Upcoming Hike — Copper Canyon Traverse (CCT)

Details are final­ized and plane tick­ets are now booked, which means that I can offi­cial­ly say that the trip is on! I am real­ly excit­ed for this hike and am lit­er­al­ly prepar­ing for the trip as I post (yes, I am eat­ing Ben & Jer­ry’s while I type this).

It may seem strange to a lot of peo­ple that I am head­ed out on a month long hike with some­one that I met in per­son for the first time only three weeks ago. I met Cam Honan (Swa­mi) in per­son at a hik­er gath­er­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber. We had been e‑mailing off and on for a few years about infor­ma­tion on var­i­ous hikes. In the late sum­mer and fall we were cor­re­spond­ing about the Cop­per Canyon when we decid­ed to adjust course from solo trekking and add the secu­ri­ty of a part­ner for this hike. I think this abil­i­ty to com­fort­ably add a hik­ing part­ner, even one that you hard­ly know, real­ly says a lot about the hik­ing com­mu­ni­ty and every­thing we have in com­mon. Once you have hiked a cer­tain amount of miles, in vary­ing envi­ron­ments, your out­look on hik­ing, life, and the unex­pect­ed is like­ly to be fair­ly sim­i­lar. With that hav­ing been said, Cam has hiked A LOT! I think Cam and I have very sim­i­lar hik­ing styles and I am real­ly excit­ed to head out with him on this trip.

Now some details on the trip, since that is prob­a­bly what you are all inter­est­ed in:

Who: Cam Honan (Swa­mi) and Justin Lichter (Trau­ma)

What: We will be tra­vers­ing the Cop­per Canyon region in Mex­i­co, con­nect­ing all of the major canyons in the area.

When: We will be head­ing out in mid-Novem­ber and hope to com­plete the route before Christmas.

Where: The Cop­per Canyon region in north­ern Mexico.

Why: The Cop­per Canyon is a remote and beau­ti­ful area in north­ern Mex­i­co. The canyon sys­tem is the deep­est in North Amer­i­ca, deep­er than the Grand Canyon. There is tremen­dous recre­ation poten­tial in the area but the region gets a bad rap from some of the dan­gers asso­ci­at­ed with trav­el in north­ern Mex­i­co. We intend to link up the major canyons to tra­verse the region, not in the straight line, short­est dis­tance pos­si­ble type of plan, but in weav­ing through the area con­nect­ing the canyons and areas that look impres­sive and scenic. We expect the route to be some­where between 350–450 miles. We’ll have a bet­ter idea of that when we get on the ground. It is very hard to tell the exact mileage with all of the twists and turns in the canyons. We will be hik­ing, swim­ming, canyoneer­ing, pack­raft­ing, and of course — ‘shwack­ing.

Check back for more posts before the trip as the details get ironed out and as we are in the field.

Cam has also post­ed some great infor­ma­tion and back­ground on the region on his web­site at http://www.thehikinglife.com/journal/2013/10/full-length-traverse-of-mexicos-copper-canyon-region/

Good write up about the Outdoor Retailer Tradeshow a couple of weeks ago

I was for­tu­nate enough to attend the Out­door Retail­er trade show in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago. The show this sum­mer seemed espe­cial­ly vibrant and inno­v­a­tive. It was also one of the most well attend­ed shows of the past few years. This report does a great job of cov­er­ing some of the new prod­ucts that were intro­duced and will be avail­able next spring (Spring 2014).

http://gossamergear.com/wp/buzz-blog/outdoor-retailer-delivers-again-loads-of-new-updated-lighter-better-and-outrageous-gear-and-some-items-you-didnt-know-you-needed-or-not

Sawyer Squeeze Filter Gear Review

The past few weeks I have been exper­i­ment­ing with some Sawyer water fil­tra­tion prod­ucts, includ­ing the Sawyer Squeeze Fil­ter. I was excit­ed to use these prod­ucts. I have increas­ing­ly been see­ing the Sawyer Squeeze Fil­ter out on the trail. It seems like it has been gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty among thru-hik­ers, and right­ful­ly so. It is sim­ple, light­weight, and very easy to use.

