Brett does most of his hiking in the Pacific Northwest but he has been known to haunt the higher elevations of California. Check out the post count on each of these categories at his blog: Food Reviews (6) Gear Reviews…
Yearly Archives: 2008
Latest hikes column: Monte Bello Open Space
by tom • July 3, 2008 • 0 Comments
From this morning’s Mercury News: If you’ve got a mind to do one crazy thing this summer, try hiking in the hot sun at Monte Bello Open Space Preserve. The park in the Santa Cruz Mountains west of Los Altos…
Book event for hikers with dogs
by tom • July 3, 2008 • 0 Comments
Linda and David Mullally, authors of “Best Hikes with Dogs: Central California,” will sign books and give a slide show at the REI in Mountain View, REI Mountain View, 2450 Charleston Road, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 23. Note: Backpacking…
High-altitude hiking
by tom • July 2, 2008 • 6 Comments
Those of you not chained to the local trails by a Newspaper column about nearby hikes may actually experience the thrill of sacrificing 50 percent of your lung capacity because the view’s so much better up there in the Real…
Dan White’s backcountry don’ts
by tom • July 2, 2008 • 5 Comments
I keep blogging about Dan White, hoping some of his writing skills will rub off, but anyway, Mr. Cactus Eater shows some promise as an outdoor blogger with a list of things not to do on a backpacking trip. Highlights:…
State of the blog update
by tom • July 1, 2008 • 8 Comments
The first half of ’08 is over, so what the heck, let’s look at how things are going around here. I shifted to Bay Area coverage around this time last year and installed a Google Analytics counter to measure our…
Book review: “The Cactus Eaters”
by tom • June 30, 2008 • 7 Comments
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…
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…