Category: Hiking

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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New West vs. Old West
2019.08.30
Hayduke
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 […]

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Tuckup Canyon Head Flora and Fauna
2019.05.28
Hiking
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 […]

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When I Almost Killed George Steck
2019.05.26
Hiking
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 […]

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Cabin 140 on the North Rim
2019.05.20
Hayduke, Hiking
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 […]

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Do As I Say
2019.05.10
Hiking, Latergram
I had LTE. @vanillabazan (who picked me up hitching outside Kanab in 2016) DM’d to ask me if I was in Last Chance Bay. I replied “I’m just rounding the corner into it!” As I rowed in, I was struck by some headwinds. I decided to pull ashore for a break & to make plans. Each crossing on the Lake was an endeavor against wind, choppy water, zippy boats, and my nerves. Drowning would be easy. I was so nervous. I chewed gum to relax. I chewed it until it was hard. I lay down behind a rock to dodge the sun, and stared at the dead mussels still glued to it, and the red rock’s white calcium coat. A raindrop hit my knee, soon another, and […]

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Getting Over It
2019.05.05
Hayduke, Latergram, Nursing
This picture was taken while celebrating coming a long way. Not just physically over miles, but emotionally over tears and smiles. Last time I was in this spot in Utah in 2016 I was having blown-out-of-proportion anxiety attacks about quicksand and river crossings. This year I blew up a raft and sat in it and just floated down the river, laughing. I took this picture while spinning circles, getting ready to bounce off the canyon walls and butt drag thru some class 2. This morning I remembered a huge milestone is coming up for me on the 9th, when I will be struggling with weather and more water (in Lake Powell): the 10 year anniversary of my last shift as a registered nurse. May 9, 2009 was […]

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A Walk from Hite to Ticaboo
Hiking
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 […]

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Backpacking the Kokopelli Trail – Part 2
2019.04.16
Hiking
Return to Backpacking the Kokopelli Trail – Part 1 Day 5 – Ups and Downs April 13. Trigger warning: Skip the next two paragraphs if you hate annoying conservationist chatter… about cows. Depending on who you ask, our public lands are littered with hundreds of thousands of cattle, or free range beef just “grows on trees.” In Utah there is one cow for every four people, so you’re bound to run into them in the woods. Often ranchers take government subsidies to pay very little money to graze their stock on our public lands, which sometimes even includes National Parks! They become millionaires off our backs, then sell us a product that isn’t necessarily good for us, whether ethically or whether it contains ecoli or whether it […]

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Backpacking the Kokopelli Trail – Part 1
Bikes, Hiking
In the spring of 2019, I solo backpacked (self-supported) from Loma, Colorado to Moab, Utah on the Kokopelli Trail. Given it was a relatively high snow year and the wet weather forecast, this was sorta dumb. But I was determined to hike “the entire Colorado Plateau” after a geologist friend asked about the Hayduke. He was driving me to Vegas so I could pick up a rental car in 2016, just before the first time I hiked it. He seemed to challenge me when he said: “Why would the Hayduke not cover the entire Plateau?” I am not sure he was exactly throwing down that gauntlet, but that’s how I took it, and even after having hiked the Hayduke twice, once in each direction, I decided to […]

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Life is a Fairytale
2019.04.15
Hiking, Latergram
People really die taking selfies like this. But from what I was told, this little 6-day, 140-mile jaunt from Loma, Colorado to Moab, Utah could kill me – no water, then cold and snow and ghoulies, oh my! It was a very uncomfortable hike because of foul weather causing me to shiver the nights through, and time constraints forcing me to walk big miles out the gate, but it was also one of my favorite walks. The Colorado Plateau mystifies me. Wait? What? How? Utah has such incredible hidden wonders (and disasters). This long trail took me right back to my mountain bikey roots and made me wonder – if I got back on the saddle, would I still “have it?” Lord knows I can hardly walk […]

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Dear PCT Class of 2019
2019.04.01
Hiking, Opinion, Pacific Crest Trail
I’m getting ready to go on a hike of my own, but I wanted to drop you a note to let you know it’s still snowing in the High Sierra. My 2017 blog post “Dear PCT Class of 2017” with tips about snow travel and whatnot definitely, definitely applies, since we got more snow (* see footnotes) this year than we did overwinter 2016/2017. I spent the winter shoveling, plowing, skiing, and snowshoeing in the Sierra, and I’ll tell you what: nobody who knows anything about avalanches or snow conditions (in brief, they suck) is going back there behind the Crest right now. I hope you read my 2017 letter and do all the other research and preparation you can, and don’t rush a thing. There are […]

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Frigga, Flemish, Floundering
2018.12.02
Hayduke, Hiking
(a cloudy story for you) The man who stalked me on the Hayduke is a meteorologist for the Belgian army. He asked how I understood what I understood about clouds and I told him I read the Cloudspotter’s Guide a couple times. I also look at clouds. I try to make sense of them. I also have a weird sense of barometry through pressure I feel in my ears, believe it or not. My ears ring and hurt me a lot, but the upshot is I’m very very good at predicting rain. This was the fateful day I decided to sorta hike with him for a couple miles and give him a chance. To be friendly. Our last day, given the next we were going in different […]

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Annual Whitney Debaucle: 2018 Edition
2018.09.22
Hiking, Pacific Crest Trail
This story is about this year’s weird ass annual Whitney hike. I’ve been sleeping on top of Whitney every year for six years now, and each year it seems to get worse. This year I made a loop, planning to go in over Baxter Pass and out via the Mountaineer’s Route on Whitney. It didn’t happen that way. Something happened on top of Whitney that turned the whole trip into a skidmark. The story starts off a little slow, but stick with it. It ends with poop and helicopters, which always liven a story. The Hike in over Baxter Pass I actually walked to Rae Lakes all the way from the center of Independence. WHO DOES THAT? Me. I do that. I’m not afraid to walk a […]

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Living at Frenchies: Getting There
2018.09.09
Hiking, Lonesome Miner Trail, Opinion
Or – that one time I drank my urine. Between August 22 and September 6 I lived deep in the Inyo Mountains in an old mining cabin near the ghost town of Beveridge. This was an experiment in backpacking vs. thru-hiking. I’d realized that thru-hiking was a bit of a rat race, and decided to try an extreme version of backpacking. The difference? Backpackers tend to walk much shorter distances and often spend more time at camps. Backpackers had time to draw and read and sit around; thru-hikers do not. I wanted what they had. My plan was to hike in 12 miles to an extremely remote ghost town, and spend at least two weeks holed up at that cabin. I actually started my backpacking trip on […]

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