If you are interested in climbing and mountaineering you probably have heard of the AAC(American Alpine Club). Well, the AAC now also publishes many of their articles online at the American Alpine Journal. This publication is the “journal of record” for the documentation of significant climbs. The reports from North America can be found here. I

From the AAJ website: “The AAJ is published by the American Alpine Club. Founded in 1902, the AAC is the leading national organization devoted to mountaineering and rock climbing, the conservation and study of mountainous regions, and representing the interests of the American climbing community.”

I am a member of the AAC for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is the Global Rescue Service. This service is a $5000 rescue benefit, no elevation limitation and not just for climbing. If you spend as much time as I do in the mountains, this coverage is a good idea. The other benefits can be found on the AAC Website.

Well, since I am not on the trail today, I think I am going to spend a little time in the journals at AAJ!

Hope to see you on the trail, Peter

One of the most commonly found stoves carried by long distance backpackers is a cat stove. This stove is light and is usually home built! Some of the other reasons for its popularity are simplicity, availability of fuel and low cost. This stove is powered by alcohol. Fuel sources include denatured alcohol, grain alcohol, methanol and/or isopropanol. Most  backpackers will purchase “HEET” in the yellow bottle(methanol) to fuel their stove.

This little stove has many advantages, just be careful not to crush or step on it. There is a price for ultralight! So here are some of the disadvantages: no adjustable heat, no shut off, unable to cook lots of food, melt or cook in the snow.

Find all the information you could ever want on the building, use and specs for this amazing stove at zenstoves.net.

Be safe and see you on the trail, Peter

As I plan and pack for a small winter mountain excursion, I double check one key item in my pack. A reliable fire starter! I have read many journals that end in near tragedy or a trip account that ends in death when it could have been averted. It is easy to have hind sight. But with a little preparation and a few key bits of information, you may just save yourself and not become a statistic.

Being able to start a fire when needed is a life saver. I have been so wet and cold, had I not been able to start a fire, I am sure it would have been a lot more miserable if not fatal. With a fire I was able to dry my clothing and sleeping gear. I was able to get some warm food and liquid into my shivering body. All this kept me from falling into the grips of one of the greatest outdoor threats, hypothermia.

To make sure I can start a fire I carry three forms of fire starters. In fact, my stove has a “click” spark mechanism, so I guess I have four. I carry matches, a lighter and a flint. All of these are in a heavy zip-lock baggy and the matches are in a water tight case. With all of these at my disposal, I have never been with out fire if needed.

This brings me to most important bit of advice. You need to know the signs of hypothermia so you can avert it before you are in its grips. If you are traveling solo and become fully involved by hypothermia, you most likely will perish. The fist sign is uncontrollable shaking; this is the body attempting to warm itself. It is time to find or set up shelter and get warm. If you are traveling in a group, identifying the signs in others can be life saving.

The following is the list of hypothermia’s signs:

• Shivering
• Clumsiness or lack of coordination
• Slurred speech or mumbling
• Stumbling
• Confusion or difficulty thinking
• Poor decision making, such as trying to remove warm clothes
• Drowsiness or very low energy
• Apathy, or lack of concern about one’s condition
• Progressive loss of consciousness
• Weak pulse
• Shallow breathing

If one or more of these symptoms are evident, take action! Get out of the cold, get out of wet clothing, get warm fluids, get warm by shelter, sleeping bag, and/or sharing body heat with another. This may just save someone’s life, maybe yours!

Be safe of the trail, Peter

Here is a list I came across on the National Geographic Adventure Blog. I am not sure it would be my top ten adventure list, but I still like it!

Top 10 American Adventures

10. Shipwreck diving in Lake Superior, Minnesota: Shipwrecks that rival anything you’ll find in the ocean can be found in the waters off Grand Portage, Minnesota, near Isle Royale National Park. The freshwater keeps them incredibly preserved, too.

