I took a day off from hiking yesterday to read Dan White’s “The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind — and Almost Found Myself — on the Pacific Crest Trail.” Oddly enough, my summation before reading the first sentence…
Monthly Archives: June 2008
Meet Dan White, Cactus Eater
by tom • June 27, 2008 • 3 Comments
Dan, who shares the unfortunate name of a notorious San Francisco double-murderer, has a new book out about his long-ago adventure up the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s called “The Cactus Eaters,” alluding to the time when, in an extreme expression…
MSR Reactor camp stove reviews: raves mostly
by tom • June 26, 2008 • 1 Comment
For fun this morning I went looking for reviews of the MSR Reactor backpacking stove, Mountain Safety Research’s response to getting its butt kicked, innovation-wise, by those JetBoil upstarts. GoBlog touted its arrival in October 2006, Backpacker magazine made it…
Five-day Bay Area Ridge Trail hike
by tom • June 25, 2008 • 4 Comments
Reservations apparently are still available for this nifty fund-raiser for the Bay Area Ridge Trail for 45 miles over five days from Castro Valley to Martinez — somebody else will haul all your camping gear and food. It’s $225 (or…
Bay Nature’s site relaunch
by tom • June 25, 2008 • 5 Comments
Bay Nature magazine, of my favorite publications on the planet, has revamped its Web site with a bunch of cool features like events calendars and maps of Bay Area attractions. Also has videos like this one: They’ve also put all…
Ventana Wilderness closure expected
by tom • June 24, 2008 • 2 Comments
John Fedak sent me this e-mail from a posting to a Ventana Wilderness listserv: Folks – I just got a call from Patrick Bailey, the Wilderness and Trails Manager for the Monterey Ranger District. He tells me that in response…
Ruins along Bay Area trails
by tom • June 24, 2008 • 11 Comments
No matter how much we crave trees, flowers, meadows, mountain peaks, etc., we still like seeing human stuff along the trail — provided it’s suitably old and existing in a state of advanced disrepair. Last week’s water bottlers and PowerBar…
Pescadero Creek County Park, a first hike
by tom • June 23, 2008 • 3 Comments
Add Pescadero Creek County Park to your must-hike list, if it isn’t there already. It’s remote, quiet, full of ambitious young redwoods and a smattering of really old ones that, oddly enough, survived the steam-powered saws of outrageous fortune. Pescadero…
All new map of Two Heel Drive hikes
by tom • June 20, 2008 • 1 Comment
I built this with Google maps this morning; it’s built around the park profiles I’ve written for the Mercury News. View Larger Map