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This video has been making its way through the Twitterverse and Blogosphere lately, and it’s just too good to not share. It is a black and white tourism video for Yosemite from the early 1940s. Make sure to watch the ancestors of today’s valley bears getting fed by the tourists...

The passes are open but the high country isn’t yet melted out. Where to go on a weekend overnight that will give me my Sierra fix, but avoid the unknown conditions and snow/mud hybrid trails that are common at this time of year? The answer occurred to me last Wednesday - an easy, low [...]

From the moment the passes close each fall, I have serious Eastern Sierra withdrawals. Getting from the Bay Area to the “East Side” in the winter involves a long and circuitous route, undoable in a weekend...

I need a good cup of coffee to start my day. At home, this is generally in the form of Peet’s Ethiopian blend, or if I’m lucky and have recently been to the city, something picked up from Blue Bottle...

After last weekend’s backpack in 100 degree heat and the opening of Tioga Pass, I officially declare Summer Backpacking Season open. Looking at my calendar, it’s chock full of awesome trips over the next four months and I can’t wait to get things started...

What does a backpacker in backpacking withdrawal do on the hottest yet weekend of the year? She, along with 9 friends, goes backpacking in the hot, hot Cache Creek Wilderness, of course...

It’s here! It’s here! Sonora Pass is now officially open, and the Half Dome cables opened for the season today. Rumor is that Tioga Pass will be open by the upcoming holiday weekend. Me, I’m sticking to the lowlands around Cache Creek this weekend, hoping to catch some wildflower stragglers...

It’s nothing special, but if you’re not into RSS readers and want to subscribe to updates from this blog via email (hi mom!), click that mail icon over there on the left by the search box. I forgot to enable this when I switched to Feedburner for my feeds...

I mentioned a few entries back that I’ve gotten the Bay Area Ridge Trail hiking bug, and of course past hikes don’t count. I have to start from scratch and ‘officially’ add everything to the list...

Tom over at Two-Heel Drive posted an excellent video yesterday about how to properly fit a backpack. It is by Wayne Gregory, pack designer and founder of the popular Gregory Mountain Products. If anyone understands pack fitting, it’s Wayne...

Those of us who hike in bear-prone areas are used to the monstrous, heavy beasts known as bear canisters. Required by both law and common sense, bear canisters are bear-proof containers for storing food and other odorous items in the backcountry...

Once a year, Henry Coe State Park opens up the gate to the remote and less-traveled east side of the park, including Orestimba Wilderness...

This past weekend was a perfect one to get out on the trail. The parks are still green, the wildflowers are peaking, and the weather was absolutely beautiful...

In an effort to fix some css integration issues with my photo management software I’m cleaning up my theme a bit. Bear with me while I take the site down from time to time and work my way through design issues. Thank

I’m going to let you in on a secret. It comes in two parts. The first is this: Lava Beds National Monument. The second part is this: Easter Weekend. Lava Beds sits just south of the California/Oregon border...

I continued my spring obsession with wildflowers and hiking last weekend at Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. A friend of mine has the through hiking bug, deciding to complete the entire Bay Area Ridge trail...

I can’t believe I forgot to post an entry on this, but a very kind comment I received yesterday spurred me to action...

Mother Nature has had some kind of grudge against me lately. It seems that every time I plan on getting out to the snow or backpacking conditions are anything but favorable...

Wildflower season in California is a lot like the fall colors season back east. People will drive for hours to see one bright orange poppy...

We had planned a nice backpacking trip for the weekend, hiking the Ohlone Wilderness trail between Del Valle Reservoir and Sunol Regional Wilderness. About 20 miles long, we were planning on camping at the half way point, breaking it into a nice easy weekend. Well, the forecast had other plans...

Even though I’ve gotten out on some good dayhikes, I’ve spent the past few weekends stuck in the Bay Area and the cabin fever has really set in. I was determined to head to the mountains this weekend, and the siren call of the Yosemite Horsetail Firefall window called my name...

For all of you Sierra addicts like me, let it be known that there is a new edition of Secor’s Peaks, Passes, and Trails that has just hit shelves. It has been ten years since the last edition. This 3rd edition has apparently had a complete overhaul and reorganization...

Tom Mangan of Two-Heel Drive has written a nice profile of Henry Shires and his Tarptent business over on Trailspace.com. I’m very fond of my tarptents and was even quoted in the article, along with a cheesy picture of me in my Rainbow last summer...

I sat down to do the quick upgrade to Wordpress 2.7 and quickly got sucked into browsing around plugins and themes. I’m in the midst of upgrading and reconfiguring quite a lot around here, so if things seem a bit wonky I hope to get them back on track shortly. At least this bad weather [..

By Day 3 everyone has hit their stride, but everyone is also exhausted. I turn into a loopy zombie under these conditions, so it’s a good thing that I didn’t have to take as many appointments the last two days...

The Outdoor Retailer show involves a lot of walking around - scurrying between appointments on opposite sides of the hall, checking out that one booth you wanted to get to way back in the corner, running back to that other booth that had munchies for lunch, etc...

This was my fifth time attending the Outdoor Retailer Winter show, and it was no less daunting. It always takes a while to get over the sheer size and craziness and get to business, but I had to focus, starting off Day 1 with appointments right away...

As I’ve gained experience as a backpacker, one thing I’ve learned is that it isn’t always the big ticket items that make a trip - it is often the smaller, inexpensive pieces of gear that shine and become indespensible...

The Outdoor Retailer Winter Market happened in Salt Lake City last week and once again I was fortunate enough to attend. Over the next few days I’ll be posting about some of the great gear I got to see. In the meantime, you can see some pictures and blurbs about the things that caught my [..

California desperately needs rain, but it’s so easy to appreciate the fact that we’re enjoying a wonderful spell of perfect weather in the middle of Janurary. All week it has been cloudless skies with temperatures in the high 60s to low 70s...

On the northern side of Anza Borrego there are the remains of an old calcite mine. In operation around WWII, they mined optical calcite for use in gunsights...

One of the most popular hikes in Anza Borrego is Borrego Palm Canyon. But just a short drive south of this canyon is Hellhole Canyon. Hellhole has a similar set of Palm Oasis, a seasonal waterfall with ferns, and a lot of fun rock scrambling...

We spent the first couple days of our trip exploring the southernmost side of Anza Borrego (along S2), basecamped at Agua Caliente Hot Spring. It was nice to camp there since we had the nice hot pools to come back to at the end of the day! On Monday we checked out two areas I had [...]

We left Palm Springs on Christmas morning, ready to head back out to the desert for some hiking. Unfortunately, the weather was not cooporating and most of the surrounding ranges were completely socked in...

On December 26 we awoke to the coldest morning of our trip. It was in the mid 20s and the wind, though it had died down from the previous night, was still gusting pretty good. After packing up camp and sucking down some hot coffee, we headed towards our target of the day, Queen Mountain...