9. Hiking the Sierra High Route, California: The 195-mile stretch between King’s Canyon and Yosemite National Park is not for the faint of heart. This trail, through the country’s most rugged terrain, is challenging to say the least.

8. Surfing ‘The Lost Coast,’ Humboldt County, California: If you’re looking for epic surfing, look no further than Humboldt County, where 80 miles of serious surf combines with coastal redwoods and gorgeous cliff walls.

7. The Tour de Heartland – Biking RAGBRAI, Iowa: Every summer, 10,000 fun-loving bikers ride across Iowa in ‘Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa.’ This year, the Barenaked Ladies are kicking the race off with a concert in Council Bluffs.

6. Watching the Caribou Migration, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Hike to the Kongakut River in ANWR to watch one of the world’s largest migrations. You’ll see lots of other large wildlife, too.

5. Canoeing the Adirondacks, New York: One of the most serene parks in the country, Adirondacks Park is perfect for paddling. Drop in at Little Tupper Lake and paddle the million-acre circuit of pristine lakes and streams.

4. Climbing Mount Rainier, Washington: Mt. Rainier may only be the 22nd highest peak in the country, but its technical climbing difficulty makes it one of the premier mountains for daring climbers.

3. Rowing through the Grand Canyon, Arizona: Row a dory (a traditional rowboat with a narrow prow) through the rapids of the Colorado River for ultimate thrills you won’t find on a raft.

2. Kayaking Lake Yellowstone, Wyoming: Paddling the Thorofare region of Yellowstone (where Yellowstone River meets Lake Yellowstone) will allow you to see the park in a whole new way. Laden with wildlife but lacking in crowds, Lake Yellowstone is teeming with bison, grizzlies, wolves, eagles and more.

1. Biking the Continental Divide Trail: If you’re looking for a challenging and epic cycling trip, pedal the Continental Divide Trail from northern Montana to southern New Mexico. 2,490 miles of trail take you up a total of 200,000 feet in elevation through desert, prairie and mountains.

This time of year I am starting to plan my grand tours. I attempt to do two or three of these “major trips” each year. This year I already have two on the books. I will be going Mt Rainer in August with Alpine Ascents International (I will have more on this in later blog posts!) and a road trip to a family reunion outside of Chicago in July. For the trip to Chicago I am still in the process of figuring the logistics of this vacation from Southern California to Chicago and back.

I do know that the “Reunion Trip” will be by car. It will have a Northern Route and a Southern Route. It will be three weeks in length, 3 day will be in Chicago. Now the planning starts. Where are all the stops, side trips, etc? I know some of it has to be spontaneous, but I do want to have some key destinations for this trip. So, I have the atlas out and I am starting to get my list together.

I received an email the other day with a link to Google Books. I guess I heard of this before but never checked it out. After clicking on the link I was taken to an entire archive of older Backpacker Magazines! What a treasure!! I am sure I probably have all these magazines in boxes out in the garage or somewhere and the key word here is somewhere…

These are from 2004 and prior, but for browsing and adventure planning, this is an awesome resource! Not is it going to help me on this upcoming trip to Chicago but it has already sparked some additional adventures and trips that need to go on the “life list”.

For me, all the planning and re-planning is half the fun! I will be spending some “quality” time at Google Books!

Here is a second response to the Question: What are the Top-10 suggestions for thru-hikers:

1) Pack as light as possible, and be willing to chuck your old gear and buy new stuff mid-trip if it’s not working out for you (especially shoes).

2) Remove the word "comfort" from your vocabulary. It doesn’t exist on a thru-hike. Pain and hunger will be your constant companion, but you’ll get used to it.

3) Be friendly and enjoy the social aspect of hiking. Long after you’ve gotten bored of beautiful sunsets and mountain vistas having some people to talk to will give you a reason to keep you going.

4) Take however much money you expect to spend, and make sure you have at least 30% more than that available. Somehow everything ends up costing much more than expected.

5) Don’t become too attached to any specific person or group of people, because the time will come when you have to compromise your hike to stay with them. Maintain a flexible, informal relationship with people you meet on the trail, and always be willing to part ways when necessary.

