Tag Archives: hiking gear

Olympic Coast Overnight

With our National Parks re-opening (after much outrage), I thought I’d recount a hike Catherine and I had been wanting to do since we were planning our June Seattle/Portland trip: Backpacking the Olympic Coast. Due to its relative remoteness, it deserved at least the two days we gave it, and offered a good deal of solitude.

We check the tides and arrived near the coast to hike a section of the “Wildcatter” shore.

The beach near the trailhead.

Our plan was to beat the incoming tide, and the hike to high ground until we reached our campsite.

After much scrambling, we reached a pebbly cove.

Catherine hanging out, surveying the numerous sea stacks.

A view of the cove. I had to give up my walking stick already.

We quickly arrived at a very steep ladder switch-back, which we had luckily read about. We also encountered our first mud of the trip.

Catherine, perched in the middle of the ladder.

Our route took us over Hoh Head, and then lead us into thick brush, despite being an old trail. We also encountered more types of mud than a Tough Mudder course. Tiny spiders seemed to enjoy making their webs across the trail, which we had to keep swatting away. Constant glimpses of the shore kept us motivated, though.

Because of the tides and the travel distance we’d gotten a late start, so we set up camp as the sun began to set. Luckily this lead to some amazing views.

Sunset at Mosquito Creek

As the sun dipped below the horizon, distant sea stacks came into view. I think they might be part of the Washington Islands Wilderness.

Sleeping wasn’t too cold yet and we very comfortable under our Ray-Way quilt, sewn by Catherine’s mom. It was our first backpacking trip with it, and though light, the synthetic bulk took up a bit more space than carrying two summer down bags, but also warmer. I think if my pack was 36-40 L (including rolltop) and under 2 lbs, it would fit better than in my current 31 L. Luckily, everything fit, even with the added bearvault we were carrying.

The next day we packed up and doubled back, since we didn’t have a car to shuttle us from the other end.

It was a great weekend hike, that was over far too quickly!

Deal Daemon – Android Apps on Google Play

Deal Daemon – Android Apps on Google Play:

Deal Daemon version 2 is available in the Play Store! Check it out! Here are some screens:

Winter Readiness: Winterized Zipper Pulls!

On the surface, this post is almost silly. But I assure you, the only thing silly about it, is that the industry hasn’t gotten their act together and done this themselves. Alas, the industry is frequently swayed toward form before function. Anyhow…

…If you’re wearing your ski jacket, then you’re probably wearing your gloves and you probably have all you can do to access all of the zippered compartments of your jacket or day pack with your maimed manual dexterity. They give you about an inch of string or fabric to clutch onto with a finger with is like two and half inches thick. OK, I exaggerate slightly, but you get the idea.

There is a simple solution to this. Grab you’re favorite ski jacket, buy a few feet of p-cord from your local mountain shop and tie longer zipper pulls onto each of the zippers. If you plan to be outside for more than a few hours at a time, you’ll thank yourself that you have arranged your gear in such a way that you never have to remove your gloves.

Cut about 8 inches of p-cord off and loop it through the metal zipper tab.

Tie the biggest burliest knot you can so that you’re gloves or mittens have
more surface to grasp onto.

I’ve used an 8-knot because it’s easily tied, neat, and bulky. They tend not
to pull out too often either.

As a backup measure and to add extra surface area, I tied a second 8-knot
with the slack ends of the p-cord.

After you’ve cut the p-cord, you can fuse the frayed ends with a lighter to
prevent them from raveling.

Check ’em out in action. This can be done with back packs, and tents too.

These like the burliest gloves ever. And the pit zips are hard enough to get
to with no gloves at all…

And that’s it. Go play outdoors all day without getting cold fingers!

Gear List (click links for more product info):

Monadnock Warm Up Run

Now that it’s just about June, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that ski season is finally over. I even pulled all of my skis out of the Thule box and propped them up in their summer resting place.

All is not lost, however. With the weather getting nicer every day, I can’t help but find myself excited for the summer hiking season, and I certainly won’t miss dragging a million pounds of gear all over New England every weekend.

To get warmed up for the summer I headed out to Mount Monadnock with Abby (who practically just got home from a winter in Vail, CO). Monadnock is certainly not the most challenging mountain but the summit is rocky and bald, with a few decent rock scrambles toward the top. It can be crowded, but its pleasant, and perhaps most enticingly, it allows for a none-too-shabby day hike with time left over to head back to Boston for some R&R.

Here’s a quick look at the loop:

View Monadnock in a larger map

Since it was relatively light hike, I took the opportunity to do some experimentation. The first item I wanted to test out my Merrel Chameleon hiking sneakers. Perhaps the real test was running the Tough Mudder in them, after which I realized that they are probably hearty enough for a decent hike as well. Until recently I really had never entertained the notion of hiking in sneakers since my ankles are in such rough shape, but in the absence of any real disasters on the Tough Mudder course I was inspired to try out some hiking in them. As I suspected all along, as I get fatigued my ankles get more and more floppy, which is when I’d begin to wish I had boots, however I think as a new rule of thumb, any hike less than about 10 miles is probably fine for hiking sneakers, but for longer, harder hikes I think I’ll stick to boots, at least for a while.

The next item on the agenda was the new camera. I figured it was time for a new one when I crushed my last one by rolling over it while sleeping on the floor of Denver International… This time around I wanted to find a camera with superior optical zoom, good image quality, HD video, and a high speed burst mode, all while remaining compact enough to actually bring hiking and skiing. I found all that and more in the Canon Powershot SX230 HS. The Powershot series is just plain great. They’re all full featured, take great photos, are relatively easy to use and are at a pretty reasonable price point. Unfortunately it was overcast and foggy for most of the hike, but I managed to snag a few sample photos here and there.

And on that note, it’s time to finish gearing up for tomorrow’s 17 miler up in Crawford Notch!

Gear List: