Barack Obama signed a bill creating three new hiking trails for the national scenic trails system. The most ambitious is the Pacific Crest Trail.

It is the only national scenic trail that connects two others - the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail - meaning a person could hike from near the Mexican border, up to North Cascades National Park, east to Glacier National Park, and then down to the Mexican border again.

The feds will supply money to connect several very old trails, build bridges, and put up signage at trailheads for what will become the Pacific Northwest Trail. The trail will run through three national parks in some of the most mountainous and emptiest parts of the lower 48. A perfect place to get away from it all if you’re the governor of a northwest state. Keep that excuse in your back pocket.

Tour stops are out for the 2010 Subaru Freeskiing World Tour this week, so there’s plenty of time to book your flights for all the competitions. They’ve added Revelstoke, British Columbia and La Parva, Chile to the tour, and both of those stops will be happening early September. Athlete registration starts August 3^rd for the South American only portion of the event. Prize money will be over $100k this year, and they’ve renamed the award going to the overall champion the McConkey Cup in honor of the late great Shane McConkey who helped pioneer the sport and the Freeskiing Championships.

What hasn’t changed is that they’re still not allowing those attachments that keep kids’ ski tips from crossing up during championship competition. One year we’ll finally get that rule changed.

Authorities recovered the remains of two hikers in the hills near Palm Springs last week. They can tell that they’re hikers based on their clothing, but the bodies are so severely dehydrated that they can’t even pull fingerprints. They’ll have to rehydrate the bodies and then try to get prints so they can identify the lost hikers. So far no one’s stepped forward to try to identify the two bodies. One group reported that their friend left them to head to the trailhead last week during a hike when he started cramping, and no one’s seen him since. The other body’s a mystery. Maybe a solo hiker found the straggler and one of them pointed the other in the wrong direction?

That lost Eagle Scout who spent three days with an injured ankle on the mountainside and was subsequently fined about $25,000 for his rescue is looking for help. Again. One of his Scoutmasters stared a Facebook group in the hopes that it would gain about 25k members and each person could donate $1 to the family. So far it has about a dozen, and that’s after the Examiner wrote an article about the Facebook group.

I previously joined a Facebook group called “Save the Star Tribune.” It has about 2,000 members and to date I don’t think it’s raised any money. My friend who works at the Star Tribune sent an e-mail asking for cash, but it was pretty obvious that she hadn’t bothered giving either since $0 had been raised. These Facebook groups don’t bring in a ton of cash. Why? They’re easy to join. Sending cash takes work.

I broke my arm climbing an apple tree in my grandparents’ backyard when I was six. I’d fabricated my own grappling hook from some scrap metal I found in his greenhouse and attached it to a length of hemp rope. It worked really well for the first couple hours, but when I swung too wide it came unhooked and I fell to the ground. I gave up on the tree climbing grappling hook, but the guys at New Tribe are still living the dream. They’re selling this Yella Grapnel hook for $27. It’s designed to hook onto the rope after you toss it over a tree branch. I’d maybe throw two or three of them for backups before you climb too high.