6) Pace yourself. You don’t have to do 20+ miles a day right out of the gate. In fact, it will be tough to do that if you aren’t used to desert hiking. It’s perfectly OK to do 13-17 miles a day, or take a couple zeros each week for the first month or so. There will be plenty of time to catch up and crank out miles in Northern California and Oregon, after you’ve gotten into the best shape of your life.

7) Don’t get married to schedules, itineraries or plans. Stay flexible and when faced with a choice between having fun and staying on schedule, always choose having fun.

Do at least one shakedown hike of 50 miles or more to test out your gear before you start (and to make sure you really enjoy hiking if you haven’t done a lot of it before). Thru-hiking is a romantic fantasy, but in reality it’s more like a job (sleep, eat, walk, sleep, eat, walk, sleep, eat, walk)

9) Make sure you eat enough. 4,000 – 6,000 calories per day. If you find yourself feeling lethargic, light-headed, or nauseous try bumping up your food intake. Food is one area where packing extra weight is worth it. You can also load up on food in towns so you don’t have to pack as much.

10) Whenever you feel like quitting, give yourself three days to think about it. Chances are that within three days, you will discover a new reason to keep going. If not, take some time off and do some non-hiking activities for a week or so, and then come back to the trail. But don’t rush home just because you had a bad week. You will regret it almost instantly.

Happy trails!

By Erik The Black

As OnTheTrail.org moves to start archiving and making available .tpo files in our own Map Exchange section, I came across this interesting conversion article. OC

Extracting TOPO (.tpo) track files

Yesterday I posted about being able to convert National Geographic TOPO (.tpo) track files to .gpx using GPSBabel. This is something that will excite quite a few people, as it overcomes what (IMHO) is TOPO’s biggest disadvantage. Let’s take a look at the whys and hows.

When I first discovered GPS and mapping software, I went wild mapping trails in our area. I mountain bike with my wife every weekend, but the area we ride is private land, and there are no good trail maps. My first software purchase was National Geographic TOPO! Not only did I record tracks of rides, I started adding logging roads that show on aerial photos, trails that only showed up on 1:100,000 scale maps, etc.

In an effort to build a complete map of the area,
I kept adding data to the same map file, but I ended up with a mess; a relatively clean section of map is shown at left. To make matters worse, when I used the same trail again to access a new area, TOPO layered GPS tracks on top of one another, which caused all sorts of problems. If the track was fairly accurate, you couldn’t even tell this unless you deleted the top layer.

As my mapping got more sophisticated, I wanted to extract tracks for clean printed maps and to load to my GPS. But extracting tracks in TOPO was a pain until the recent update of GPSBabel. But once you extract the tracks, then what do you do?

I chose to extract them in the .gpx file format, since it’s become something of a universal standard. The TOPO file I extracted tracks from contained over a hundred track segments, but when I opened the .gpx file, there was only one track.

I then turned to OziExplorer and imported the .gpx file. (BTW, I believe you can do everything I’m describing here in Ozi’s trial versions.) Using the Track Control dialog, I chose the button
that says "Use mouse to draw a box around a track point. All track points in the same track section are made active." (See image at right). Then, under "More options for active track points," I selected "Save active track points to a file." Ozi forces you to save this in their .plt format, but Ozi can also convert it back to .gpx.

<Tangent>Just to check it out, I tried converting the .tpo file to Ozi’s .plt format using GPSBabel. It put over a thousand files on my desktop, so if you’ve got a bunch of data, you might want to stick to .gpx files, or at least create a separate folder.</Tangent>

The end result? Beautiful clean tracks (example at left) ready for use in your GPS or favorite mapping software!

Brief commercial message: There are separate chapters in my book, GPS Mapping – Make Your Own Maps, on National Geographic TOPO!, OziExplorer and many other mapping programs. You can check out the table of contents here.

Extracting TOPO (.tpo) track files | GPS Tracklog