Black Mountain Video.
This is the first video that I am going to link to. It is from this weekend in New Hampshire…Hope it works.
Video Posts??
Video yes or no?
Post your thoughts on me posting occasionally with video as opposed to text. Or if I do post video, should I just share a link and provide a written transcript of it as well?
Peace,
BC
Lightweight Backpacking…
I recently returned from Arizona (October 2011) where I participated in the Lightweight Backpacking Seminar. We spent a week going over gear, weight reduction and more importantly freeing of the mind and body.
I have been an avid lightweight backpacker for years, but in my time guiding over the past five or six years, I have slowly accumulated more gear. More gear that I felt was necessary, more gear that I needed for groups and my personal comfort. I really needed this Seminar to get back in my lightweight mindset.
While guiding, I find that I carry more gear than normal. I generally have my gear plus the safety equipment and also a few extras in case a client needs something. While for the most part as a guide I try to divide the weight up around the group, I inevitably end up carrying more weight.
I have been renewed. With my NOLS seminar I have been reminded that I can lead a group with lightweight gear. Simpler things allow for less gear. I won’t get into the entire scope of the seminar or my entire thoughts on Lightweight Backpacking, I will say that simple is better. I have forgotten how easy it is to get caught up in the “Backpacker Magazine” machine and think that everything is necessary to make trips exciting, fun and rewarding…when all we really need is a couple essentials and ourselves.
Peace,
BC
New Year…New Resolution
So it is January of 2012…my how time flys. It seems like only last month it was 2011.
Every year millions of people make resolutions that they can’t or don’t keep, why? I am guessing it has to do with willpower and motivation. So this year, I intend not to make a resolution. I won’t lose 10 lbs, I won’t quit smoking, I won’t eat healthier…but I guess by deciding to not make a resolution I am still making a resolution…
So let’s see how far I can get this year on the “non-resolution” front.
Happy New Year and best of luck with your resolution…
Peace,
BC
Northern Visitors
A couple of weeks ago we had a couple friends (Vlad and Mark) from Canada visit us. They were coming down for a weekend and Vlad originally wanted to pick up new winter tires for his car, but ended up getting them in Canada, before he came down.
Vlad with Gwen.
It was the weekend before Halloween and they decided to leave at 1:00am on Friday for the drive down. Normally the drive for me driving around the speed limit is about 8 hours, but Vlad seems to take longer, with getting searched at the border and taking breaks. They were intending to arrive about 8am, but didn’t get here until about 10:30am.
Well the weekend started off bad. The temperature was dropping and the furnace wouldn’t work. Mark and I tried fixing it but couldn’t get it to start. Since the furnace is propane we didn’t want to play around with it too much so we called Hank Hill…or his New England counterpart. By mid afternoon we had the furnace up and running. Which is a good thing as Mark was turning into an icicle…anything below 80 F and he shivers.
The rest of Friday was great, we went out to dinner in Providence at Apasara Palace with Colleen and a couple of her friends. Then it was back home to relax since the guys didn’t get much sleep and we had a big day planned for Saturday.
Saturday arrived and we had a huge breakfast, then started to tackle the trees that came down in Tropical Storm Irene. The guys wanted to be like me so they got dressed up…
Mark and Vlad, trying to be like Greg.
I had chunked up about 2 cord of it but it was at the bottom of the driveway and needed to be moved next to the house. Mark and Vlad worked at carrying the wood up, one wheelbarrow load at a time, while I cut up some more of the tree. They worked like machines and before long had a huge pile of Oak at the top of the driveway. We wanted to get as much done as possible as there was a forecast of snow…we didn’t believe it, but were hurrying anyways. Low and behold around 15:30 the snow came on and we decided to finish up. We lit the BBQ and had a late lunch. Colleen had been out climbing most of the day, luckily inside since the snow was coming down pretty hard by 17:00.
I was in the shower and the lights flickered and at 15:30 it went out for good. It seems that whenever Vlad comes down, there is a snowstorm, but we weren’t worried. We got the fire going, the generator out and the candles burning. Dinner was by candle light…it turns out that would be the case for the next few days.
The snow was wet and heavy and by 22:00 we had about 8″ of fresh snow on the ground and just as much in the trees. The entire night we listened to the constant CRACK and SNAPS coming from the woods around us as the tops of trees snapped off and fell to the ground. I don’t think Vlad slept at all, he kept getting up and checking his car…but it survived.
Vlad's car safe and sound...Colleen's, not so much.
