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Photograph looking south along the clear Colorado River from the Beamer Trail canyon shelf in Grand Canyon.

North Kaibab, a Trail Closure

So much water! So much trail destruction everywhere! This morning I heard that the North Kaibab trail is 1000% closed for maintenance until June 2. In fact, the entire North Rim is closed until June 2 (at least to cars)! And starting tomorrow the Canyon below Glen dam is about to experience a rare Spring “High Flow Experiment.” Shit’s gotten real in the Grand Canyon area this winter! Wow! Usually it opens May 1. 2023 has thrown a monkey wrench in thru hiker’s plans, and many of them refuse to back down. I’m not hiking but I still got excitedly thinking about fun (but still pretty much impossible) detours, and reminiscing about my time on some of them. (I have ~2500 miles solo on foot in Utah/Arizona after crossing them a few times.) (Inadvisable before fall 2023) AZT Re-routes in continue reading…

A view southwest of Musselman Arch in Canyonlands.

Jeeping the White Rim All By Myself

Last month I was planning on meeting my BFF Pete in Moab to celebrate his birthday. I figured if I was going to make the long drive out to Utah with my Jeep Cherokee, I might as well put the 4wd to good use. I started watching for White Rim campsite permit cancellations, and strung together 3 nights in Canyonlands Island in the Sky (iSky) National Park. That took a few weeks of checking almost daily, so I guess that’s not exactly luck! The idea was this: I’d swing through the White Rim area and pick up Pete at the Moab airport when through. It was pretty critical that I not get stranded somewhere, because he would really be depending on me to meet him (he is vision impaired). In preparation I bought a some things for my Jeep, like continue reading…

Creek Fire smoke in central Nevada

Flu and The Trail, part 2

This post is an update to my March 16 post, Flu and the Trail. It turns out you can thru-hike during a pandemic, but if you’re not still asking yourself “should I?” and considering your impacts on other people, I hope you’ll keep reading and hear me out. After volunteering several months of my life over several years to help thru-hikers on the PCT, I left with a bad taste in my mouth. I met several burned out trail angels who felt similarly, and noticed quite a few hikers themselves abandoning the trail shaking their heads. Why? Because thru-hikers are generally privileged, and often self-involved and entitled. It’s not exactly “rewarding” work to help people who don’t really need help. Bear with me when I explain how I got here. It is based in experience with hikers, and I have continue reading…

Escape to Yosemite

Yosemite now has a permit system which limits traffic somewhat*. We heard maybe we could get more of the Park to ourselves, and headed out on our first venture to a public place since February. We enjoyed a few slightly-more-serene days in the park. For me it still felt like a zoo, but maybe that’s because I’ve been living with 1-2 people surrounded by millions of acres of untouched forest for five months. We went for a hike, and the next day for a climb, and for about 48 hours almost forgot that it’s been a difficult year. I hadn’t seen Tuolumne from up high since 2013 (and I didn’t see much then because I was running from a lightning storm off Clouds Rest). These views floored me and smoothed my ruffled feathers. * Many people are abusing the system, continue reading…

Custom Fonts with WooStamper (SetaStamper)

The SetaPDF library which PDF Stamper is built on allows quite a bit of font customization to be done. More on SetaPDF and font manipulations. For the meantime, a quick tutorial on how to get other fonts beyond the three packaged with the plugin (Times, Courier, and Helvetica). Start by finding a TrueType font (.ttf) file which suits your needs. Try to keep the file size small, subsetting if necessary so that your server isn’t bogged down managing a large font file while trying to manipulate your PDF. Upload the file to your wp-content/uploads directory, somewhere it won’t get overwritten. It makes sense to use the woostamper folder, so we’ve gone ahead and done that below. Arimo is a TrueType font which works for our purposes, so we have uploaded it to a folder “arimo.” Look at the function below continue reading…

