Gazing up at mountains from their valleys down below, it's hard, if not impossible, to detect any change on the top of the mountains. But change is ongoing, especially in recent history as the climate continues to warm.

From Tacoma or Seattle in Washington state, the snowy summit of Mount Rainier National Park appears unchanged from how it's always looked. Snowy. But is that truly the case? What would you think if someone told you the top of the summit no longer is 14,410 feet high, that the high point of the park has actually shrunk?

Our guests today are Eric Gilbertson, a mechanical engineer and mountaineer from Seattle University, and Scott Hotaling, a watershed sciences professor from Utah State University, who have measured the thickness of the ice cap on the summit of Mount Rainier. What they have to say may surprise you.

The government shutdown has been record-setting in terms of its length. So, too, has been the time that many employees of the National Park Service have been furloughed without pay.

How has the shutdown affected the parks, and how have the friends groups that support the parks responded? We're going to discuss that today with Chris Lenhertz from the Golden Gate Conservancy, Jacki Harp from Smokies Life, Eric Stiles from Friends of Acadia, and Cassius Cash from the Yosemite Conservancy.

What is a "typical" day at the National Parks Traveler like? When you surf over to the website there's always content there, ready to update you on news from around the National Park System. How is it generated, and who generates it?

Editor Kurt Repanshek and Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell dive into the logistics of running a news operation that's focused on national parks and protected areas.

Though the Revolutionary War didn't officially end until September 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, a key turning point in the war for independence occurred six years earlier in a small corner of today's New York state.

The Battle of Saratoga stretched out from September 19 until October 7, 1777, and marked the first time the British Empire had been forced to surrender. British General John Burgoyne had stretched his forces too thin in marching down from Canada with the intent of capturing Albany and wound up with huge losses in his army of nearly 7,000.

His defeat at the hands of Major General Horatio Gates and General Benedict Arnold greatly raised American hopes to gain independence and convinced France to come to the colonials' aid.

The story of how the British surrender came about is told at Saratoga National Historical Park near today's Stillwater, New York. To help us better understand the battles, we're joined today by Lauren Roberts, the historian at Saratoga County, New York, and Traveler Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell, who recently visited the historical park.

The federal government is shut down, but the national parks – most of them, anyway – are open.

Back during his first term in office President Donald Trump also kept the parks open during the government shutdown that stretched from the end of 2018 into early 2019. That led to some vandalism to the parks and damage to some park resources.

How are things going this shutdown? To explore that question, our guest today is Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs with the National Parks Conservation Association.

Nearly 700 volunteers, including some from as far away as Japan, descended on the Appalachian Trail in the past year in an unprecedented effort to recover a landscape forever scarred by Hurricane Helene.

The storm in September 2024 shut down 431 miles of the AT. Trees were snapped in half, piled in what looked like a bizarre game of pickup sticks. Landslides and flooding tore away trails and treadway. Bridges and crossovers were gone.

It was — and still is — a disaster of historic proportions. But it's also a story of resiliency of the land and the people who are stewards of it.

This week the Traveler's Jan Childs talks with two of the famous trail's stewards: Joe Morris, project coordinator for Tennessee Eastman Hiking and Canoeing Club, and Franklin Tate, regional director for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which by the way is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

This past week unspecified interpretive materials related to slavery were either removed or tagged for removal from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. It also was reported that a troubling photo known as the "Scourged Back" that depicted the scar-riddled back of an enslaved man was taken down from Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia.

The National Park System has been pulled into the current-day battles of wokeism of sorts through the removal of those, and likely other, interpretive materials in the parks that help us better understand enslaved history. Where it will end, or whether it will be reversed, is unknown.

To better understand what's transpiring and what the impacts are, we've invited Alan Spears, the senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, to join us today.

We can't escape history. We're born into a world full of it, and we're making it as we go from day to day. But how are we at preserving history?

There's been a lot of concern this year that the administration of President Donald Trump is altering, if not entirely trying to erase, history. But can that actually be done? The National Park Service, often called the nation's storyteller, has been interpreting history for more than a century, and some of that interpretation revolves around sites that have lost their physical structures over the decades.

Today's guest is Monica Rhodes, an internationally-recognized leader, advisor, and influencer who has directed preservation activities in 46 states and completed projects in more than 100 national parks. Today, she advises and partners with cites, universities, and other institutions to revitalize and leverage historic sites and communities to ensure a vibrant future for these places.