Sunday morning we woke up to a winter wonderland with downed trees everywhere! Our road was blocked off and the yard was full of more trees. Oh well, more wood for the fire next year.
Bottom of the Driveway
View from the Deck
Instead of hanging out in the house, we decided to see if we could get breakfast at a restaurant…ha. The power was out all around us and where there was power the diners were PACKED! We couldn’t even get coffee…so the guys hit the highway and we made our way back home. Maybe another time, I will talk about how great National Grid is…
Peace,
BC
Reviews
Over the next couple weeks I will be testing and reviewing various pieces of outdoor gear. I will be posting some starting next week. First review will be the “Caldera Cone System” which I have used in the past, but want to try in colder weather…check back on Monday or Tuesday.
Workshop
For the past while I have been contemplating upgrading, no upgrading isn’t the correct word, I guess building a workshop. I have my tools and equipment in the basement and it makes woodworking difficult. While the basement is large, the dust and and mess that I make when I work is less than ideal. So with that thought I have decided to convert our shed to a workshop.
I have been procrastinating putting any real work into the shed as I wasn’t sure what I should do with it. Since we are thinking about building a garage, I thought I might put a workshop in it. I have decided not to put the workshop in the garage, well at least not the woodworking shop in the garage, which will be used primarily for canoe/kayak and car storage.
The shed has some problems, the entry ramp is rotted, the doors are broken and rotted and the entire front extension was sagging pretty badly, since the previous owners didn’t support it well. Last year, when my friend Roy was down visiting from Canada I put him to work. We jacked up the shed leveled it out and placed it on concrete blocks. Well we leveled it as we could, so that solved that problem pretty much anyways. There is or was, a wall in the center between the extension and the existing building that needed to be taken out. I took it out today to allow for more space to move large sheets of plywood and just to get more light in the entire building.
As I was saying today I did some work on the building, I took the doors off, removed the rotted ramp and removed the wall. Here a couple pictures of the project so far.
Hopefully I can get the shed turned into a workshop in the next week or so, well at least get the doors on, ramp made and get some workbenches built. There is also the issue of power. There is none…I have been debating running power from the house, solar or putting the generator out there. I think for now, I will use the generator and eventually put solar panel and batteries.
There is also the need for heat. I know, right now the temperature is hovering close to 90 F, but before long winter will be here and it will make things easier to have a heat source in the workshop. I am on the fence about what type of heat source. I would like to put a small woodstove in, but space is limited so another option would be a small propane heater. For the time being it will be the suns warmth and in the fall I will throw in my portable propane heater, and if I can pick up a top loading woodstove, I will put that in.
Now I just need to clean up the demolition scraps and come up with the most space efficient layout. The shed is 12′x14′ and 10′ high in the center… and I need to fit a tablesaw, scrollsaw, drillpress, planer, mitersaw, some shelving and a workbench. Any ideas will be welcome.
Peace.
BC
Spiderwebs…Sometimes it is the little things that bring back memories.
Sunrise Coffee.
Early Saturday morning it was misty, it was relatively cool, well below 80 F anyways, and quiet. I woke up around 5:30am got my water on for my coffee, packed my tent and was hiking by 6am. I only had one cup before hiking but is was nice and strong, and I thought to myself, that I would make a cup or two later on in the day. I quietly checked the campsite out, trying not to wake the other backpackers, shouldered my backpack and hit the trail. The mornings on the trail are my favorite time. If I am hiking in remote areas it really doesn’t matter what time I hike, but on populated trails or trails that see lots of traffic, early mornings are best. You get solitude that you might not find during the rest of the day. I was at Brassie Brook Lean-to along the Appalachian Trail (AT) and was planning on camping North along the trail, but since it was early I decided to take a trip to the South for about 4 miles to enjoy an early morning view from Lions Head. I hiked along in the early morning, I was constantly brushing through spiderwebs that crossed the trail, some sticking to my face, some my hands and some to my legs. The spiderwebs, well they don’t bother me, and the spiders in them don’t either, and even though the view was socked in by fog, the hike that morning stirred memories of my youth…
As a kid, well when I was younger, since I am still a kid, I would throw on my backpack or some sort of pack, grab a loaf of bread from our bakery, a can of beans, some bacon and head out to the woods somewhere in Albert County. I generally didn’t hike to far, maybe five or six miles a day, but I hiked off the trail. I cooked on a fire, in my cheap aluminum Boy Scout cook set (I was never a Boy Scout but had the cook set), drank water directly from the streams without treating it and set up my cheap pup tent or tarp right next to the water, where the bugs were terrible. I occasionally had a friend with me, but most of the time I would just go. Never really telling anyone where I was going to be, just “camping”, I am sure if my mother new, she would have been worried sick, but my father didn’t seem to be worried, although I am sure on more than one occasion he checked up on me as did his brother.