Sawyer has done a great job mak­ing the Squeeze Fil­ter adapt­able to most people’s sys­tems and for a vari­ety of loca­tions. The fil­ter comes with sev­er­al sizes of light­weight, col­lapsi­ble water stor­age con­tain­ers (sim­i­lar to Platy­pus bot­tles). As a result you can use the sys­tem on trips on the Appalachi­an Trail, where you hard­ly need to car­ry any water, and also on trips in very dry areas. Just change out the water blad­der that you car­ry by the vol­ume that you will need. Addi­tion­al­ly, they include a con­trap­tion that allows some­one to fill their hydra­tion pack with­out remov­ing it from their pack. This is a bril­liant idea and elim­i­nates one of the main rea­sons that I don’t use a hydra­tion system.

After ask­ing an employ­ee at Sawyer, I also found out that it is pos­si­ble to use the Sawyer Squeeze and still use Crys­tal Light and oth­er drink mix­es. They rec­om­mend adding the drink mix­es to the dirty water and then let­ting the mix dis­solve before the water is fil­tered. Just make sure to back flush the fil­ter with clean water before stor­age as the sug­ar can hard­en in the filter.

In addi­tion the Sawyer grav­i­ty fil­ter can be a great, light­weight option for larg­er groups since you can just hang it on a tree and let every­one fill up at will (the grav­i­ty fil­ter is def­i­nite­ly my go to option for groups with more than four people).

I must men­tion a few small gripes about the Sawyer Squeeze. The first being that it is hard to chug the water through the fil­ter sys­tem because it is released a bit slow­er than I would ordi­nar­i­ly drink. This is not a big deal and I got used to drink­ing slow­er. How­ev­er, when I am out of water and come up on a water source, I usu­al­ly add Crys­tal Light and down the liter with­in 30 sec­onds. My sec­ond small gripe is that the mouth on the water blad­ders are small and can make it a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to fill up from some water sources and seeps. You can use an extra plas­tic water bot­tle or your pot to help fill up the blad­der if need be, but it is an extra step. Also keep in mind since this is still a fil­ter sys­tem it is not good if the fil­ter has water inside and freezes.

Over­all the Sawyer Fil­ter is a con­ve­nient and easy to use fil­ter sys­tem for 3 sea­son hik­ing trips. I would not rec­om­mend it for win­ter use, but it is a quick and effi­cient sys­tem for all oth­er trips. There are many sim­i­lar­i­ties to the SteriPEN in its capabilities.

To sum it up here are the rea­sons that I like both of these treat­ment systems:

1)    There is no need to sit at the creek when the mos­qui­tos are bit­ing and pump water. You can just grab water and keep mov­ing, sav­ing time and blood loss.

2)    You also have the abil­i­ty to drink imme­di­ate­ly when you arrive at the water source, pre­vent­ing the need to car­ry addi­tion­al water. Sav­ing weight and water is one of the heav­i­est things that you will car­ry at about 2 pounds per liter.

Vargo BOT review

Every so often an idea comes around that makes you slap the side of your head and say, “why did­n’t I think of that”. The BOT by Var­go is one of those notions. So sim­ple, yet so practical.
A few weeks ago I tried one out on a two week ski trip through the Sier­ra Neva­da Moun­tains, fol­low­ing the cor­ri­dor of the Pacif­ic Crest Trail and John Muir Trail. I skied about 300 miles through vary­ing con­di­tions and weath­er. I was excit­ed to test out the BOT and this was a per­fect trial.
Dinner on some dry ground during the ski trip.

Din­ner on some dry ground dur­ing the ski trip.

