Patriotic PA Outdoorspersons - Get Your "Hike PA" Sticker

I didn't make this, I just think it's cool and want to support it. Get it on Etsy here.

New Podcast: Trail Doc Vlog

By John Onate of UC Davis, and medical director of the Western States 100.

Here's episode 2 - Ultramarathons during a Pandemic, a discussion with Ultramarathon Medical Directors.

Ultra-Run for Slain Officer Natalie Corona Scholarship Fund

For once, a running project that I won't be picking on - for tragic reasons. Colin Schmitt will be running 224 miles around Davis to benefit the scholar fund in honor of the late Davis PD officer, recently fallen in the line of duty. Article here; GoFundMe page is here.

Pennsylvania Trail and Outdoors Resources

There's so much cool stuff around southeast and central PA that I'm always surprised there's not more of an outdoor culture, although it's definitely getting more prominent (along with the microbrew scene - coincidence?) One possible reason is that people just don't know all the cool stuff that's around. I live on the West Coast now but I get back fairly frequently and I keep a list of places I want to check out during my visits home, and like many traily types, I suffer from two problems.

1. Fear that I will run out of trails.
2. Frustration that I keep adding new trails to explore, faster than I can explore them.

I would like you too to share this completely irrational conundrum, so here are some great resources for trails and outdoor activities around Pennsylvania.

• Down Hex Highway Youtube channel (I am using this to plan a hike right now)
• The Wandering Woodsman (I have already used this to plan a trail run)
• Gone Hikin - FANTASTIC mid-Atlantic resource by a very prolific hiker.
• Mid-Atlantic Hikes - Another fantastic resource with multiple contributors.
• Susquehanna Appalachian Trail Club
• Berks nature resources
• My own list of cool stuff in Berks County, including outdoors

Berks County History: Passing Scenes by George Meiser

I can't believe I only now found out about this amazing resource, this twenty-two (22!)volume work. Check it out at George's website here.

Riding from the Bay Area to Sacramento

Reddit user Old_Gold_Mountain rode from the Bay to tha 916 and took some great pictures along the way. Below I've taken one but you really should see the rest.

Resources for People in California Who Like the Outdoors

This is a list for people who like having fun outside and by that I mean, running, hiking, camping, climbing in those places - and preserving all this stuff so we can keep doing it and pass it on to our descendants. (And don't forget good food and drink.) This list includes some older resources that I still found immensely useful (plate tectonics aren't THAT fast.) They also include resources which aren't for California specifically but have a lot of good CA stuff and will also help you plan road trips and vacations!

Of course, here are my own best-of lists for San Diego and SoCal generally

peaksforfreaks

simpsoncity

lagoldmines

socalhikes

socalhiker

walksimply

modernhiker

californiathroughmylens

lastadventurer

eastwesthike

hundredpeaks

abhiking

hikespeak

trailrunproject

photographyontherun

davidstillman.blogspot

nobodyhikesinla

atlasobscura

Weird California

peakbagger

summitpost

trailporn

peakery

For urban trails, beer, and shenanigans, the Hash House Harriers

I Am a Published Glaciologist

Well okay maybe not. But kinda. First of all if I were actually a glaciologist, I would be more certain about what people who study glaciers call themselves. The only credit I can claim is that I have a photo in Jorge Daniel Taillant's Glaciers: The Politics of Ice; Dr. Taillant is obviously very discriminating in his choices of photographic sources. It's a shot of a rock glacier in Colorado's San Juans that I took four years ago (below; original blog post here).

Donna and Molly Walking the Bay Ridge Trail

Find their blog here. I did a very modified version of the Ridge Trail in my own run around the Bay (which I then connected to the Western States Trail in the Sierras). I ran across this through the Ridge Trail Council's Facebook page.

Always good to see other folks who share an obsession with long trail projects, although I'm frankly a little jealous that their blog will be prettier than mine owing to their mad art skillz (see below? It's the absolute essence of a wet winter day in the East Bay Hills.) Have a blast guys!

