Gear videos are a mostly justifiable time-suck
When you’re outdoors, gear isn’t everything. It just enables everything. Good gear usually equals good performance: it lets you go farther, faster, with less exertion. It also, often, embodies admirable design. And it’s reliable, which matters always and especially in sports where an equipment failure can mean injury or death. Gear also gives you something...
Saturday mash-up: May 26, 2012
Busted glasses, busted diets, lost manufacturing…no intention here to sound ominous. Sometimes the news just points you in a way and there’s no point in resisting it. But summer is here at last. Break out the white flannels. Soon. Just as soon as this small dark cloud passes over. They’re pretty light, those glasses, so...
Saturday Mash-up: May 19, 2012
Like the other photos for Saturday mash-ups, this one is picked not for its relevance but just because we like it. It’s a photo of a “black ice growler from a recently calved iceberg closing in on the shore at the old heliport in Upernavik, Greenland. Such black ice growlers originate from a glacial crevasse,...
Trips your children won’t recommend
Runestone checked in yesterday with a link to Greenland’s official web site (which just won a Webby Award, which is considered the Oscar of the internet). As a travel destination, we had slotted Greenland pretty far down the list, between Somalia and Cancun. Now we’re less sure. We thought of the island as a frozen...
Happy National Parks Week!
A gentle reminder: in the United States, this is National Parks Week. Free admission to all 397 properties managed by the National Park Service, “84 million acres of the world’s most spectacular scenery, historic landmarks and cultural treasures.” (Note to the National Park Foundation, which penned the citation above: the parks are inarguably excellent places...
Hiking and the spiff of health
You know the seasons are wheeling around because of all the hiking stories that are popping up online. Over the past week or so we’ve been reminded of the joys of hiking, and the toys of hiking, and the health benefits, including this simple and stunning fact, from a study by a team at the...
A guide to the paths less travelled
So much of our attention is diverted to the marquee destinations, and understandably so. It’s fun to read about diving in Bonaire or skiing Whistler, and we can convince ourselves that we’re actually gathering useful information. Something that will help us plan that next outing. No, I’m not wasting time looking at this video of...
Sunday hash: February 26, 2012
Odd lots and bolt ends from the past week: As pointed out in an earlier post, research demonstrates that “exercising with an interactive computer game improves brain function among the elderly.” Now comes news that you might not need the exercise part of that: a study by North Carolina State University...
Another John Muir Trail video
A few weeks ago we posted a wonderful video on California’s John Muir Trail. Given that there are hundreds of beautiful trails (and apparently thousands of highly professional videographers out there), it seems unnecessary to revisit that particular hiking route so soon. But we were drawn to this short blog entry...
Hiker’s Snack FAQ: Don’t leave home without ’em
Most people understand the importance of carrying plenty of water on a long trek—for maintaining hydration and as a reserve in case you get lost or injured or the shuttle you planned to take back to your car doesn’t show. And most people know (or sense) that they need...
Sunday quote: October 2, 2011
“Wander a whole summer if you can. Thousands of God’s blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be...
When it comes to sweating the small stuff, Steve Green is our Yoda, our guru, our sensei
If you’re interested in laying down some of your backpacking burden, you can find plenty of advice in bookstores and online. (Type “ultralight backpacking” into the YouTube search box and you’ll get over 3,100 videos.) But no one synthesizes the opposite poles of obsessive-compulsive, shorten-and-drill-out-your-toothbrush hysteria and utterly...