It took me a day or two to get com­fort­able with the BOT. The high­er cen­ter of grav­i­ty ini­tial­ly played tricks while I was cook­ing. I am used to the typ­i­cal .9 and 1.3 Liter Ti pot shape, which is so sta­ble that I hard­ly ever have a cook­ing dis­as­ter. On the first night cook­ing we were camp­ing in the snow. I piled some sticks in the snow and cooked on top of them to pre­vent melt­ing and set­tling, how­ev­er I did have a tip-over. Luck­i­ly I did­n’t lose my whole din­ner! Also on the first day, it was snow­ing and windy with highs only in the 20’s. The top of my BOT froze and I was unable to open it until I set it on my stove to warm it up. Not a huge deal, but I would not rec­om­mend it for win­ter camp­ing or win­ter con­di­tions. The tem­per­a­tures warmed up for the rest of the trip and I had no oth­er freez­ing issues, despite con­tin­ued overnight tem­per­a­tures below freezing.
I also came to the con­clu­sion that water boils a slow­er in the BOT. I believe this is due to the shape. I will try to toy around at home and make my alco­hol stove a lit­tle more effi­cient for a nar­row pot bot­tom, so I don’t lose as much heat and flames up the sides. This should help the boil time a lot.
I ini­tial­ly thought that I would need a sil­i­con band near the top to help me pick up the heat­ed BOT since I did not car­ry pot grip­pers. I quick­ly learned that due to the shape this was unnec­es­sary. The upper area of the tita­ni­um nev­er real­ly got too hot to han­dle. Tita­ni­um is a poor con­duc­tor as far as met­als are con­cerned, but in this case it was per­fect because it aid­ed in the sim­plic­i­ty of the product.
My biggest con­cern was that I some­times mis-thread­ed the lid back on to the base and it became stuck. This was more of a nui­sance than any­thing. All it took was a lit­tle tap on a rock or a tree and the lid would then come off and I could reat­tach it prop­er­ly. Not a real issue once you learned how to deal with it.
After tens of thou­sands of miles of drink­ing from reused Gatorade, Pow­er­ade, and oth­er plas­tic water bot­tles, I thought it would be great to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to save weight, while also going BPA free. It seemed like a no-brain­er, after all my plas­tic water bot­tle typ­i­cal­ly sits on the out­side of my pack and in the sun all day. The sun caus­es the water bot­tles which aren’t meant to be reused to release the BPA, a poten­tial car­cino­gen. Why not save weight and cut the BPA out at the same time?
Cooking dinner in the BOT.

Cook­ing din­ner in the BOT.

All in all, I quick­ly became accus­tomed to the intri­ca­cies of using the BOT and I high­ly rec­om­mend it. While hik­ing a water bot­tle is like­ly your most used pieces of equip­ment. The wide mouth on the BOT han­dles and drinks smooth­ly and the shape will fit well into most out­side stretch pock­ets. The lid does­n’t leak at all and it is per­fect for mak­ing tea, Crys­tal Light, hot choco­late, and even sav­ing left­overs for the next day. The Var­go BOT is a ver­sa­tile tool to add to any out­ing. It quick­ly became my new favorite prod­uct and I am excit­ed to add it to my kit. Why did­n’t I think of that years ago!
Skiing through the Sierras. The BOT is right in front of the yellow HEET bottle in my outside mesh pocket.

Ski­ing through the Sier­ras. The BOT is right in front of the yel­low HEET bot­tle in my out­side mesh pocket.

P.S.- I also just used the BOT on a John Muir Trail thru-hike. On the final day of the hike I descend­ed about 8000 ver­ti­cal feet with­out open­ing the lid. I then got into a car and drove to sea lev­el. The pres­sure change cre­at­ed a vac­u­um seal on the lid that I could­n’t wres­tle open for the life of me. A few days lat­er I went home (ele­va­tion 7,000 feet) and the lid prac­ti­cal­ly fell off when I grabbed it. I felt like a weak­ling, but appar­ent­ly there have been some oth­er instances of this as well. So keep this in mind on big descents and when head­ing out of the moun­tains. Here’s a link that Var­go post­ed for some tips on how to deal with this.(http://www.vargooutdoors.com/blog/screwing-around-with-the-bot-unsticking-a-stuck-lid/).

