Tag: lnt

Leave No Trace (LNT) is a set of outdoor ethics promoting conservation in the outdoors. LNT is essentially seven principles:

  1. Plan ahead and prepare
  2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces
  3. Dispose of waste properly
  4. Leave what you find
  5. Minimize campfire impacts
  6. Respect wildlife
  7. Be considerate of other visitors

More PCT high snow tips
2017.04.12
Hiking, Opinion, Pacific Crest Trail
In my last feverish post, I totally missed some really good points about hiking in snow – really crucial stuff like navigation. A 2011 nobo thru-hiker made me aware right away (but doesn’t necessarily want to be credited). So without further ado here are more tips from someone who has gone through the difficult and uncomfortable, but very survivable process of trudging through the High Sierra in a high snow year: “GPS/phone = major time saver. THERE IS NO TRAIL. Forget the trail being avalanched away. It’s just not there” (until many people walk it first). Learn how to read a map and navigate by it (that is an invaluable link to a precious map-reading resource, BTW). “Carry a paper map back up, because you know, if […]

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Wilson
2016.05.11
Hayduke, Latergram
I’m alive. At South Rim Grand Canyon after five nights camped below the rim. I’ve now been hiking alone for 49 days I think, but at one of my most vulnerable moments, sitting on the shore of the Colorado near the Little Colorado confluence waiting for someone to ferry me across and getting ignored by commercial floats (I’m not used to being ignored while hitching), I made a friend. I was worried about my food and my itinerary (which I had to keep to keep my mother happy), and yet settling into the idea of never getting a ride, so maybe spending a night there. So I started looking around for places to hole up in the rocks for the night. And I found not one, but […]

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Willis Creek Falls
2016.04.24
Hayduke, Latergram
On this hike through Utah desert in this wet(ter) year, finding water isn’t the problem. It’s just that you can’t choose when and where you find it, it may or may not taste like it’s run through 10,000 cow pies (and it likely has), and it might be just a tiny trickle. I found this shortly before booking myself a nice little cabin near Bryce (for my second zero in 31 days) and was torn. But not so torn that I didn’t tear off my backpack and half my clothes and get under it immediately. Pretty cold, way too much water pressure, uncertain soft sinking sandy pool bottom. But for the second time in a month I was wetting my hair, and it felt so good. I […]

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Leave No Trace in Advertising
2015.12.08
Hiking, Pacific Crest Trail
I’ve been shopping for new gear for 2016 and something is bugging me… So here’s my call out to manufacturers and users of tents and sleeping bags and camp stoves and other camping gear. All outdoor folk who love nature. (Hopefully that includes you.) Stop advertising gear with images that clearly violate the Leave No Trace ethic. Stop glamorizing these violations. Instead, set great examples of people camping using LNT principles. Dude. What are you talking about?! More specifically, I’m talking about images of camps set up right on the sides of lakes. They’re so pretty, but they’re so… wrong. Please stop posting photographs of tents pitched less than 200 feet from idyllic lakes. Less than 100 feet from lakes. Less than 50 feet from lakes! What’s […]

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Marion Lake
2015.10.20
Latergram, Sierra High Route
In 1901 Joseph LeConte married Helen Marion Gompertz, a fellow member of the Sierra Club. In 1902 they backpacked up the little known Cartridge Creek and discovered a beautiful unnamed lake. LeConte named the lake Marion after his wife, and when she died in 1924, a formal plaque was placed on a rock on the shore (it’s still there), with this view. 💐😭 Marion Lake might be one of the most gorgeous and unique alpine lakes in the Sierra, and is fittingly extremely difficult to access – high and remote. I was charmed by this sweet love story, and camped near the lake outlet* *But not too near! I was at least 200 feet away from the water, @elisabitch!

