Ben Cramer has hiked more than 6,000 miles on Pennsylvania's hiking trails and has completed many of the state's long-distance backpacking trails multiple times. He is a longtime member of Keystone Trails Association and was a member of its board of directors from 2018 to 2023. He is also a member of several Pennsylvania conservation groups and hiking clubs; and was formerly an executive committee member for Sierra Club at both the local and state levels. Cramer is the author of seven guidebooks for Pennsylvania backpacking trails, including two previous editions for the Allegheny Front Trail. With one exception, none of those long-distance trails had dedicated guidebooks previously. Cramer was also the editor of Pennsylvania Hiking Trails (13th edition, 2008). For several years he wrote regularly on outdoor adventure and environmental issues for the Centre Daily Times, and for a variety of Pennsylvania volunteer publications. Under his professional name Benjamin W. Cramer, he is the author of the book Freedom of Environmental Information (2011). He is a longtime resident of State College, PA and teaches for the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, where one of his research specialties is the environmental impacts of modern telecommunications services.