Category: Hiking

Labyrinth Canyon
2024.05.10
Hiking, Latergram
If you had told me in 2019 when I was hiking and packrafting around the mouth of Labyrinth Canyon that someday I’d be exploring the canyon deeper in a much larger boat, with a man and a dog, and that I’d be starting to enjoy it, I’d have laughed in your face. Lake Powell was at that point pretty depressing, I thought. Laughing in the face of a conservationists’ dilemma, their collective pain–my pain–this year I decided to let go and enjoy what I could of this odd situation Glen Canyon finds itself in (underwater). If I had decided during my Pacific Crest Trail through-hike to let go of the sadness of walking through burned sections of forest, and instead celebrate the char and ashes as a […]

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Navajo Canyon Camp
Hiking, Latergram
We spent quite a bit of time setting anchor here (two anchors, actually) because weather was coming. And boy did weather come! At one point we had hiked about 1000 feet above the boat to sight-see. Looking down on the boat, while wind gusts pushed us around like little sails, we prayed it would stay in place. When we got back it was just how we put it, the anchors buried under about a foot of sand, at 45º anchors from the bow. But what’s the worst that could happen? Oh, it would be pretty bad actually: the boat would blow into and scrape up against sandstone walls, which are effectively rock-hard sandpaper blocks. The perils of navigating this man-made lake are sometimes intense, but my captain […]

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North Kaibab, a Trail Closure
2023.04.23
Hayduke, Hiking, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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Jeeping the White Rim All By Myself
2022.04.11
Hiking
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 […]

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My New Wheels
2022.03.29
Hiking, Latergram
I’ve been laid up sick and not really able to plan hikes. That’s been hard. And so my new set of wheels has come in handy to get me to the places that I love. Don’t worry! I still have my Westfalia! He goes places, too. But I was able to pick this Jeep up for a deal I couldn’t pass up, and it will drive pretty much anything. I originally wanted a Comanche, and my boyfriend was stuck on the idea of restoring his old beater Land Cruiser, so we compromised, scoured the web for months, traveled unnecessarily looking at lame options, and finally landed this by simply placing a wanted ad in the local paper. Its inaugural drive was up Steel Pass in Death Valley. […]

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High Sierra Pack Tripper
2021.08.08
Hiking, Latergram
This summer I had the privilege of working with Reds Meadow as a backcountry cook, which meant occasionally bumping into a 12 year-old packer named Bo. I first met Bo in 2013 when hiking the PCT. He was eating candy outside the Reds public restrooms, looking cute. Bo spends each summer in the Sierra with his sweet family on extended National Forest permit at Reds, surrounded by pack animals and thousands of tourists and backpackers. What a life, and what a little man, charming as ever! We had some bumpy interactions at first where he would say strange, sorta bossy things like, “Hi we are your guides on this trip, best get crackin’ on dinner ok?” 🤣 I was puzzled, thinking, “What a little asshole!” They weren’t […]

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Flu and The Trail, part 2
2020.10.18
Hayduke, Hiking, Nursing, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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The Curse is Lifted
2020.09.06
Hiking, Latergram
In 2013 I started an annual tradition of sleeping on top of the tallest mountain. I don’t know why, but year after year I went up. Pressure built to go up again the next year, and so on. These extended 14er summits were not easy for the obvious reasons, but almost every time it ended up being harder than hard because of surprises at the top. 2013: I had no idea what I was doing. It was very hard to get up that strange hill, especially since the notorious PCT clown Guino had dosed me with 200mg caffeine that morning (I’m caffeine-free). But it turned out to be bizarre and romantic, with a sunset and a sunrise akin to something you’d see on Star Trek. Kitten, King […]

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Escape to Yosemite
2020.07.28
Hiking
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 […]

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Flu and the Trail
2020.03.16
Hayduke, Hiking, Pacific Crest 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 […]

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My Gatekeeping, Continued
2020.03.04
Hayduke, Opinion
So as to not seem like I’ve got my head completely up my ass, I’m going to address a blog post shared with me by a climber friend of mine. She, blessed with nice melanin, mentioned it with a hard wink as if to say… “consider it carefully, Caroline.” I’m trying. In June 2018, the Center for Outdoor Ethics issued its first guidance on social media by urging people to “avoid tagging (or geotagging) specific locations. Instead, tag a general location such as a state or region, if any at all.” We disagree. We invite all public land owners to experience and fall in love with local, state and national parks, national forests and wilderness areas—and here’s why you should too. We don’t care whether you are […]

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Where trails come from, where they go…
2020.01.21
Hayduke, Hiking
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 […]

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Rock or Wood?
2019.12.15
Hiking
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 […]

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Nature : Museum
2019.10.01
Hiking, Opinion, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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