Best Mountrainier Podcasts (2026)

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Year in Review 52:31

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1h ago52:31

52:31

This year, 2025, likely will go down as the most transitional for the National Park Service. We've seen the loss of nearly a quarter of the permanent workforce, efforts to whitewash history in some parks, and the loss of a grand lodge to wildfire. The past 12 months have been full of news impacting the National Park Service and national parks, not …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historic Preservation in the Parks 39:27

4d ago39:27

39:27

A century of seasons has worn the appearance of the log cabin Roy Fure built in present-day Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, but his care of the small cabin, and later National Park Service restoration efforts, have enabled it to stand the test of time. Dovetail-notched spruce logs still sit tightly together, the corrugated metal roof F…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Threatened and Endangered Species Intro 45:27

11d ago45:27

45:27

After more than 50 years as one of the country's landmark environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act has gone from one of the most popular measures before Congress to one fueling demands that it be revised, if not discarded. The National Parks Traveler is reviewing the Endangered Species Act's work and its record, spotlighting individual specie…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Endemic Haleakalā 44:14

18d ago44:14

44:14

Haleakalā National Park is deceptively wonderful and rich in biodiversity. But if we're not careful, we could lose some of that biodiversity. Located on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the first thing you notice about this national park is its towering dormant volcano, Haleakalā, which rises from sea level to more than 10,000 feet. While many visitor…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Staffing and Funding the Park Service 48:47

25d ago48:47

48:47

It's Thanksgiving Weekend, usually interpreted as a bountiful time of year when we can all sit back and be thankful. But can many who work for the National Park Service feel thankful in the wake of the staff reductions this year? This year has been hard on the Park Service, what with the loss of roughly a quarter of the full-time workforce and ques…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Shrinking Mount Rainier 55:49

1M ago55:49

55:49

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…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Park Friends Under Pressure 1:00:40

2M ago1:00:40

1:00:40

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 th…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | November NewsMatch Fundraiser 42:24

2M ago42:24

42:24

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…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | The Battle of Saratoga 53:27

2M ago53:27

53:27

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 E…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Government Shutdown Blues 48:09

2M ago48:09

48:09

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 thi…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Kansas Road Trip 33:46

3M ago33:46

33:46

Kansas is a big place, and not one particularly well-known for national park destinations. But that doesn't mean you should overlook the Sunflower State. In the closing days of September, as the country seemed destined for a government shutdown, the Traveler's Kurt Repanshek and Patrick Cone headed into Kansas to visit some of the parks there to be…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historical Interpretation in the National Parks 54:30

3M ago54:30

54:30

How do national parks develop their interpretive materials? What influences come into play when a park begins to outline its approach and the direction it takes when crafting educational materials for visitors? Is the National Park Service careful to take a truthful path when presenting history? Those are topical questions considering the Trump adm…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Rebuilding the Appalachian Trail 46:23

3M ago46:23

46:23

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. …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Disappearing Black History 45:28

3M ago45:28

45:28

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 Monumen…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historic Preservation 48:14

4M ago48:14

48:14

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, of…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Government Shutdown Blues 44:37

4M ago44:37

44:37

We've made it past Labor Day. Which means fall colors in some parts of the country aren't too far off, seasonal wildlife migrations are getting under way, and summertime crowds in the national park system have thinned out. Fall is a glorious time to be out in the park system. The question right now, though, is how will the park system be functionin…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Bison Benefits 46:43

4M ago46:43

46:43

Once upon a time, there were tens of millions of bison on the North American continent. Today, there are somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000. Most are in commercial herds, with a relative few in private herds and on public lands. Should there be more bison on the continent? There potentially is space for them on places like the 550,000-acre Thund…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Rare Phenomena in the Parks 48:11

4M ago48:11

48:11

It's been said that the night skies are the other half of the National Park System. And it only makes sense, for when you're in a park and the sun goes down you tend to look into the night sky to spot constellations or, if you're lucky enough and in the right place, a comet overhead. Keeping that other half of the park system in mind, today's podca…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Keeping Glacier Bay's Whales Safe 42:18

4M ago42:18

42:18

Vessel-whale collisions are a significant concern in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, where nutrient-rich waters support a seasonal influx of humpback whales and other marine mammals. As one of the most visited marine parks in Alaska, Glacier Bay sees a high volume of vessel traffic, including cruise ships, tour boats, and private craft. Thi…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Nature is Nonpartisan 55:26

5M ago55:26

55:26

Is nature nonpartisan? Earlier this year we had an interview with Dr. Caleb Scoville from Tufts University, who received an Andrew Carnegie fellowship to explore whether environmental issues are highly partisan. It can certainly seem that here in America just about everything is partisan these days, but is nature partisan? As another of our guests …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | El Camino Real de los Tejas 1:01:43