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Making Steve Roper Proud
2015.10.19
Sierra High Route
The Sierra High Route is a 195-mile long route charted through the backcountry — and along some existing trails — of the High Sierra Nevada. It was devised by noted Sierra climber and historian Steve Roper, and originally, discreetly, published in book form in 1982. I first learned about it in 2013 during my thru-hike when the wonderfully thought-full hiker “Manchurian.” Manchurian hiked a section of the Sierra High Route between Reds Meadow and Tuolumne, I’m not sure how much of it he conquered but I remember him telling me it wasn’t too hard, and that the only sign of humanity he found out there was a deflated helium balloon. When the Pacific Crest Trail and it’s burgeoning “culture” totally disenfranchised me earlier this year, I made […]

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Sierra High Route Part 2: Taboose Pass to Piute Pass
2015.10.15
Hiking, Opinion, Sierra High Route
Day 1: Taboose Pass to Taboose Pass August 16th. I started the day having leftover apple pie, cinnamon rolls, and fresh hot coffee with LoveNote and Burly White’s wedding party near South Lake. This was a beautiful wedding, a marriage of two great people who met while hiking the Continental Divide trail and fell in love. They crowned their hike and sealed the deal by adopting a puppy together, and this great dog, “Huckleberry,” dug holes between the two as they voiced their oaths. Behind them the backdrop of the Inconsolable Range and Bishop Pass Mountains Mt. Goode, Mt. Johnson, and Mt. Thompson seemed only painted on canvas — it was that perfect. I was watching them get married and looking at familiar High Sierra at the […]

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Lowest To Highest
2015.10.10
Hiking, Lowest to Highest
GET L2H MAPS The Lowest to Highest Trail (L2H) is a challenging route that runs from the lowest point in the contiguous USA (Badwater, Death Valley, -282 feet) to its highest, Mount Whitney (14,505 feet), across 130 miles. This distance is run yearly as an ultramarathon, but there is also a less-known hiking route that avoids the highways. There are other possible L2H routes plotted by other parties. I met one man who leads groups on one such route and am amazed nobody has died that way yet. There are a lot of ways to get from Badwater to Whitney, but this particular hiking route is one of the least absurd. Although still… it’s very absurd! Typically the L2H is walked in the late winter (February-early March) […]

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How to Do Trail Magic Right
2015.09.01
Pacific Crest Trail, Sierra High Route
This is a post about trail angeling and trail magic on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and why perhaps it has become detrimental to the trail and trail culture.* Between 2013 and 2015, whether because of the “Wild” movie effect or due to an influx of Appalachian Trail (AT) hikers wanting more trail time or even triple crowns, the population of thru-hikers on the PCT doubled. The Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), a governing body of sorts in charge of maintaining access to the trail, again issued permits arbitrarily and for free — several thousand of them. Between April 6 and May 1 this year, I camped out at mile 42 of the trail, doing backpack shake-outs at Mt. Laguna Sports and washing dishes at the Pine […]

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So embarrassing and very ironic
2015.08.25
Hiking, Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
2015 PCT hiker Splob left a book of John Muir’s writings in the Muir hut with this Public Service Announcement (PSA) in the back pages. I thought it’d get a little more mileage by sharing it here. LNT is great because it means that more of us, and our children’s children, can enjoy pristine areas of wilderness. It’s important when camping near pristine headwaters (or any water source) to keep your chemicals and biohazard waste out of it. Wash/poo well away from water’s edge over a dirt hole and bury it. It’s sad to see lakes and streams full of soap bubbles, much less the invisible sunscreen and Deet, and don’t get me started on white roses. 🐟 But Splob! Look What You Started! Update 2019: Splob’s […]

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Prayer Flags at Muir Hut
2015.08.22
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail, Sierra High Route
Muir Pass hut, view of smoke from the Rough fire Wednesday night. Pray even harder for rain! Everything south of Muir Pass on the JMT/Pacific Crest Trail is pretty bad smoke-wise for hikers, with many of them abandoning their hikes. I stayed up there, looking at it this way: most inner city children have worse air quality 365 days a year with not nearly as beautiful or safe a scenery. Who would I be to complain? I had a lovely time, and for the first time in a while actually resented returning to town. Would have stayed an extra day but didn’t want anyone to worry. Aside: The Muir shelter was paid for by a forestry magnate, which is humorous to me given that Muir Pass is […]

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