A Lodge Called Folkestone - The American Hiker Magazine Startup

A Lodge Called Folkestone

The Dream, The Challenge, The People
 by Bob Kranich

(Excerpt 21)

“The Lodge Called Folkestone”. You may wonder why the first half of the book is about my many adventures throughout the USA. Well, this first part explains just why my interests changed from hot rodding cars to backpacking. How the idea of a lodge came about, and just how the lodge came to be in North Carolina and next to the Smoky Mountain National Park, Deep Campground to be exact.

We hiked into Chicago Basin and set up a base camp. We did day hikes around the area, and found old deteriorating log cabins and mining remains. Then after four days we hiked out, caught the train back to Durango, and then drove back to Houston. We had gotten our story, and made some very interesting contacts.

Our second edition of American Hiker was much more professional looking. We had fine articles and photos. We picked up a freelance writer and knowledgeable hiker, Robert Pancoast, who wrote amazing articles. He was with us for the remainder of our issues. We had attracted a full page environmental ad from the Wilderness Society. The most exciting part was that we had sold five paying ads, and two of them were famous equipment manufacturers, The North Face, and Sierra Designs. Because of this, we decided that just as soon as we had the December-January issue out, we would be off to Denver and Boulder, Colorado. There we would visit the equipment manufacturers in those towns, introduce them to the American Hiker magazine, and attempt to sell them ads.

We were actually going to be in Colorado in the month of October. That meant cold and snow. We ran into it. While we were visiting the equipment manufacturers, we made a contact in Boulder, Colorado, with some hikers that were running an “Outward Bound” camp. When we were finished selling ads, we went to the Vail ski area and found them. They had rented a large, but not being used “A” frame ski lodge at the far end of Vail. There were about 15 Outward Bound instructors, and they had two groups out. They would swap leaders, but keep the students out on the trail. Everyone there would cook something whenever they wanted, and crash in their sleeping bags anywhere on the bottom or top floors. There is one strange thing that I remember. This was the time when the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, (a seagull that wanted to be different) was popular. All of these hikers were reading it. And we did too!

This ad sales work and research paid off, and for our third issue, we had a total of seventeen ads. Two of these ads were full page, and five were well known companies. We even had the magazine Off Belay advertise.

Our fourth issue turned out well. It should have come out in April-May, but we needed the time to get it all together, and to save up the money for the printing. So we came out in May. I was working and supporting the magazine. We had sixteen paid ads. Our articles and photos were great. The articles spanned the United States, from an article on hiking the northwest high mountains, Big Bend National Park, ski touring in upstate New York, to “Backpacking the Big Cypress” in Florida. Bob Pancoast had another great article on the “Dangers of Backpacking.” The Eastern Region of the U. S. Forest Service let us use one of the finest articles written on wildlife management entitled “The Fairest One of Them All.”

From a publishing standpoint, we were looking good. However, I was running out of money. As I had mentioned earlier, we were never in the black. It was fun doing this, but I had run out of my reserve funds, and couldn’t afford to go on. So American Hiker magazine joined the ranks of statistics. Approximately only one out of every twenty new magazine startups succeed. However, I did one thing that most other new businesses that don’t make it ever do. I refunded every subscriber their money, on a pro-rated basis.

After this project, we were tired! We had each been working our regular jobs, then working after hours and on weekends doing American Hiker. We decided to go on another adventure, take a long break, and visit the Smokies.

From The Author:

This is a new book. It is about the Lodge I built in the Smoky Mountains, near Bryson City, and Deep Creek campground, North Carolina. Having been from Florida, I know that a lot of Floridians love to visit the Smoky Mountains National Park. Therefore hopefully you will enjoy my story of the building of “A Lodge Called Folkestone”.