5M ago1:01:43

1:01:43

El Camino Real de Los Tejas is a network of trails that connected Spanish missions, settlements, and military outposts from Mexico through Texas and into Louisiana. Now a national historic trail, this road played a crucial role in the Spanish colonization of the region in the late 1600s. It served as a vital route for communication, trade, and mili…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Theresa Pierno 45:13

5M ago45:13

45:13

The National Parks Conservation Association is almost as old as the National Park Service. The Service, as you probably know, was established in 1916, and NPCA came along three years later. Through the 106-year history of NPCA, there has been only one woman who held the title of president and Chief Executive Officer. That woman is Theresa Pierno, w…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | The Future of Grizzly Bears 44:10

5M ago44:10

44:10

Grizzly bears. They define charismatic megafauna. Huge animals that draw both human admiration and fear. Once they roamed the entire country, though that was a long time ago. Today there are pockets of grizzly bear populations in the Rocky Mountains from Yellowstone to Glacier National Parks. Among the questions that revolve around grizzly bears is…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Appalachian Trail Crowds 50:44

6M ago50:44

50:44

Running nearly 2,200 miles along the spine of the Appalachian Range from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail arguably is the world's most famous long-distance trail. Some think it's also one that can be very crowded in spots. Morgan Sommerville, the director of visitor use management for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, joins …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Intrepid Travel 41:04

6M ago41:04

41:04

Heading into the National Park System this summer? Going it alone, or have you booked a tour company? What do you think about how the Trump Administration and Congress are treating the National Parks and the National Park Service? Have you reported any park signs to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that disparage Americans, dead or alive? As you can …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | ATC at 100 51:16

6M ago51:16

51:16

Anniversaries and birthdays give us time to reflect on individuals, accomplishments, and moments in history. They often refresh our memories and can serve as motivators to do something. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which was established in 1925, just two years after the first sections of the Appalachia…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Federal Lands Fire Sale 45:09

6M ago45:09

45:09

There are some in Congress who think we should have a fire sale on public lands. Places across national forests and the Bureau of Land Management that politicians think should be offered for sale, either to try to adopt President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill that would continue to offer the biggest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and corpora…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | How Wild 36:07

7M ago36:07

36:07

Today our guest is Marissa Ortega-Welch, a San Francisco-based freelance journalist who focuses on environmental issues. Last year she generated a series of podcasts surrounding the topic of official wilderness – the history of official wilderness and the idea of wilderness. It's an interesting series that you can find by searching for How Wild whe…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Plight of the Parks 55:45

7M ago55:45

55:45

So much is happening so quickly to the National Park Service. There have been staff reductions, hiring freezes, spending freezes, orders from the Interior Secretary to make sure that visitors find national parks welcoming, no matter what it takes. Every week seems to bring something new, and quite frankly dire to the National Park Service. Most rec…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Environmental Partisanship 48:42

7M ago48:42

48:42

Is green a red and blue construct? Put another way, is there a political partisan divide over the environment? That's a particularly interesting question, no doubt more so in recent years as the country seems to have drifted farther and farther apart because of our political beliefs. To that point, a reader reached out the other day to say our stor…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility 40:53

7M ago40:53

40:53

News around public lands these days seems to revolve entirely around the Trump administration. In the case of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, many of the steps the administration is taking with the operational efficiencies of the National Park Service and other land management agencies certainly are keeping PEER busy. But what ex…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | North American Bird Declines 53:54

8M ago53:54

53:54

True birders are some of the most determined and persistent hobbyists out there. If you want to call bird watching a hobby. For many, it's more like a passion. Many look forward to "Big Day" competitions, where individuals and teams strive to see how many different bird species they can spot in a 24-hour period. Many birders log their sightings and…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Walt Dabney and Public Lands 56:35

8M ago56:35

56:35

It's fair to say that the nation's public lands, those managed by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land-management agencies are at risk under the Trump administration. There's no hyperbole in that statement if you pay attention to what the administration already has done in terms of…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Congressman Jared Huffman 43:18

8M ago43:18

43:18

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term might be the most tumultuous first 100 days of any president. He certainly came in prepared to move his agenda forward, no matter what barriers to it existed. We don't usually discuss presidential politics, but President Trump has released a blizzard of executive orders and directives touch…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | National Park Science At Risk 37:52

8M ago37:52

37:52

There has been much upheaval in the National Park Service this year, with firings, then rehires, and staff deciding to retire now rather than risk sticking around and being fired. There have been fears that more Park Service personnel are about to be let go through a reduction in force. While Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered the Park Serv…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | George Wright Society 42:52

