Two-Heel Drive is a blog for hikers, campers, backpackers and nature cravers in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Need someplace to go? I've hiked all the best Bay Area trails: check out my favorite hikes or read the park profiles I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News.
She wrote it up the other day.
Our route took us through some incredible scenery (is there any other kind in the Sierra?), including a night of cowboy camping at Precipice Lake, the site of one of my favorite Ansel Adams photographs. It just so happened that the night coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, making for one memorable night.
Her pictures are awesome.
Barbara Egbert, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail a few years back with her 10-year-old daughter, has a few store appearances coming up:
Barbara will be signing her new book at 2 p.m. March 2 at the Pleasanton Library; at the Pacific Crest Trail Association “Trailfest” in Sacramento on March 28-29; at the Saratoga REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 3; at the Mountain View REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 9 and at the Marina REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 15.
My “Zero Days” review is here.
Tacoma News Tribune has a rundown of the usual “stop trashing the place, dammit” advice. The first of 11:
1. Stay on the trail when you hike – even if that means walking through mud puddles. Cutting from one part of the trail to another on a switchback causes erosion that can damage plants. Walking off trail to get around puddles also damages plants.
This is a fave of mine. The story also has a few info nuggets I hadn’t seen before, such as:
Left on the surface, human waste can take up to 18 weeks to fully decompose.
That should make you grateful your cat is so fastidious.
Found this blog posting from some folks who went backpacking to the dome country at Anza-Borrego in Southern California. Includes some nifty pix, plus this:
It’s about a 3.5mi backpack from the trailhead w/ a bit of elevation gain. We hiked in during the afternoon and it was nice and cool - which was good because we were each carrying 8 liters (that’s 17 lbs!) of water, plus our backpacking gear.
Basic backpacking calculation: You can carry much more if you walk much less. Anza-Borrego gets mentioned in a lot of the Trail Journals accounts of thru-hikers heading northward in the spring, when it’s already a fiery furnace down there. Much cooler now, though — just the thing to give the one you love for Christmas: a weekend among rocks!
More on Anza-Borrego (which is the largest state park in the state, the only one bigger than our beloved Henry Coe) at the State Parks Page.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Crest Trail, the Pacific Northwest Trail runs for nearly 1,200 miles from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Ocean. Two-Heel Drive reader and blogger Greg Seitz interviewed a friend of his who hiked all those miles over two months this past summer. The hiker is Sam Haraldson. From Part 4 of the interview:
Although not formally educated as such I feel as though I found Zen while walking in the woods. Life reduced to its simplest parts, sustenance and shelter being your only concerns one is forced to grasp life at its minimum. Stripping away the intricacies of society the mind far better grasps the relationships not of one person to another but rather one person to the world. Kicking your foot mid step knocks over a plant which ultimately rots into compost making way for new life. A pebble thrown into a pond creates ripples of water which send ripples into the air and so on and so forth.
This rippling effect followed me back into society and strengthened my beliefs in the interconnectedness of all things. It boosted my beliefs that people must be good to each other as the ripples arenít just in the water, but in the conversations we have with others as well. As my sister-in-law loves to quote, ìLive well, laugh often and love much.î
Sam’s an ultra-lighter, so of course there’s a discourse on gear.
All the gear I brought I hold in the highest regard but a few items stand out as being very superb. As the year comes to an end and I determine my 2007 favorites I predict the list will be topped by two items. One being the Bushbuddy Ultra backpacking wood stove and second being the Montbell Thermawrap jacket. These two pieces of gear packed the highest value per ounce of anything I carried with me.
Hey, I have one of those Thermawraps — handy to have around, even on day hikes near civilization.
The interview starts here.
Sam’s hiking pages start here. His photo album is here.
Sounds to me like the PNT is an excellent alternative to the PCT, particularly if you haven’t got a free six months to spend hiking.