John Muir Trail Hike

I had about 6 days with­out much going on. Since I was free I decid­ed to go out and hike the John Muir Trail. It was great to get back out on good trail tread and hike. I aver­aged about 35 miles per day and com­plet­ed the trail in 5.5 days. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle bit more snow on the pass­es, but in this low snow year that was­n’t hap­pen­ing. It was amaz­ing to see the dif­fer­ence in the land­scape and amount of snow around from when I skied through about a month pri­or. The mos­qui­tos were already start­ing to come out also.

Here are a few pic­tures from the trip.

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Trail Tested, Edition 2 released by Falcon Guides

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Yes­ter­day after­noon the UPS dri­ver showed up with 12 box­es to unload at my doorstep. I am excit­ed to announce that I now have the Fal­con Guides ver­sion of Trail Test­ed! It is fan­tas­tic! You can get your copy right here on my web­site. All orders through my site will be signed by me, and of course by Yoni also 🙂 

Sierra Ski Trip Completed


View Sier­ra Ski Trip — April 2013 in a larg­er map

I got back home last night after com­plet­ing the Sier­ra Ski Trip. All in all, despite the lack of snow this year, this was a great trip and real­ly good expe­ri­ence to get my gear and sys­tems dialed for this type of trav­el. In two weeks and over 250 miles, there was a mixed bag of con­di­tions and ter­rain to try every­thing out on. This ranged from walk­ing across dirt patch­es with our skis on, to hik­ing in our ski boots, scram­bling through house-sized talus with some class 4 and low class 5 moves in ski boots, to actu­al­ly ski­ing. Boot fit for all of these con­di­tions is the sin­gle most impor­tant les­son that I have learned, since I was­n’t expect­ing these con­di­tions and who knows what you will encounter.

Where's the snow?

Where’s the snow?

Dur­ing the past week, the con­di­tions improved great­ly since the major­i­ty of the time was spent over 8000 feet ele­va­tion. Up high in the lakes basins and head­ing up to the high pass­es the con­di­tions were opti­mal. The ski­ing was fan­tas­tic and the lakes were still frozen, which made for direct lines, good glide, and lit­tle side-hilling, not to men­tion fun, slight­ly out-of-con­trol down­hills. At times, espe­cial­ly in the after­noons, I would rel­ish in the fact that I had skis on. Know­ing that if I were hik­ing I’d be posthol­ing every step. In skis I was able to stand in places that I knew I would ordi­nar­i­ly post­hole, and not budge an inch. It was great! Oth­er times, espe­cial­ly in the morn­ings, I knew I could be mov­ing faster by walk­ing on the firm snow and straight up a steep uphill. Some­times I’d strap the skis on my back and boot­pack. Over­all when the snow­pack is cov­er­ing this much ter­rain, I’d have to say it is faster to ski. By the last week, my body was feel­ing good and used to the motions, so an aver­age of about 20 miles per day was not out of the ques­tion, includ­ing a few 30 mile days. At the begin­ning of the trip, we were hard pressed to get 15 miles in a day. In the last week, basi­cal­ly fol­low­ing the Pacif­ic Crest Trail/John Muir Trail cor­ri­dor through the High Sier­ras, I went over 8 high pass­es, cov­ered about 130 miles, and broke anoth­er cam­era. I am not sure how but right after the last town stop in Mam­moth the cam­era lens stopped work­ing. Bum­mer, but that is the life of a long dis­tance hik­er. This is prob­a­bly the fourth or fifth cam­era that I have had break in the back­coun­try. Oth­er than the cam­era break­ing, a few big blis­ters, and a cou­ple of painful bruis­es on my achilles from the ski boots (which were both­er­some enough to end up requir­ing Vit­a­min I treat­ment the last few days), the trip was fun and the scenery was amaz­ing. It was great to see the Sier­ra extra ear­ly in the sea­son with all of their Nevada.