Best Trail Running in Southern California

After five years in SoCal, I accumulated some pretty fun outdoor experiences. SoCal's funny, in the sense that it doesn't have a culture as outdoors-oriented as the Bay Area, and yet down here we have 10,000' peaks and big national forests right in our backyards. And, it seems like even in my short time here, SoCal people have clued into this more. Great! Help protect these places! Here are my favorites:

The SoCal Triple Crown - San Gorgonio in San Bernardino Natl Forest, San Jacinto, and Baldy in Angeles, in decreasing order of how neat-o they are. They're all pretty cool. San Gorgonio is really isolated and more forested than I expected, and get your permit ahead of time (they were pretty disorganized when I went, and yes they do run out of them!) San Jacinto often seems longer than it actually is, and from the Humber Park/Devil's Slide area it's 16 miles round trip. My favorite thing about Baldy is Devil's Backbone, which is actually not as exposed as reports may lead you to believe.


LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Baden-Powell - my favorite peak in the Angeles, for the last quarter mile if nothing else. This is a trail that does not screw around, and neither should you!

Any trail in Angeles NF starting from Chantry Flats - because it's super green.

Santa Monica Mountains - Backbone Loop/Boney Trail. There's a lot more up there than you think.

Griffith Park - better than I thought it would be for an urban park.


ORANGE COUNTY

Crystal Cove State Park - go in the spring when it's green, but really any time of year it's great.

San Juan/Bluebird Trails, southern Trabuco Unit of Cleveland NF - forest, nice climbs, waterfalls, plus I saw my first horny toad on this trail, and no that's not a euphemism.


SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY

Cactus to Clouds - from Palm Springs up San Jacinto the hard way. Don't let the rangers discourage you, they really tried to scare me off when I called. Do take a lot of water (I took 4 liters = 1 gallon, and it was just barely enough). Do it in spring or fall, although fall is the best time (mid-late October, start early, no snow or ice leftover from winter.)


SAN DIEGO COUNTY

I lived here so I got a little more specific in this other post.


There were also outdoor things in SoCal that underwhelmed me (i.e., in terms of reputation vs. my experience). I'd definitely rather have the open space than not have it, but I'd also rather have had some people temper my enthusiasm to set aside time to do these things:
- Trail running in open desert, even in desert mountains. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails if you can see continuously exactly where you're going.
- Palos Verdes Peninsula
- The southern half of the Descanso Unit of Cleveland NF
- Crystal Lake in Angeles NF



Of course I am indebted to the many people who, out of passion and altruism, put resources online to help others find their own experiences. These are just some of the ones I used a lot but I can't possibly remember or list them all.

Photography on the Run (Ventura, Northern LA)
Dan's Hiking Pages (Angeles NF)
Dave Stillman's blog (Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Padres NF)
Nobody Hikes in LA
Mountain Bike Bill (San Diego County)


And if you use and enjoy the trails, get out there AND VOLUNTEER! AND VOTE TO PRESERVE OPEN SPACE!

Add Your Own Close Calls: The Rattlesnake Encounter Map

View Rattlesnake Encounters in San Diego County in a larger map

Clicking on that nasty-looking reptile you see to the right will take you to the map you see above, which is a public-access Google map for people to mark rattlesnake encounters in San Diego County. My purpose in putting this together was to get an idea if there were certain spots where people routinely encountered snakes outdoors. It's been up for a little over a year and a half and as of today there are 15 encounters on it; so far it hasn't been enough to show if there are any hotspots. But either way, I appreciate the contributors!

I'm going to leave it up (and linked on this blog) but probably won't plug it again. So, if you see one of these critters out there, or someone mentions to you that they have, you can tell them to do a Google search for "rattlesnake encounter map" and they'll find it. Hey, if it helps one less person get bitten by a snake, it's worthwhile.

