High school student YouTube channel takes off
An Oasis High School student continues to spread his wings in ways to share his love of national parks.
Author Eric Feichthaler Jr., a rising senior, has published “A Junior Ranger’s Guide to the US National Parks,” as well as its second and third edition. The young park enthusiast has visited 61 out of the 63 U.S. National Parks.
The summer months, while he is out of school, is when he checks the majority of the parks off his list. In June he will travel to Acadia National Park in Maine for three, or four days.
While hiking with his dad, Eric, Sr., and brother, Tyler, in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, the idea struck after visiting 14 parks that summer that he should share his experiences in other media formats. The YouTube channel, “National Park Wild,” took hold, as Feichthaler hopes to make other people wild about national parks.
Although the channel was created in 2020, it has recently received a boost of subscribers from 600 at the beginning of May to 2,200 subscribers at the end of the month.
Feichthaler said he really enjoys sharing his individual experiences of the parks, which include what he has seen, the wildlife spotted and tips for traveling.
“I find it easier to relive those memories and directly speak my mind through revisiting the parks,” he said, adding that he has run out of space on his camera so many times capturing the right photograph.
His huge collection of photographs sometimes can be hard to sort through and find the best photos to share.
“I will cut things out. It’s really a lottery. I try to have the best ones and the most impact,” he said for his YouTube channel.
The videos range from 5 to 10 minutes with his longest 36 minutes long due to him ranking all the parks he has visited.
“There are a lot of people from all over the world,” Feichthaler said of who has subscribed. “I communicate with people through my videos.”
He also put together a mini documentary of his experience at Yellowstone National Park in honor of its 150 year anniversary of becoming a park.
“That is my favorite video that I made,” Feichthaler said.
Although he has seen many amazing sightings of animals, there was one that stuck out the most at Lake Clark National Park in Alaska. He said he was close to bears, but looking to the right he saw an animal he had never seen in the wild before, a wolf.
“He was closer than the bear,” Feichthaler said, adding that the wolf started howling before more joined.
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