Trip Report: Gothic Basin
"A Sea of Granite" (teal tent near bottom right for scale) On July 26th I led a two-night trip for The Mountaineers to Gothic Basin, a beautiful alpine basin that I'd previously only visited on a day hike a few years ago. The basin is located off of the Mountain Loop Highway, a scenic highway which winds through the mountains between the towns of Granite Falls and Darrington in Washington State. It shares a trailhead with the Monte Cristo ghost town (an old mining town that was active until around 1900) before splitting off onto trail 724 which was originally [...]
Trip Report: Mount Margaret Backcountry
Mount Teragram looming over our first work site (far right) I spent July 18th through 21st doing trail maintenance in the Mount Margaret Backcountry, an incredibly beautiful area located in the northern portion of the Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument, just north of Spirit Lake. This was my first time visiting the area and also my second BCRT with the Washington Trails Association, the first having been a log-out on the Duckabush River. Although I did move a log and trim a tree, the focus on this trip was rebuilding trails: Installing a new foundation and raising up the [...]
Trip Report: The Enchantments
The central core of the Enchantments from Enchantment Peak I managed to snag a three-night core permit for the Enchantments from July 1st through July 4th - but just for myself. This year Enchantments permitting migrated onto Recreation.gov for the first time and the system is somewhat different. Last year you just requested a permit for a given entry date and then once you won the permit lottery you were able to adjust the number of people as you saw fit (up to a maximum of eight if I recall correctly). So this year when it asked for the number [...]
Trip Report: Pete Lake
Morning mist on Pete Lake On June 15th Person B and I went on an overnight backpack to Pete Lake which lies northeast of Snoqualmie Pass in the Central Cascades, just a mile east of the PCT. We wanted something short and flat and lake-ish so I browsed around on the WTA's Hike Finder Map until I stumbled across it. At about five miles each way with only 400 feet of elevation gain Pete Lake fit the bill. Overnight permits for Pete Lake are self-issue at the trailhead and a Northwest Forest Pass or America the Beautiful pass is required [...]
June 2019 Loot! Litesmith Edition
Hoo boy! Every quarter or so I like to browse around the various ultralight gear vendors and see what's new. This time I bought a bunch of stuff from Litesmith to help shave some grams off of my upcoming Enchantments trip. Without further ado: Nylofume pack liner (not pictured because it's a clear bag) 28g | $2.49 | 12g saved | 4.8g/$ I'm currently using the Gossamer Gear pack liners which, in addition to being made out of polyethylene, are a penny dearer and 12g heavier. I have no complaints about the GG liners but wanted to see if nylofume [...]
ASAP Orange Nitrile Gloves
Stats Make: ASAPModel: Orange Nitrile GlovesModel Year: 2019Price Paid: $11.91 for a box of 100 or $0.12 per gloveMeasured Weight: 7g per glove in size large When I was doing some maintenance on the Bogachiel Trail with the WTA I got some advice for keeping your hands warm while working in the rain: wear a pair of nitrile gloves under your work gloves. Every volunteer was given a complimentary pair and I can say from experience that it was super effective. Once I got home I ordered a box of 100 off of Amazon and have been bringing them on [...]
June 2019 Loot!
Another month, another giant pile of crap in the mail as I try out new things. Here's what's cooking: Instant Thai Tea I don't recall where I heard about this but apparently you can get instant Thai tea packets off of Amazon. Now that I'm back on the cooking wagon I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting drink mixes and this one seems like a winner. Testing it out at home it tastes great but doesn't mix well in cold water (the label says to use hot water so this isn't exactly a surprise). Update: took this out [...]
May 2019 Loot!
Bare Boxer Contender 101 Bear Canister First off, I picked up a Bare Boxer Contender 101 bear canister for about $70. It's a little over half the weight of the Backpacker's Cache (707g vs. 1238g) because it's much smaller - it only holds up to 3 days of food for one person. Fortunately I do lots of 1-2 night trips on the Olympic coast where hard-sided canisters are required so this actually made a lot of sense for an upgrade. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism is pretty annoying - instead of the circular devices having a slot which fits any coin [...]
Duckabush River
Your humble correspondent living out his childhood lumberjack fantasies I went on a four-day logout along the Duckabush River as part of the WTA's Backcountry Response Team. This was my first time doing anything like this and I got to cut downed trees in half with a two-person crosscut saw, kick giant logs down steep slopes, and generally just live out my lumberjack fantasies. Oh, and I also got a hard hat with my name on it, a t-shirt, and a sticker. And muscles. If you're looking to do multi-day backpacking trips where you cut and clear logs off of [...]
OpenStreetMap
One of the data layers for Gaia GPS is OpenStreetMap, a collaborative mapping platform (think of it as Wikipedia for maps). Often times features such as campsite locations, toilet locations, etc. are missing from OSM and thus missing from Gaia. Here's how I add new locations to OSM such that they're visible to all Gaia GPS users: Export the point from Gaia as a GPX fileLog into OSMSelect Edit with iD from the Edit dropdown to bring up the in-browser editorDrag the GPX file onto the editor to add the point as an overlayClick on the Point icon at the [...]