Day 2 with the storm starting to break up.

Day 2 with the storm start­ing to break up.

A few days ago I saw bear tracks at 8500 feet ele­va­tion. The ter­rain was com­plete­ly snow cov­ered still, so I was very sur­prised to see this so ear­ly in the sea­son. I have been won­der­ing what the bear was doing up there since there obvi­ous­ly was­n’t much food yet. It is a light snow year but it seems very ear­ly in the sea­son for it to be head­ing to that elevation.

I think that’s all for now. Time to go get some Ben and Jerry’s.

Getting water.

Get­ting water.

Update from Mammoth

Pep­per and I pushed hard yes­ter­day to get to Mam­moth Lakes, CA. We are get­ting orga­nized and resup­ply­ing now for the next stretch. We skied into town under head­lamps and moon­light in a ~30+ mile day. We camped a few miles south of Tuolomne Mead­ows in Yosemite the night before and had the most favor­able con­di­tions of the entire trip while head­ing over Don­ahue Pass and Island Pass. We even had some pret­ty good turns and corn snow on the descents. I only wiped out once on the descent, which is say­ing a lot con­sid­er­ing I am using leather tele boots and 3‑pin bind­ings with no heel bail (this set-up was the tough­est deci­sion for a weight con­scious hiker—added control/performance vs. weight). I don’t regret my deci­sion now at all con­sid­er­ing the snow con­di­tions have been less than opti­mal. Below 8000 feet ele­va­tion it is a mixed bag. We have had to bushwack through thick brush with our skis on our packs, make our way through talus fields with house sized boul­ders in our ski boots, and hike at least 15 miles of clear, snow-free trail in our ski boots. We should be high­er mist of the way through the next sec­tion, but we have still decid­ed to add the bur­den of car­ry­ing a light­weight pair of shoes just in case.
The first cou­ple of days were chilly and snowy. The weath­er has now tran­si­tioned to full-blow sun­shine and intense solar radi­a­tion. At times I notice that I am still squint­ing despite wear­ing sun­glass­es. The fords have been cold, with ice often flow­ing in the rivers, but none too over­whelm­ing. The biggest thing is the lack of snow. At times we are forced to zig-zag around to stay on snow instead of being able to trav­el a straight line. All in all, the trip is going well. We have cov­ered about 110 miles now and are excit­ed to get into the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Nation­al Park tomor­row. From here on out we are antic­i­pat­ing stay­ing more on the Sier­ra High Route than the Pacif­ic Crest Trail/John Muir Trail due to snow con­di­tions and the high­er ele­va­tions that the SHR maintains. 

Last Minute Scramble

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As usu­al the last minute scram­ble tie up all loose ends has begun! We are head­ed out to Sono­ra Pass tomor­row to begin our ski trip to Mt. Whit­ney. The weath­er is sup­posed to turn back to win­ter tomor­row with temps in the 20’s and 50 mph wind gusts, and lows in teens overnight. Need­less to say it will be a lit­tle chilly.
As far as snow­fall goes, it has been the polar oppo­site of a cou­ple of years ago when Pep­per and I went to the Himalayas. At this point two years ago it was still dump­ing snow and there was over 30 feet of snow­pack on the ground. Short­ly after we left, the police had a vol­un­tary evac­u­a­tion of the town, due to propane leaks from the snow and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of a home. Iron­i­cal­ly, this year when we are going to under­take a ski trip, the snow­pack is a mea­ger 50% of aver­age and the last few weeks have been real­ly warm. My gear list for the trip is below in case you are inter­est­ed. Check back in. I’ll be updat­ing the blog dur­ing the trip. 

Sierra Ski Trip Gear List