I often wondered what their content was like. Recently, Trails.com absorbed my favorite online map service, Topozone.com. That plus Trails’ 14 day free trial offer prompted me to take a look at their service. The verdict? Trails.com offers a depth and breadth of coverage that is considerably more than I was expecting. Is it worth $49 a year? Read on (more…)

Here’s a nifty blog I found over at the New York Times: Dot Earth. In this environmentally-oriented blog, reporter Andrew C. Revkin “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.” As you might imagine, the topic of Global Warming figures heavily in the examination.

Today’s DotEarth blog entry discusses the new SimCity Societies video game. The better simulation video games are surprisingly realistic—often leading you to new and unexpected realizations of macro phenomena.

For a classic example, consider the original Civilization, one of the best early simulation games…

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