Outdoor Life

The locals refer to the 46 mountains in the Adirondacks of New York with summits over 4000 feet as the ‘46ers.’ The plan for the weekend was for my girlfriend, Emily, and I to summit 5 of them, via an 18-mile loop with nearly 4000 feet of elevation gain on unmarked trails and up the trail free summits. Upon one last weather check before leaving for the trip Saturday morning, we discovered a rainy forecast for our second day in the mountains, but decided to proceed with the trip since we had been planning it for so long. 

I started my New Hampshire 48 completely by accident. When I finally heard about this list, I decided to make it a goal of mine, starting with the summits I had already done before making the list my goal. I won't say this is one of the hardest goals I've ever experienced as I've been through a lot, but hiking all of the 4,000 footers was by far the most enjoyable & mentally challenging!

It’s that time of year again! Thru-hikers are beginning their planning for the various treks throughout the United States. Whether it’s Northbound hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail, hikers are gathering their gear and planning their routes. Our Merinoholic Lynley recounts her experience and what gear worked for her!

Sometimes a chunk would break loose and make me grateful for helmets, one time a piece broke loose in an awkward fashion that convinced me that perhaps it had not and this trickster piece of ice smashed into my nose when I looked up at it to see what was going on. But I continued with the climb, now with watery eyes and dribbling dots of red up the ice like Hansel with his breadcrumbs. 

Many people think Merino wool is reserved for the cold places of the word: where the sleet falls and the frigid cliffs loom over ice climbers, where the blizzards bring hail and numb the toes of fishermen on frozen lakes, where biting winter winds nip at the noses and ears of backcountry skiers and chill bone to the core. But merino wool, though very good for all of those things, is also one of the most versatile fabrics out there. I’m here to tell you another place you might have overlooked to sport your new merino clothing: the boat.

I often have such an itch to travel and explore new places I forget to appreciate the beautiful natural area around my home.

Here in Alaska, we are fairly isolated, which means that the chances of contracting Covid are quite small compared to crowded cities. 

Nonetheless, on the first week of December, a friend of ours got sick and tested positive.

In the past few weeks, I’ve made a radical change and I am standing by it.

I decided to stop posting pictures of my trips on Instagram.

I know it is quite a serious decision but it is one that I feel good about.

For my birthday this year, I rented a Subaru and trekked up to Big Bear, California for a free day of skiing and two nights camping in the back of my car. Leaving Los Angeles around 9:00 AM, all of the East-traveling traffic had dissipated and I had an easy shot to the mountains and arrived there in about two hours. The road coming up 330 to 18 is one of my favorites in all of California. They call it the Rim of the World Highway because you run along the edges of ascendant mountains and through wild canyons that have expansive views of the Inland Empire and the Los Angeles Basin below.

As much of the U.S. of A comes into the cooling fall temperatures we inevitably need to start looking for the best outdoor work clothing, and there are a few things to consider when researching your best options. First, how does the clothing’s material handle positive and negative temperature swings? Next, how does it handle lunchtime spills, or will it stink if you sweat while wearing it? Finally, what color and weight options are there to choose from? 

I used the red light of my headlamp to take a final check of my map and get my bearings before embarking down the valley once more. Keeping one eye closed, again, proved to be essential as exposing my one eye to even the red light turned out to make it useless for night time navigation, even on a trail that could almost be described as clear as a highway. As I walked into an extra wide flat bottomed section of the valley, things became slightly more clear as a dim white halo began to form on the distant daggered peaks to the left that would soon unveil a rising full moon. I stopped when I saw a large village in the distance to scan the area. The topography was flat and exposed, there wasn't much I could do to make my approach any more stealth-like, I would just carefully follow the trail in and be prepared to bail.

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