Adding Custom Fonts to EDDiStamper

All three new Stamper plugins (EDDiStamper, PDF Stamper, and Download Monitor Stamper) come with the three standard PDF fonts: Helvetica, Times New Roman, and Courier. Not much to get excited about, I know. Whereas EDDiMark and WaterWoo (plugins based on TCPDF, not SetaPDF-Stamper) have built-in font uploaders with more instant gratification, the integration with Seta is a bit more complicated, and so you’ll need to use a little code. Whether you add the code into a custom plugin, your child theme functions.php file, or by using the more plug-n-play Code Snippets plugin doesn’t matter. Before using the following example code, we have started by creating a “fonts” folder inside the wp-content/uploads/eddistamper/ folder. We put our Comic Sans (yes!) TTF file inside the fonts folder. You can see that path reflected in line 6 of the code below. So, put the continue reading…

colorful sunset

Flu and the Trail

We’re now at least a couple months into the surreal shitshow called “COVID-19” (a coronavirus). I’ve spent the past week and a half-sequestered very remotely, not just because of the misanthropy I’ve felt more and more while scanning the news and social media, but to enjoy the wild, help build an off-grid house, and perhaps survive (and help others survive) the pandemic I’ve been warning friends about since I was a nurse in Portland in the oughties. This type of thing was bound to happen, and it’s too bad more people aren’t more prepared. (That said, not many of us have the resources to be prepared.) While cutting wood, plastering, and painting over the past week, various unrelated COVID-19 impacts have come to mind. Having gotten more and more worried about hoarding, I came to town yesterday to stock up continue reading…

woman hiking in Utah

Where trails come from, where they go…

I subscribe to Wired Magazine in digital form, where I learn all sorts of neat things each day. This morning I spent over an hour watching a video produced by Wired, where an astrophysicist explains gravity to five people, ranging from beginner to expert. What a brilliant way of teaching/learning a topic, by helping someone realize how much they don’t know, and expanding on a concept bit-by-bit over an hour. (I was about at the grade-schooler’s level of understanding, haha. How far can you follow the concept? By expert level, my mind was blown.) This afternoon, an opinion piece popped into the Wired newsletter. It’s right up my alley. If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you probably know I’ve been subjecting readers to an achingly long rant about conservationism vs. the modern “opt outside” movement…. about Leave No Trace continue reading…

Death Valley rock formations

Rock or Wood?

I just spent a couple of gloriously mild days in Life Valley, canyoneering and hiking, conversing with and admiring a lot of rock. The Valley also had quite a bit of water in it due to some recent storms, but this time of year the plants and animals have retreated and it’s time for the rock to shine. And there’s a lot of rock. The Valley’s valleys, as they show (or don’t show) themselves from the car, are enshrouded, modest, and less-than-tantalizing by reputation. If one is brave and stupid enough to venture too far from the road on foot and with rope, they open in dizzying, hypnotic displays of color and texture, enfolding you. It’s not so much that they threaten to keep you against your will at that point, as that you threaten to stay against their will. continue reading…

High Sierra glacial basin

Nature : Museum

Discussing my latest backpacking trip with my guy, I came up with an analogy which I like very much, and which seems original and enlightening. I compared modern wilderness visits with museum visits of the recent past (pre-2010). My first memories of museums were of the Anchorage Museum as a young teen, then the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay, and the Met in NYC and Mutter Museum in Philly as an older teen. Even if relatively brief, I treasure those visits for several reasons. Be they small or petty reasons it doesn’t matter, the memories are large as a very deep breath. Memories of carefully-curated open space and light, surprises of color and subtle hushed sounds. Photos were disallowed and so I would stare without blinking in an effort to somehow memorize what I had seen, feelings and all. I tried continue reading…

lake powell invasive mussel shells

New West vs. Old West

I’ve been struggling with thoughts about conservationism, conservationism against the prevailing tide, and my tiny place in the thick of things, as well as a sore knee, since I got back from walking Utah in early June. Some reading, and going through my photos, is helping me finally collect my thoughts. I can’t remember where I was when a friend forwarded me a link from the Canyon County Zephyr, but I was definitely in Utah. I was probably in the backcountry still somehow indulging in LTE “connectivity,” but unable to read much because I was busy walking. But with a few clicks and paragraph licks, I distinctly gleaned a sense of being the outsider where I was. I looked up from the phone and had lost my bearing, my confidence. I suddenly felt woefully ignorant of the vast soulful and continue reading…