Del Mar Mesa Trail Work: Saturday 25 January 2014

This is being run by Friends of Del Mar Mesa - if you're interested and want to contact them, check them out on Facebook.


Where: Park & meet on Aquitaine Court off DMM Road (see map on next page)

When: Saturday, January 25th, 8:00 – 11:00am

What you'll be doing: Trail clearing/restoration (east & west ends of "Angel" trail) & trail sign installation

What to bring: Tools (e.g., shovels, rakes, McLeods, loppers, etc.)

What they'll bring for you: Gas hedge trimmer, trail signs on posts (2), post-hole digger

What to wear: Work clothes, boots, gloves, hat, sunscreen, sunglasses

Kickstarter for Documentary About "Suffer Fest" Races

In an interview recently I was asked how I got into trail running and long races. (It was a residency interview, not an interview about running, but it just came up.) I said that I seemed to have a knack for endurance, solitude, and not knowing when to quit, and I went from road races to road marathons to trail marathons. Once you start doing trail marathons on wacky terrain, a) it's really purty and b) you mean progressively weirder = more interesting people, and finally aspire to be one of them. You meet paleo people, and back-to-nature types, and high-tech self-quantifiers, and poets, and radicals, and auto mechanics, and people who live in geodesic domes, and people from countries and tribes you've barely heard of who are addicted to these races and follow them around like the Grateful Dead of old. There's something off about people who do this stuff for fun. I mean seriously four-standard-deviations-away-from-the-mean kind of people, and I love them all, every last one.

So - the Kickstarter mentioned in the title is for a documentary that seems to focus on these weird=interesting people, which is a huge part of why people do this, and what I personally love about the community. It deserves a shout for noticing this truth. Give it a look-see!

This Guy Is Running Every U.S. State And Is Cool

Check out statesrunner.com. He's run across 31 states so far. Wish I had the time...but really it's always a matter of priorities. The runner (Brian Stark) says he's met a lot of interesting folks along the way. The interesting paradox, and belated Thanksgiving thought, is that until recently in history, all of us walked or ran everywhere we went, but at the same time, we also couldn't have done something like this without very likely getting killed. If you lived in the developed world, you're lucky. Try undertaking this project even today in Africa or most of Latin America. Even Bashoo in 17th century Japan set out on his famous trek fully expecting not to survive.

Running the coast of San Diego County, or around the whole San Francisco Bay, or even part of the Pony Express route were fun too but this looks like a blast. Here he is running Nevada.

Santiago Peak For Real

Done. Didn't start in time for the side trip to Modjeska. The saddle of Saddleback doesn't look as pretty from the top as the pre-Divide Road portion of the route Santiago was, with lots of wooded areas and some of the biggest damn ferns you'll ever see. The view from the type is a nice look straight across to San Jacinto, Banning Pass and San Gorgonio. Baldy was there too, really the only snow yesterday in the San Gabriels, with the smog pouring east from LA still considerable. As for many SoCal hikes, Nobody Hikes in LA is a great resource to plan your hike. Just keep in mind how annoyingly indirect that Divide Road around the summit is. Since it's for cars that need a level surface, that road is pretty much the opposite of the shortest route.

If you've had any of the bugs going around this year - one of several* viral flus, or a nasty strain of Strep pneumo that I was lucky enough to host for two weeks - you know how hard it is coming back from this. Very frustrating! The up-side is that when you're coming back from an illness, those parts of your training you hate and neglect have a more obvious impact. For many people it's hills; for me (and also many people) it's sprints. See you at the track!

There must be several viral strains going around this season because there are many people who got their flu shots, your blogger among them, and still got sick. That's no excuse not to get immunized!

Link of the Day

If you're bored of normal tourist destinations, check out Atlas Obscura. They end up being mostly outdoors and natural things. Nature is usually more unexpected than things other humans do. Except when it's not, because one of the articles on the front page is about an island in the Canaries where the pastoralists have developed a whistled language.

