This year was supposed to be one for the books for the Chattanooga Track Club.

For the past 15 years, the Head of the Hooch, one of the world's largest rowing regattas, has attracted thousands of competitors and spectators alike to the Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga.

Growing up, Mitch Groothuis' father used camping as a way to bring the family together by taking him and his two brothers on an annual trip to Norris Lake near Knoxville for a week every summer for 14 years.

Meet Erin Elizabeth Flettrich, local artist and climber.

One can wonder why backpackers do what they do. After all, they go to a lot of trouble, and sometimes expense, to find a place where they can sleep between two trees or lie on the ground.

If you've been on Instagram in the past few years, chance are you're familiar with #vanlife.

Even on the days you cannot be in the field searching for new species to cross off your checklist, there are still ways to bird. This season, let your imagination soar by indulging in others' adventures — or misadventures, depending on who's telling the story. Birders, after all, are an offbeat bunch, which makes them always entertaining characters.

This year upended Jim Johnson's plans for retirement and has decimated his successful European bicycle tourism business for the foreseeable future. However, the local cyclist hopes his previous bike advocacy work and an updated business model can lead to a new venture in regional bike tourism in 2021.

My younger brother and I spent years of summers circling a golf course pond. Over thousands of casts we learned the intricacies of an enclosed ecosystem, first with bream and bobbers and then with largemouth bass.

The best time for camping is the first couple of weekends after the air first starts to feel crisp in the morning — that long-awaited departure from the heavy blanket of humidity that greets us on most summer days in Chattanooga. The more pleasant temperatures also usher in the always-stunning effect of the leaves' transformation from shades of green to vibrant yellows, oranges and reds.

As the spring of COVID-19 has become the summer and likely the fall of COVID-19, people have been forced to learn new ways of going about their lives to live safely with a disease that has upended the world.

When Heath Rowland goes to Big Soddy Gorge, his favorite local place to climb, he rarely sees a Black person, he says.

When introducing children to paddling, the younger, the better, says Zach Bopp, supervisor of experiences at Chattanooga's REI.

In 2019, Luke Thompson was visiting the Canadian Rockies, his heart set on spotting a spruce grouse.

On Feb. 13, 2015, Caryville angler Gabe Keen caught a 15-pound, 3-ounce largemouth bass fishing out of Chester Frost Park on Chickamauga Lake.

Nature is full of surprises.

If the new leaders of SORBA Chattanooga have their way in the coming months and years, mountain biking in this area will be heading downhill — in the best possible way.

As a professional climber for 30 years and a longtime climbing coach, Lisa Rands has honed a 30-minute routine of stretches and conditioning exercises that help climbers stay healthy and balanced.

It's hot. And what's worse, it's humid.

If you've ever gone on a commercial rafting trip or picked up a soaked boater hitchhiking along the Ocoee River, you might have heard some confusing and/or incomprehensible slang.

With deft oar strokes, Bill Stranahan steered his high-prowed Clackacraft through the first set of shoals below the put-in.

Birding by ear can be difficult, which is why some enthusiasts come up with tricks for remembering those tweets.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people were forced to stay at home and away from work and school for months to help control the spread of the disease.