Quickpost from Alaska

A peek behind the curtains at the glamorous life of an outdoor journalist

Greetings from the Sea Bean internet cafe in bustling downtown Seward! Sorry for the slow post. I actually spent most of my flight time up here composing a rather brilliant blog post, but had DNS server complications getting it out from Anchorage. Tragic, really. You'll never know what you missed.

Dang, I need a shower, and badly. Life's been a scramble since I first landed at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. Grabbing a rental car, finding a throwdown campsite, trying to sort and ready all my camping and media gear amid torrential rain.

Really, what's wrong with the people up here!?! You can't find a decent overhanging roof anywhere in this state! Not even out in front of the Safeway grocery! Baseball dougout sheds at the local city park? All locked. What's a dirtbag journalist supposed to do? Spend money!?! Sorry, that's verboten by my publishing overlords. YOU try sorting a month of camping, photo and video gear inside of a rapidly steaming reantal car while it pours outside. Makes groping high school sex in the back of a VW bug seem straightforward.

After one night I was forced to capitulate and get a cheap motel room to organize. But in the Last Frontier (tm), where a Motel 6 can set you back $140, cheap motel rooms can be alarming places.
Read Full Story...

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Tuesday, August 04, 2009 in: Survival, Humorous/funny
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SPOT announces new improvements to their beacon

Smaller, lighter, more powerful, new functions, better attachments

I drove up to the Outdoor Retailer Show on Thursday, mostly to pick up just-sewn 2010 backpack models for upcoming Gear Guide testing. But while I was there I also got to briefly fondle a prototype of SPOT's new, improved beacon, which I'm pretty excited about.

Full diclosure here: SPOT is apparently sponsoring Backpacker's Get Out More road tour. I just discovered that when I went to their website, which shows how clueless us Field Editors are about advertising contracts and the oft-claimed but lamentably nonexistent tester payola.

That said, most readers here know I'm a fan of emergency beacons for serious backcountry use. SPOTS, PLBs, sat phones or cell phones - hey, whatever - they're all light years better than having nothing, which is what most hikers carry, and what puts the "search" in "search and rescue." I no longer go trail running, mountain biking or hiking without a beacon, and SPOTs are my personal choice due to their flexible communications and Google mapping capabilities.

But just like other beacon/phone styles, SPOTS do have their weaknesses, namely, poor tracking in deep timber, and emergency buttons that are easy to inadvertently trigger when you have the unit powered on in tracking mode. The new SPOT, shown above, seems to have addressed those concerns, in addition to adding more functions and reliability while 30% smaller and two ounces lighter than the current model.

Here's the list of improvements: Read Full Story...

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Friday, July 24, 2009 in: Survival, Gear
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The Big Trip

Thoughts on adventure organization from the depths of packing hell

                Trekking the Bagley Icefield, Wrangell-St. Elias, AK

For a feral outdoor writer like myself, big wilderness assignments are the juice of the job, the what-gets-you-off part. Sure, it's rewarding seeing your words and photos in print, but nothing compares to a month in big, brawling wilderness. I bring this up because I'm frantically finishing up biz and packing to leave for a four-week recreational survey of Alaska.

Hey, nice work if you can get it, but the logistics are daunting; stringing together multiple hikes, overnights and five-day trips in rapid-fire style. There's not much leeway for rain, bugs, unexpected swamps or 'gee this is bigger than I thought'. Right now it's less than a week till blast-off, but I've also got the Outdoor Retailer Show to drop by, two feature drafts to submit, and a lot of gear to sort and pack. Amid the chaos of finding my 'old reliable' stuff, reading maps, and prepping kits of various types, I've come up with some tips for fellow hike-a-holics who might be prepping for an annual summer expedition.

[] Keep a master calendar that includes the lead-up to your trip: You can print custom pdf calendars free off the internet. Pencil and count off days, write down airline times, allow for travel and shuttles, record important details like the time and place of a rendezvous, possible route delays, numbers of motels or outfitters.  The visual layout of a calendar helps you accurately budget days and avoid list-induced mistakes. Read Full Story...

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Monday, July 20, 2009 in: Survival, Skills & tips
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Really Lost Hikers and Slow Evacuations

Striking case histories from Australia and the slopes of Mount Terror

          Ruined Castle Overlook, Blue Mountains, Australia

Well, the summer vacation season is well underway and my news feeds are bulging with mostly boring hiker-takes-off-with-zero-preparation-and-gets-lost–overnight stories. But a couple cases stand out.
Climber Spends Four Nights on Mount Terror After Friend Rescued
On July 1^st, four climbers entered the remote, rugged Southern Picket Range in Washington state, set up a camp in Crescent Creek Basin, and spent two days climbing alpine routes on Inspiration, West McMillan Spire, Degenhardt and The Pyramid. On their fourth day  they began the North Ridge of Mount Terror (III-IV, 5.8) a long, committing alpine climb to the Southern Picket’s highest summit.

