A wrap of the biggest stories and best writing about the outdoors from New Zealand and around the world.

Midjourney, the artificial intelligence platform that won an art contest at the Colorado State Fair, has delighted and befuddled audiences across the internet by generating images of bears cast as humans’ hiking buddies. The bear likenesses appear mainly in selfie format and are sometimes clothed and equipped like human hikers. The general consensus among the internet — adorbs! Also troubling!

Comments poured in — from the elated to the sarcastic to the woefully misunderstood. Others finger-wagged, forecasting that kids would think the images were real and solicit selfies from bears as a result. 

To see more pictures of ‘hiking bears’ head over to Gear Junkie.

Great Walk bookings pushed back to mid-June

DOC said it was working with vendors to resolve the fault with the booking system and apologised to those who had tried to book a Great Walk for the delay.

“We are very sorry for the frustrations people have met with when using our booking system recently, and the delay of Great Walk openings until mid-June,” DOC director of heritage and visitors Cat Wilson said.

DOC will confirm the exact opening dates on its website on May 31. Read the article on Stuff.

Duo arrested for selling drugs on the Appalachian Trail

Two people are facing charges for allegedly selling drugs to thru-hikers along the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina.

The Macon County Sheriff’s Office said that it had arrested Bobbie Anne Drelick and Ioan Edward Craia after receiving a tip. After searching their van with a drug-sniffing dog, deputies found two and a half kilos of marijuana, 248 grams of psilocybin, eight doses of LSD, and ten grams of THC wax resin.

In recent years, a growing party culture along the trail has also elicited complaints from locals, businesses and other hikers who have pointed to what they characterise as entitlement and disrespect as reasons to limit hiker activity in some towns.

Read the full story at Outside.

Chance encounter on the Camino de Santiago leads to love

When Californian Loni Philbrick-Linzmeyer and Danish Kjartan Bergqvist decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, they each strongly felt it needed to be a solo trip.

But two weeks into their respective hikes Kjartan and Loni first met. The interaction was friendly, but brief. They met up later that evening and started walking together each day for the next three weeks when they reached the end of the trail.

“I realised that I did not want this to end, I didn’t want to go home without having Loni in my life,” says Kjartan. Swapping contact details and promising to stay in touch didn’t seem enough. Even committing to a long-distance romance felt lacking. “It’s settled then,” said Kjartan. He said the words aloud: “Will you marry me?” Loni was overjoyed. Read their love story on CNN.

The most remote place to work in the world

Applications have closed for a 13-month job on one of the remotest islands in the world.

Gough Island, a British territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean, is 2400 km from the African mainland and requires a seven-day boat ride from South Africa to get to.

The island is host to seven employees and eight million birds. The job involves “frequent long days” tracking seabird species, and requires employees to adapt to living in a “challenging and remote sub-Antarctic environment”.

Current employee Rebekah Goodwill said, “They give us a year’s worth of food during the two-week takeover time, and we live off it for the rest of the year.” Read more about the tough living and working conditions on Gough Island at RNZ.