SoCal Triple Crown 3/3

I done hiked up San Jacinto.  Because I've also hiked up San Gorgonio and Baldy, I got that thar triple crown.  The mountains did not give up without a fight:  I came down with nice flu-like symptoms and a bad cough and sore throat while I was on the actual hike, which made the altitude even more fun.  (I barely noticed Baldy, at the same altitude.)  Taking the illness as a positive omen, I pressed on.  The view from the top is definitely the best of all three, not surprising given Jacinto's prominence.


View to the northeast from San Jacinto, NOT taken by me (there is no snow on trails up there as of Memorial Day 2012) but by awesome Aussie photographer Dianne Kennett.

I took the Humber Park/Devil's Slide route.  After my hike up Baldy I decided I would only do hikes or runs that had the word devil in them somewhere.  One note if you're going to do the Devil's Slide route:  there are various mileages posted around the web for this.  Take my word, it's 16 miles round trip.  Sixteen.  The rest can't read their GPS or took a different route or something.

Now I can focus on some of the 9s or 10s on Nobody Hikes in LA.

Support This Awesome Team in The Relay

The Relay is a 200 mile running race where teams of 12 relay-run from Calistoga at the north end of Napa Valley, all the way to Santa Cruz. (For you East Coast types, that's running from New York to Baltimore.) It's every bit as fun as it sounds but you shouldn't plan on getting anything done that weekend...and that weekend is 5-6 May. Coming right up! Even better, the event raises money for organ donation, and here's how you can help: go to the website for the relay team with the best name, ...And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Drugs, and help out one of the runners, Mathew Lomas. (In the interest of full disclosure, Matt is awesome, but then again so is this cause). Link is here.

Awesome Ice Skating...On the John Muir Trail

You can hear the thought process..."No snow in the Sierras, so what else can we do...wait, it's cold and we can get to the high lakes...hmmmm...." Talk about making lemonade - some genuine California ice skating. And the BEST PART: no soundtrack. When people watch nature videos, we want to hear, you know, water gurgling, wind, the scraping of ice and rocks...not annoying Euro-pop. This video is pretty much perfect. Thanks to the folks who made it and thanks to Mark at Marks Tales from the Trails for posting it on his awesome blog.

L.A.'s Griffith Park Is Neat-o

View of Mt. Lee from Mt. Hollywood in Griffith Park. From Planetrambler.com.

I have to admit I always thought of LA city parks as probably kind of gross and trashy and pretty small anyway. Wrong-o buster. Today I ran around a bunch of trails in Griffith Park, which is where the Hollywood sign is. The problem with the smaller or less isolated LA parks and canyons for us Diegueños is that they're not really worth a special trip, but if you're on your way somewhere, your stuff (often including your computer) is vulnerable in your car, and if you've been broken into before you understand why I'm nervous about that. So if I go to LA, it's for the Natl Forests up there, and I end up looking at places like Griffith Park and hoping I'll eventually get to explore them. And today I did.

Some nice green areas on the east side and some fun little climbs in there too to get up to Mt. Hollywood. Start on the east side by the merry-go-round to find these; Nobody Hikes in LA has the info, although hell if I was going to try to follow all the instructions in that post. (Signage in the park is pretty much absent.) The snow on the San Gabriels was pretty clear once you started getting up on the hill.

Critter sightings: some birds whose calls I didn't recognize, and a woodpecker that was damn determined to mmake progress on a telephone pole. I saw a very young horse getting trained to be comfortable walking along the ridges, plus there was a drum circle down in the east side parking lot and best of all, two brazen coyotes wandering around. (Picture below, sorry about the fuzziness, but then again it's an iPhone.)

Also, a big thank you for dlockeretz at Nobody Hikes in LA for that awesome website. I've been using it before but what I really like are the categories (region, or distance, or quality). Awesome. Much appreciated!