Uri Dvir, a pioneer of Israeli hiking and initiator of the Israel Trail, died July 3 at his home in Tel Aviv. He was 80.

Dvir authored numerous books on hiking and wrote a column on “tiyyulim,” the all-inclusive Hebrew word for day hikes and camping trips, for Ynetnews.com. His final article, on a trail near Israel’s southwest coast, was published the day he died.

A co-founder and longtime leader of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Dvir was responsible for thousands of miles of trails and markers in the country. His major achievement was the development in the 1980s of the Israel Trail, a nearly 600-mile hiking path that runs from the Lebanese border to the Red Sea. — jta