Morning Hike
Walking through those woods a kid I didn’t follow a man made trail, at least not for long…I would start out on an old logging road or trail and then veer off into the woods. Sure, I took a compass, but did I use it? No, I didn’t have a map either. Not that it would have made a difference, I climbed over trees and around ponds, and probably wouldn’t have taken the map out. I never seemed to get lost, at least not for too long, and I didn’t worry about getting lost. Hiking off trail there seemed to be an abundance of spiderwebs and I made a game of trying to avoid them. If it was a misty morning, it could be done, but no matter how hard I tried, I always got a couple of spiderwebs across my body. Every time that one got me I would try and see if I could spot the spider, and more often than not, the spider was nowhere to be found. Spiderwebs to me were a symbol that I was the first to be there, nothing had past through that area since the spider made the web…and hiking along the AT Saturday morning I found myself playing the same game and even though I know better, thinking the same thing…
Peace.
BC
Updating my blog from my journal.
Over the next couple of weeks I hope to transfer a few of my journal entries from the trips that I have been on. On every wilderness trip that I lead or take part in I keep detailed notes about each day. Sometimes there are fun things to write about, sometimes not. I am going to do it on a trial basis and see what people think. So follow the blog over the next few weeks and let me know what you think. I will also be linking to pictures as well. For now here are a couple pictures that I have uploaded, just click this link.
Appalachian Trail
Last weekend I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail (AT), monitoring the Connecticut and Massachusetts section. Now if you know me, you know that I love backpacking and that weekend was no exception.
Friday night was a short hike in and I stayed at Riga Lean-to. I was alone at the campsite/lean-to until about 9pm when a couple loud hikers stumbled into the shelter. They were great guys (Pat and Adam), not knowledgeable about Leave No Trace (LNT) but very respectful. They had Meals Ready-to Eat (MRE’s) or military rations, which were very interesting, everything you need for the day in one package…they also brought a bottle of Honey Jack Daniels. Of course I had to test it to make sure it was real. It was…real bad. After speaking with them for about 30 minutes I went to my tent to try and get some sleep.
Saturday started off, well bad. I did not sleep at all, just too hot, and not much of a breeze. I realized that I forgot my Peanut Butter, which for me is a catastrophe, so breakfast was some bread and a a piece of cheese, along with my instant breakfast. I wanted to get on the trail as soon as early as possible to avoid the heat that I knew was coming, but wasn’t successful. I was hiking by about 7:30am and it was already well into the 80′s. I was atop Bear Mountain by about 8:30am and hung out there for a couple hours. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms in the afternoon and I had a few exposed ridge walks before I would get to my campsite for the evening, so I left the top of Bear Mountain around 10:30am. I did a quick scout around Paradise Lane trail and back over Bear Mountain before heading on towards my destination. Heading down through Sages Ravine brought back many memories…memories of bears. I had seen many bears in the past at Sages, but none today. Being in Sages is nice though, as the temperature drops about 10F while in there. I was glad for the reprieve from the heat for sure. Over Race mountain the temperature soared and I had a very difficult time keeping hydrated. The views were terrific, but hazy and it was HOT! I arrived at Race Brook Falls around 14:00 and the water was super low. I decided that I would cook my supper for lunch and snack in the evening. I enjoyed a lunch of mac and cheese casserole and some cool water near the stream.
In the evening Pat and Adam showed up with their friend Mike and set up camp. I also met Fred Tregaskis, see his website here, and we had a great conversation about wine and the wilderness in general. He lives in Falls Village, CT and frequents my favorite breakfast shop, The Toymaker Cafe.
Sunday started out cooler and although I was still missing my Peanut Butter, I decided to do a sunrise hike. Although my watch died, which meant my alarm died, I was up and on the trail by 5:00am. I hiked back South to the top of Race Mountain and enjoyed a hazy, rain splattered, uneventful sunrise. After that I headed North towards Route 41. I hiked at a pretty good clip. Covering about 12 miles in just over four hours, up some pretty steep terrain.
Except for the temperature it was a perfect weekend. Friday and Saturday the temps where 100 F+, and humid. It made for a difficult time keeping hydrated. Saturday alone I drank 7 liters or water and was still dehydrated.
Peace.
BC