Field-tested by the N2 route team in 2024 alone, in the Sierra Nevada corridor and across the Western U.S.
Issue No. 47 · About
Published Q4 2024 · Bend, Oregon
The Founding Story
Two ex-Search-and-Rescue volunteers walked off the mountain and into the newsroom — and refused to publish another gear listicle.
In 2017, Eli Marquez and Priya Shah launched N2 Trail Hiking out of a rented office above a Bend coffee shop because they were tired of trail advice that read like a brochure. Seven years, 2,140 articles, and one Outdoor Media Summit award later, the publication still operates on the same premise: treat every backcountry decision like an engineering problem, then test it.
Read the founding story →
Why We Started
A search-and-rescue habit that wouldn't quit.
Eli Marquez and Priya Shah met as volunteer Search and Rescue responders in Rocky Mountain National Park, pulling hypothermic weekend hikers off the Longs Peak keyhole in three-degree fog and reading too many incident reports that ended the same way: a fitness-bro who bonked at 13,200 feet because he'd eaten three gels and a Clif bar for a 14-hour day.
When they left the SAR roster for full-time jobs in Bend, the question wouldn't leave them alone. Every backcountry decision — how much salt to pack into the Sierras, how early to leave camp to beat lightning on a Class 3 ridge, which 1-pound tent actually survives a September storm at Tuolumne — was, in their framing, an engineering problem with inputs, tradeoffs, and an answer that could be field-tested.
N2 Trail Hiking launched in 2017 as a two-person newsletter with a single rule: every recommendation had to be backed by a logged trip, an instrumented measurement, or a named local land-manager source — never "trust us, bro." The publication refused display ads for four years, ran on reader memberships through the 2020 surge, and published its first transparent revenue report in 2021. It has stayed reader-supported since.
By 2024 the route team had grown to six full-time testers plus a 14-person volunteer beta network across the Western U.S. The publication had logged 1,400+ miles of in-person trail testing, served 187,432 free GPX track downloads, and won the 2023 Outdoor Media Summit "Best Independent Hiking Publisher" award. None of that was the point. The point was, and remains, turning vague trail anxiety into a downloadable plan.
"We don't write for the already-convinced. We write for the person standing at the trailhead at 4:30 a.m., wondering if their nutrition math actually adds up — and the answer deserves better than a vibes-based listicle."
— Priya Shah, co-founder
Today, the publication runs on the same premise it launched with: field-tested, no-nonsense, slightly irreverent. The newsroom is still small. The trail mileage is not.
By the Numbers
What seven years looks like, in four figures.
Collective Wilderness First Responder certifications held by the editorial and route team.
Outdoor Media Summit "Best Independent Hiking Publisher," judged on editorial rigor and reader service.
No outside investors since 2021 — every dollar comes from memberships, the Trail Planner, and the Pro tier.
All figures verified against internal quarterly reports. Trail conditions are never claimed in real time — verify with your local land manager.
How We Work
Three things every N2 story has to clear before it publishes.
Recommendations don't get filed from a desk. Every gear review, every nutrition plan, every route report passes through the same three checkpoints — and the work happens on the trail, not in a meeting room.
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01
Field-tested in the Sierra Nevada corridor.
The gear review lab processes 312 products per year in a controlled Sierra Nevada testing corridor — the same wind, the same UV index, the same granite. A down jacket gets logged across four shoulder-season trips before it earns a rating. A nutrition plan gets metabolized on the JMT, the PCT, and at least one 14er day before it goes into the Bonk-Risk Index. We do not publish claims about lab testing performed outside that corridor.
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02
Scored on seven internal rating systems.
Every recommendation gets run through at least three of the seven patented-internal rating systems N2 has built since 2018. The flagship is the Bonk-Risk Index — the only public scoring tool that rates nutrition plans on a 1-100 scale for a given route profile. Other systems score tent survivability, sock blister probability, and route-finding complexity by season. The point isn't the score. The point is the auditable reasoning underneath it.
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03
Shipped with downloadable tools, not vibes.
A story that ends with "good luck out there" isn't a story, it's a sermon. Every route report ships with a free GPX track and CalTopo map pack; every nutrition plan ships with a daily-gram calculator; every multi-day feature ships with a printable checklist. N2 Trail Hiking has served 187,432 free GPX downloads since launch, and the average subscriber finishes 23% more planned miles than the industry baseline (2023 internal survey, 4,200 readers).
Radical Disclosure
We publish our own revenue reports. Most hiking outlets won't.
N2 Trail Hiking is the only hiking publication that publishes quarterly transparent revenue and ad-rates reports. Every dollar in, every dollar out — ad rates, sponsorship terms, affiliate payouts, member revenue — all in a single PDF, updated every quarter. It's the same move every financial regulator asks of public companies. We figured the hiking niche could stand it too.
Read the most recent report before you decide whether to hand over your email. We think the source of our income matters as much as the source of our trail data.
Read the Q4 2024 Transparency Report →Or, take something with you.
Get the free 47-page Trail Planner.
The Trail Planner is the publication's flagship download: a 47-page PDF covering pace budgeting, water carry math, the Bonk-Risk Index worksheet, a thunderstorm escape checklist, and printable pre-trip checklists for the JMT, PCT, AT, and Colorado 14ers. 184,000 monthly readers use it. The email gets you the planner, weekly route reports, and a downloadable GPX every Friday.