According to party member Steph Abegg’s first-hand trip report on SummitPost.org, they were about a third of the way up the route, climbing as two rope teams of two each, when the lead climber, Steve Trent, pulled a huge block loose, took a 60-foot fall, and ended up with head injuries, a shattered heel, and a broken femur. Only the fact that they were climbing on twin 8mm ropes saved him, since one of the ropes was cut to the core by rockfall.

The remaining trio managed to get the unconscious Trent to a ledge, bandage his head and splint his leg. The injuries were far too serious for self-evacuation, so the group decided that one rope team should climb on to the false summit of Terror to get a cell signal, while the third, Jason Schilling, who had the most First Aid training, would remain on the face with Trent. Read Full Story...

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009 in: Survival, Skills & tips
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Thor Crashes the Barbecue

Close encounters of the electrical kind highlight this Fourth of July - and lightning safety

                Photo: NOAA                  
Well, I sure got my fireworks show on the Fourth!. Little Torrey town had their classic morning parade, then I grabbed the iPod, hydration pack, a couple apples, and took off for a three-hour run atop Meeks Mesa, a high sandstone plateau northeast of town. Since it was Saturday morning, I didn't get moving very early, so it was nearly 4p.m. by the time I turned around to begin dropping off the mesa edge, jogging back toward home, shower and the annual mega-barbecue at Duane and Donna's.

As my northern wanderings went south, the scenery changed as well - from bright sun to really dark clouds pouring over Boulder Mountain. Angry lightning pulsed between cloud and cliff rims, lighting up the cumulonimbus like japanese lanterns.

Now frankly, lightning scares the crap out of me, thanks to past brushes. Thor, the hot-tempered Norse god of thunder, and I don't play well together. Perhaps it's because he's always throwing that Mjolnir hammer, the one 'that smashes.' As Longfellow wrote:

"Mine eyes are the lightning;
The wheels of my chariot
Roll in the thunder,
The blows of my hammer
Ring in the earthquake."

So I ran hard, knowing it was a race to reach my truck before I ended up re-enacting Tom Cruise's run from the alien death-rays in Spielberg's War of the Worlds.  I've been there before. No thanks.

By the time I dove into the 'Yota, drops were splattering off the hardpan and bolts were already slamming into the flats a mile off. I arrived home in a hurricane deluge of rain and blowing leaves, just in time to turn off all the computers and cower in the living room until the gunshot cracking finally died.  An hour later all was clear and it was time for barbecue.

I wasn't alone in having a dramatic, electrical Fourth. That same day...
Read Full Story...

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Monday, July 06, 2009 in: Survival, Skills & Tips
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Capitol Reef Trip Report

See Honey, we were all hiking

Whoa! Busy here! I'm falling behind. Suddenly I received assignments writing about photography, and administering tests for next year's Gear Guide. The Outdoor Retailer Trade Show is rearing its ugly head, and now I'm suddenly assembling the logistics for a big, bad assignment in howling northern wilderness.

At the end of this month I disappear until September. Schweet! It's Jeremiah Johnson time! Now I just need to finish two months' work in three weeks. A month ago I was calculating how long until I went bankrupt; Now I'm hanging on like a gripped climber. Welcome to subsistence journalism.

Speaking of which, it's high time I got  these photos up from my recent Capitol Reef trip with friends Pete and Mike Rives, who recently got spanked out of Wyoming's Wind Rivers by sleet, rain and knee-deep snow. So they called from Pinedale, drove nine hours south, and we punched it into the Waterpocket Fold. This fallback plan worked admirably.

Normally I'd leave it at that, but in this post-Sanford era it's best to keep up on your trip reports, at least if you're a married guy. More images and 411 after the jump.
Read Full Story...

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Thursday, July 02, 2009 in: Survival
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The Frying Game

This is your brain. This is your brain on heat stroke. Any questions?

          Cholla cactus in 107F, Mojave desert south of Yuma, Arizona. Infrared slide.

Well, now that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has totally ruined my life as a married solo thru-hiker type, I'll try to ignore my current troubles by diving into trail-level survival cautions - namely hot weather, it's perils, and how to exercise in it.

Yes, I know, it's been a long wet, spring in many parts of the U.S.. But trust me, that's over. Welcome to the dog days of summer, the annual hot, dry, stagnant weather period that, for most of North America, falls between early July and late September. Despite what your Girls Gone Wild video collection might imply, high summer ain't all bikinis and Hawaiian Tropic, it's a committing season. In winter, you can layer on the down and Gore-Tex, but in summer, you can only strip so naked, and survival becomes more about smarts than gear.

If you're going to be outside exercising, and especially backpacking and camping where you're out 24/7, you need to understand what heat does to your body, and how to control that.

