The founder of the Florida Trail, the American Hiking Society and Big City Mountaineers takes you on a hiking and backpacking journey around the world in search of remote scenic splendor, from the 9,000-foot granite cones of Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile and the roof of the world in the Langtang Range of northern Nepal, to hikes in the shadow of Mont Blanc, France, and on the Milford Track on South Island, New Zealand.

Closer to home, Jim Kern’s camera exposes the beauty of the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, the “Whites” of New Hampshire, the wildflowers of the North Cascades along the Pacific Crest Trail and the watery foot trail of Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida.
There are well-illustrated treks, too, on remote trails in Paria Canyon, Utah; to Shimshal, northern Pakistan; and from Ranau to Tambunan, Sabah, Borneo, when it was only a footpath.
Additional and unusual hikes include backpacking by moonlight in the Guana Estuarine Reserve in North Florida. You’ll be inspired by a chapter on going alone and charmed by photographs of hiking with llamas.

While on this armchair adventure, read about the origins of the Florida Trail and the Florida Trail Association, and how Kern, along with Bill Kemsley and Paul Pritchard, kicked off the American Hiking Society. A decade later, a full-page ad in The Miami Herald offering a child’s airline ticket for $1 got Big City Mountaineers going. In 2011 BCM mentored over 1,000 disadvantaged teens in wilderness settings.