Another Vanagon Wiring Harness

I made another wiring harness for another 1983.5 (water-cooled) 1.9L (2.2 GoWesty rebuild) Westfalia van. You can see the first engine wiring harness I made here. My friend’s van started right up, but still needs a new throttle body to smooth out the idle. We knew this before we started. The original wiring harness was in even worse shape than mine, with several sections of burned wire and wire casing. Anyway, here’s some pics of the new one I made. The pics were taken just before the harness was installed, and final connections made, so there are some unfinished ends. But you get the idea. Update: as of December 2019 both these harnesses are working fine, and no regrets. Except I do regret driving through the flooded Necanicum River on Highway 101 last week because… I may have destroyed my continue reading…

I’m Not An Electrician, But

I haven’t written for a while and since I last wrote I’ve had a pretty marvelous adventure through Utah and Arizona on foot. Yet here I’m going to write about a Vanagon wiring project I just completed. I’m sorry if this is totally off-topic, boring, and a waste of your time. But I took on this wiring project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and thought I’d share a couple thoughts that could help other folks. Old: New: This was a pretty straightforward project and I’m pleased with the results. One thing I discovered while working on it bothers me and I haven’t been able to confirm anyone else has this situation: the original ECU connector was pinned in reverse such that fuel injectors 1 and 2 were in 3 and 4 position and vice versa. I’ve continue reading…

view of sagebrush forest and a deep canyon in the distance

Tuckup Canyon Head Flora and Fauna

I topped out at Kanab Point, a very quiet and lonely place. I did consider introducing myself to the people truck-camped there, but got a definite vibe that it wasn’t the right time. It’s weird to have feelings like that, but I always listen to my gut. Probably a great idea when one is that remote, and without any rescue beacon. But it was good to know someone was there in case my tonsil decided to explode. And as I went through those thoughts in my head, the truck fired up and drove off, without so much as a backward glance. People can be so weird in the desert. I know if I had flagged them down they probably would have helped, but it just seems like a desert courtesy to howdy do and ask if water is required. Must continue reading…

Looking down on the Esplanade, trying to remember to look at my footing, not the scenery! What a gorgeous morning!

When I Almost Killed George Steck

TL;DR Lucky for him, George Steck is already dead. I was just very mad at him for a couple days for suggesting anyone hike this section of the Esplanade in the Grand Canyon. In hindsight I myself wonder what I was doing trudging through sometimes hip deep snow drifts in a blizzard to Monument Point. But nevermind that, it’s another story. This story starts at the Bill Hall Monument Point trailhead, where I began by borrowing a few small bottles of water from the back of a pickup truck loaded with several dozen gallons. Gee I wondered, what was that person told? Obviously not the weather forecast! What’s wonderful about snow and rain in the Grand Canyon is it means finding water isn’t such a chore. I knew in a matter of minutes I’d be going from 36º and snowing continue reading…

Cabin 140 on the North Rim

Hello from cabin 140 on the North Rim! I’m sleeping on the floor next to a heater that came on sometime in the night when the generator was at last repaired, and have been sizzling all night. The six other people in the cabin are snoozing away; they were up late drinking and celebrating their Rim to Rim hike, which somehow ended just before the snow hit. They had foresight to send a stranger ahead with a credit card to reserve this cabin and good doing. It was chaos bordering on riot yesterday evening in the main Lodge, with folks having pushed in despite the weather only to find no respite from the cold: 29° outside and no electricity in the Park. I was not as lucky as these six; first of all, I had to travel 4 times further continue reading…

two small honey-colored bark scorpions in the palm of a hand

A Walk from Hite to Ticaboo

Who even knows where Hite and Ticaboo are? You do? That’s awesome, you’re familiar with the epicenter of Utah’s slickrock coolness! Or maybe you have spent some time on a boat on Powell Lake. Boaters in southeastern Utah would be rudderly (utterly – get it?) familiar with these two tiny outposts. Not familiar? Let me show you. They’re both sorta out of the way places, and pretty much nobody walks between the two places. I thought about hitchhiking past this section, but I heard that Swett Canyon was neato, and was curious about getting a little closer to the southern foot of the Henry Mountains. I did not plan this part of my Colorado Plateau traverse beforehand; it was a problem to tackle in real time. It takes three days to do this walk if you go at it pretty continue reading…

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