Exercise increases your metabolic rate, which increases you body temperature - especially when combined with hot air temperatures and solar heating. The human body does not like running too hot, above say 102 degrees Fahrenheit, because proteins start changing, and cellular reactions get funky. In order to prevent organ damage from high body temperatures, your brain triggers arteries and veins to expand, shunting blood flow to the skin like a car's radiator. This puts less blood, and considerably more stress, through your heart and lungs.

To adapt, the body increases its sweat rate, becoming more efficient at cooling. On a cellular level, your body also develops 'heat shock proteins' which allow cellular functions to continue at somewhat higher temperatures. Adaptation speed and total heat adaptation are limited, even with training. You can only push so hard in hot weather.

In healthy situations, your blood vessel expansion and evaporative cooling from perspiration can adjust to the heat. But if you push too hard, or too long, or it's just too damn hot (as in air temperatures above 100 degrees F), the body's cooling mechanisms get overwhelmed, leading to hyperthermia - meaning dangerously high body core temperatures. Read Full Story...

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Sunday, June 28, 2009 in: Survival, Skills & Tips
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Sigh. The "iTent," it had to happen sometime

Ponderings on concept gadgetry and deeply conflicted gear lust

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Sometimes I'm a neo-Luddite who hates high tech gear, and sometimes I'm a total sucker for it. Sometimes I just want to live in a teepee, and sometimes I'd slay to live in Bill Gates' uber-tech 40,000-square-foot totally wired house - assuming I didn't have to pay the utility bills or suffer the karmic consequences of such a huge environmental footprint.

Well, this Solar Concept Tent from UK telecom company Orange might be the solution, minus about 39,950 square feet, anyway. They developed the concept for England's Glastonbury Festival (think Burning Man-cum-Woodstock with a serious Druid jones). It's a honed-up version of their previous Text Me Home Dome. Read Full Story...

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009 in: Survival, Wierd/Funny
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Bad News Triple Header from Yosemite and Great Basin

Two deaths and a close call illustrate the perils of unroped scrambling, crowded routes, and summit separations

    Image via Flickr

Lessons from Half Dome
On Saturday, June 13th, hiker Manoj Kumar, 40, fell to his death off the Half Dome cables in Yosemite Valley. His fall occurred one week after another hiker fell 300 feet but survived. Rangers had to evacuate 41 gripped hikers from the route. You can read  more on this earlier Daily Dirt post, and in this Backpacker forum. Both include first-hand eye-witness accounts.  Here's my take:

[] Many people underestimate exposed scramble climbs. While weather, heavy traffic, and often-unqualified hikers make the phenomenon worse on Half Dome, the same sort of accident occurs routinely on less famous or traveled scramble peaks. Climbing any Class III or IV route requires thousands of individual moves. It only takes one miss. You can't expect a perfect record, but that's what soloing requires - even when you've got a hand line. It's strictly for very high-mileage, well-trained climbers, and they die by the dozens too. Half Dome averages about three deaths a year, but relative to the visitor numbers, that's not a particularly high figure. Read Full Story...

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009 in: Survival, News & Events, Skills & Tips
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Cheating Darwin; A Brief Memoir

Cats may get nine lives, but I'd call that tight rationing

  The author taking repeated, staged falls to illustrate a technique article.

The recent spate of climbing and kayaking deaths got me thinking about how many close calls I've had over the years. But trying to recall them all, and figuring out which ones were "almost died" versus "merely scary" got confusing, so I decided to write down a list. It was a sobering exercise. We always hear about the searches, rescues and fatalities, but every weekend thousands of outdoor adventurers luck out, take a deep breath, and probably never mention the scrape further. Here's my pared-down tally of incidents where the Grim Reaper rightly felt ripped off, and it's way longer than nine:

[] 1977 - I almost fell 100 feet to the ground from a poorly protected rock climb near Aspen, Colorado. I managed to re-grab a hold, barely. None of my pro would have held.

[] 1978 - I had two surprise, waist-deep avalanche burials while skiing in-bounds at Aspen Highlands ski area in CO. This was back in the days when avalanche control wasn't so intensive.

[] 1979 - I took a direct hit from a 15-pound rock while belaying on the North Face of Capitol Peak (Grade IV, 5.9), one of Colorado's most difficult Fourteeners. My partner and I took one helmet and traded off so the second had it on each pitch. Good thing too. The heavy, fiberglass Joe Brown helmet was destroyed. I had a stiff neck for days.

[] 1979 - I almost drowned while trying to cross snowmelt-swollen Snowmass Creek near the Snowmass/Bear Creek confluence, while descending from very rugged Pierre Lakes Basin in Colorado's Elk Range. Short version: I slipped off a log five feet above the water, and managed to pull myself from the raging, ice-cold creek after 150 yards. Read Full Story...

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Monday, June 15, 2009 in: Survival, Wierd/Funny
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