Category: North America

Adams 4 Bivy, King Ravine & Rime Ice

September 17, 2006

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No burnt bottoms! That is, for my second round of baking muffins up at Gray Knob cabin. It was a simple fix, really. I just moved the baking rack one notch higher.

It was an amazing long stint up at the cabin – nine days! My fresh veggies nearly lasted the whole time, and I saved the best for last, a nice piece of butternut squash. I baked it up in my stove-top oven and shared it with “Ben Here” – an Appalachian Trail (AT) through hiker who spent the previous blustery night in a small cave up on the ridge just below Adams 4.

Ben came into Grey Knob cabin at around 8am. I don’t usually get folks arriving at that time and after asking him how he’s doing, he admitted he’d had a rough night. AT hikers usually adopt trail nick-names of some sort. Either they’re given to them or they come up with them on their own. ‘Ben’ may well be his real first name, but it developed as he signed the shelter log books simply with the date and “Ben Here.”

Mt. Washington Traverse

September 12, 2006

My second week was a short one… only five days as that’s how the sub schedule worked out. It really was too short. It looks like my next stint will be upwards to 7 or 8 days on the mountain. Perfect.

I hiked back up with 40 pounds of gear under clear blue skies and a light rustling of leaves from the gentle breeze stirring the mountain air. In my pack was the rest of my personal equipment, mostly winter clothing as I prepare for the temperatures to drop. But about ten pounds of it was fresh vegetables and fruits to sustain me. I’ve never been a big fan of the freeze dried backpacking meals, and they’re crazy expensive. I think I fed myself for the week spending about Twenty Dollars.

Mountain Life

September 5, 2006

The tranquility of the mountains cannot be matched. After my first week of living in the White Mountains of New Hampshire at Gray Knob Cabin, I’ve totally fallen in love with the simple life away from the hustle and bustle of more populated areas of the world. To get off the power grid and only have to worry about how not to burn the bottoms of my blueberry muffins puts things all into perspective. On clear days I make my way up to the rocky peaks above me and on stormy days I bundle up in my rain gear and go for walks in the driving rain and under the flashes of lightning and the cracks of thunder that echo off the surrounding slopes.

Rafting the Grand

May 10, 2006

How ironic that the pinnacle of whitewater rafting experiences is found over a mile deep into the earth.

As the Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon, numerous side canyons and rock falls have deposited piles and piles of rocks and boulders to create some of the most notorious whitewater in the northern hemisphere. Because the constraining canyon walls rise thousands of feet above the river, it has no way to go around these impedances. It has no option but to go over these obstacles in a churning, violent, frothy flow. And once we’re in the canyon, we have no option but to navigate our way through these unyielding currents in our little rafts. As one of the earliest river runners of the Colorado in 1869 described it, the water snagged a boat and “whirled it around quick enough to take the kinks out of a ram’s horn.”

Atlas Trans-Sierra Snowshoe Trek

April 9, 2005

The Sierra has truly been blessed this year with record snow fall. So, although the weather this spring and early summer has been warm, there is still plenty of snow in the beautiful backcountry. With that in mind, some colleagues at Atlas Snow-Shoe Company came up with the wild idea to do a traditional skiing route across the Sierra-Nevada mountain range on snowshoes. While this was admittedly for our own personal fun, we could justify it as a work trip to test the snowshoes.

The result was a 45 mile trek across the breadth of the Sierra. We started just east of Independence, off Highway 395, and hiked up Symmes Creek. After 12,000 feet of vertical gain and traveling and camping for six days above 11,000 feet, we arrived at the Wolverton Ski Area in Sequoia National Park. The route is usually done on skis with a few mountaineering sections to get over the highest passes, including Milestone Col on the Great Western Divide at over 13,000 feet.