9M ago42:52

42:52

George Melendez Wright was a brilliant young scientist with the National Park Service back in the 1920s and 1930s. You could say he was ahead of his time, in that he wanted the Park Service to take a holistic role in how wildlife in the parks was managed. While Wright tragically left the world too young when he was killed in a car crash in 1936, hi…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Kilauea's Unrest 50:11

9M ago50:11

50:11

One of the greatest shows on Earth has been going on now for several months in Hawaii, where the Kīlauea volcano at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park has been erupting since late December. The Kīlauea volcano is the most active volcano on Earth. It's also a relatively safe volcano in that it spends most of its time simmering and bubbling without any …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Covering the Parks 52:27

9M ago52:27

52:27

There are more stories to be found in the National Park System than one could write in a lifetime. Or several lifetimes. Sometimes those stories can be hard to spot. How many were aware of the factoid from Great Smoky Mountains National Park that Jennifer Bain dug up, that if you stacked up all of the park's salamanders against its roughly 1,900 bl…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | A Little Volcanic Levity 39:15

10M ago39:15

39:15

In this week's podcast we thought we'd take a break from the unsettling news happening in and around our national parks and federal lands regarding park staff reductions and threats of reducing park boundaries to make way for mining. Instead, the Traveler's Lynn Riddick catches up with a former scientist who's now a comedian to hear about his exper…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | National Park Service Upheaval 49:38

10M ago49:38

49:38

There is, across the country, some upheaval going on as the Trump administration works to reduce the size of the federal government. Whether you support that effort or oppose it, you can't deny there's not upheaval going on. That upheaval has hit all federal government agencies. At the National Park Service, seasonal ranger job offers were rescinde…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Threatened Lands 43:06

10M ago43:06

43:06

Across the United States there are hundreds of millions of acres of public lands. Indeed, there are more than 500 million acres of federal lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Park Service, just to name the three largest land managers in federal government. A majority of those lands, the 245…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | NPS Cast Aside 44:23

10M ago44:23

44:23

It was just over a week ago, on Valentine's Day, that the Trump administration wiped 1,000 employees off the National Park Service staff without any apparent strategy other than that they were dispensable staff still on probation and so lacking any real protection for being fired without cause. Those cuts swept across the 433 units of the National …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | National Parks in Crisis 42:38

10M ago42:38

42:38

The Trump administration's determination to reduce the size of government regardless of the cost is having a hard impact on the National Park Service. Last month the agency was forced to rescind job offers to seasonal workers, saw a hold placed on millions of dollars distributed through the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act to address …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | The Ghost Forest 50:55

11M ago50:55

50:55

National parks are home to many iconic trees. Bristlecones pines, Whitebark pines, Sequoias, even mangroves. And, of course, redwoods. These trees hold many stories. The size alone of redwoods and sequoias are enough to hold your attention. But there are backstories, as well. In the case of redwoods along the Northern California coast, the backstor…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Keeping Cape Lookout Above Water 51:37

11M ago51:37

51:37

Rising sea levels, stronger storms, eroding shorelines, and sinking terrain are taking a toll on the fragile ecosystems and historic resources at Cape Lookout National Seashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey takes a close look at these threats and predicts how they will impact the national seashore o…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Parks Under Pressure 49:44

11M ago49:44

49:44

Here we are, a week into the second administration of President Donald Trump. It's certainly a time of change, some of which is expected, and some perhaps not. Do we really need to rename North America's tallest mountain, Denali in Denali National Park and Preserve? There is much going on in the federal government, and not all is good. Hiring freez…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Yellowstone Wolves at 30 43:11

12M ago43:11

43:11

There are sounds that wake you up out of a deep sleep, only to be dismissed as you fall back to sleep. And then there are sounds that rivet you, make you sit bolt upright. That was the type of sound that woke us while we were deep in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. Sunrise hadn't yet come, yet we were wide awake, listening to one of t…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Threatened and Endangered Parks 50:17

12M ago50:17

50:17

We're five days into 2025, and already there's a lot of news concerning national parks and the National Park Service. Traveler Editor-in-Chief Kurt Repanshek is joined today by Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell to discuss the Traveler's 4th Annual Threatened and Endangered Park Series and other recent park-related news.…

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | A Walk in the Park 1:07:47

1y ago1:07:47

1:07:47

Many of us like to take a walk in our favorite national park, whether it's a short stroll down one of the boardwalks at Yellowstone National Park, the hike to the top of Old Rag at Shenandoah National Park, or up the Mist Trail at Yosemite National Park, we like to get out and experience parks up close. As you might imagine, there are walks in the …

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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Introducing St. Croix National Scenic Riverway 45:05

1y ago45:05

45:05

There are across the country more than 430 units of the National Park System. And no doubt, most of us are only familiar with the so-called name brand parks. Places like Shenandoah, Acadia, Everglades, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon… But just because you're not already familiar with a park unit doesn't mean you should write it off your to-…