Randy Johnson is a longtime photojournalist and NATJA member who as editor-in-chief of United Airlines’ Hemispheres inflight magazine was keynote speaker at NATJA's early Newport, Rhode Island meeting.  In 2024, Johnson's Hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway won the Lowell Thomas Award for Honorable Mention in the “Guidebook” category.  The same year, the softbound edition of his award-winning book Grandfather Mountain: The History and Guide to an Appalachian Icon won a Lowell Thomas Silver Award for “Travel Book.” When first released in 2016, Grandfather Mountain: The History and Guide to an Appalachian Icon won the bronze medal in travel from the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and was nominated for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. In 2022 Johnson released the fourth edition of his book Best Easy Day Hikes Blue Ridge Parkway. In 2024, a new 3rd edition of Johnson's Best Easy Day Hikes Great Smoky Mountains National Park was published. 2026 saw the milestone publication of the fifth edition of his bestselling FalconGuide Hiking North Carolina, released on the title’s 30th anniversary. The 2020 previous edition of that book won a “best book photography” NATJA Award. With the 2019 publication of the second edition of his "cult classic" 1987 book Southern Snow: The New Guide to Winter Sports from Maryland to the Southern Appalachians, the International Ski History Association honored it with the prestigious SKADE Award. In 2027, Johnson will release a new book, Hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the fifth edition of Best Easy Day Hikes Blue Ridge Parkway. Johnson was editor-in-chief of Hemispheres, United Airlines award-winning inflight magazine, for nearly twenty years. Under Randy's guidance, Hemispheres earned dozens of Lowell Thomas, and NATJA awards, as well as Eddy and Ozzie honors, many for Hemispheres’ ground-breaking, itinerary-driven, and influential travel article series Three Perfect Days. Hemispheres was the only inflight magazine to win a James Beard Award.  Hemispheres was named world's best inflight magazine in 2006. In 2024, Hemispheres ended its thirty-two year run on United’s airplanes as the last inflight published in America. The passing of the influential publication was widely-noted in the media, including with comments by Johnson in The Washington Post and Columbia Journalism Review. Johnson’s passion for the outdoors has also led to a lifetime devoted to "making a difference" for trails and backcountry preservation. That includes conceiving and launching the Grandfather Mountain backcountry management system that in the 1970s reopened the then privately owned mountain’s overgrown and deteriorating trails after a hiker death. Johnson's innovative land management plan reclaimed historic trails and built new ones while the last portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway was being completed across the mountain. His program ensured public access to the private land parcel for 31 years until the private owners sold the mountain to become a legendary North Carolina State Park.  During that time and since, Johnson's books and articles helped gain Grandfather its current reputation as one of the East's most, renowned, spectacular, and special mountains. During his time at Grandfather in the 1980s, Johnson was instrumental in routing North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail, one of the nation’s newest “thru-hikes,” across Grandfather Mountain while a task force leader for the project. He is again a task force leader for the trail in the 21st century, while also serving on the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail’s board of directors.  For decades his award-winning books and articles have guided hikers to the country's most visited national parks with award-winning guidebooks to North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the South's increasingly influential ski and winter resorts.