Daniel Arnold's Arizona

My best buddy, Daniel Arnold, is one hell of a photographer and writer. But I'm sure you already knew that. And if you didn't, then stop what you're doing, head on over to his website, When To Say Nothing, and then read his blog, Born To Be Nervous, both of which are amongst the best places to spend time on the Internet.Two weekends ago, Daniel flew from New York to Los Angeles for a wedding, and on the way, in that big aluminum sardine can in the sky, took some beautiful photos of those pretty red rocks in Arizona. What a view.Enjoy more after the jump...

Jonathan Levitt (Part II)

After a few months of emailing back and forth, I asked Jonathan Levitt if he would write captions for a couple of my favorite photographs of his that I could post on Cold Splinters. The first installment, “Hedgelings and I Bothered By:," can be found here. The second installment in the series, "Ducktrapia," is above and can be seen much larger right here. Here's what I wrote the first time:Jonathan Levitt’s photos are of pet wolves and rural Maine, swimming in ice cold rivers and old Coleman stoves. It’s the morose side of being in the woods, the feeling that I most long for when I’m not camping. When you live in the city, that loneliness, even when felt in the company of loved ones, is the best part. Needless to say, I’ve been spending a lot of time on his photoblog, Grass Doe, over the last couple of months, admiring “Ducktrapia.” (From Jon: “Ducktrapia is a small settlement along the shores of the Ducktrap River in Ducktrap, Maine. For ten years, anthrophotographist Jonathan Levitt has been living among the Ducktrapians, documenting their way of life.”)

OLD FAITHFUL VISITOR CENTER

The $27 million Old Faithful Visitor Center opened in Yellowstone National Park last week. If you've been to Yellowstone, you know that Old Faithful already suffers from the overly-decorated concrete, signs, boardwalks and chains. The geyser has an eerie feeling of being man made, but when, according to the NPS, 4 out 5 of the 3.3 million visitors that came to Yellowstone last year came to see Old Faithful, I guess the old boy's show brings in the dough. The new visitor center boasts a bookstore, a gift shop, a theater for introductory films, a research area and a 4,500-square-foot exhibition space. It has touch screen televisions that provide an interactive (!) way to learn about that good ol' geyser that's right outside.One of the reasons I get off on talking about national parks and the NPS is because of its primitive aesthetic. In a world of interactive museums and the Internet, it's fitting that our public lands consist of park Rangers, old maps, dusty visitor centers with 30 year old wildlife pamphlets and WELCOME! signs from the 70s. I guess it's rather inevitable that they're going to "freshen up" the parks, but $27 million on a visitor center, specifically one dedicated to Old Faithful with exhibits that look like this, seems a little excessive. But what do I know, eh?Read more at the NYT.

Hull Cook

During the late 1920s and early ’30s, a small hut stood at the Boulderfield (12,750 feet) on Longs Peak in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park. The Boulderfield is 5.9 miles into the Longs Peak hike and the beginning of the hike's most difficult portion. Guests could hike or ride horseback to the Boulderfield Shelter Cabin, spend the night in a bunk with a hot meals, and climb the 14,259-foot peak in the morning, usually by the north face, which was equipped in those days with steel cables for hand rails. For two or three years during the early ’30s, Hull Cook worked at the Boulderfield Shelter Cabin. He and Clerin Zumwalt, aka Zum, became famous for their rescues on the park's only fourteener. Hull is pictured on the left in middle picture. Each morning the guides used to shout, "Indian's a-comin'!" as they spotted the first hikers at the edge of the Boulderfield.Back in April, the Colorado Mountain Journal posted some of Hull's memoirs from his time at the Boulderfield. You can read them here:

As hotels go, ours was tiny and Spartan. We called it “the cabin.” There was no electricity and no running water, unless you ran while carrying it from the spring. There was also almost no privacy. It was a two-story structure, the upper floor accessed by a ladder hinged to the ceiling of the ground-floor room. By Hilton standards it was indeed small, only 14 by 18 feet, so the space had to be efficiently utilized. Upstairs, springs and mattresses were placed directly on the floor, three on each side of the stair hole, and above the stair hole was a double-decker single bed. This arrangement could accommodate 14 people in relative comfort, unless someone had to go to the bathroom during the night, in which case comfort might be called into question. He or she would have to stumble over fellow sleepers, descend the ladder and seek relief outdoors, presumably making the effort to follow the dark rocky trail to the distant privy. No lights. Possession of matches or flashlight was desirable even to find the place, and to obviate the need for a somewhat unsanitary old-fashioned pot, and although canvas curtains could be drawn between the beds, there would have been few people with the callous temerity to use it in such a setting of crowded togetherness. If you rolled over you were apt to find yourself in bed with a stranger, possibly not all that bad if it happened to be someone of the opposite sex.

VBS + Oregon Fire Lines

The Filson booth at OR sure was handsome, especially when juxtaposed with the dreadlocked teenagers walking across tightropes a hundred feet away. (I'm not knocking dreadlocks or walking across a nylon chord. Both are extremely difficult achievements.) The Seattle-based Filson has collaborated with San Francisco-based Levi's and made some co-branded workwear together. Check it out here.Even more exciting is that they've tapped VBS (who also brought you Heimo) to make a series of videos to help promote the collaboration. Lucky for us. The first installment is a two-parter called "Oregon Fire Lines" that chronicles the daily work of the wildland firefighters who work for Grayback Forestry in Southern Oregon. Go watch it and be thankful/depressed that you work at a computer.Watch: The Oregon Fire Lines - We Are All Workers | VBS.TV

Cardboard Bison

I was given this huge cardboard cutout of a bison as a parting gift from my last job, and after having it propped up against my window for many months, it was stolen during a birthday party in March. A couple of weeks ago, I came home from work and the thing was sitting outside of my apartment once again, with no note, no explanation, no nothing. It's good to have it back. Who would have thought that a $35 piece of cardboard could be so desirable?The company that makes the cutouts is called Advanced Graphics, and in addition to the bison, they've got bears, wolves, eagles and more. Pretty awesome gift for someone who wants a two dimensional version of the woods brought into their house/apartment/fort...

Butch Cassidy + Aron Ralston

The Robbers Roost was an outlaw hideout in southeastern Utah that was used mostly by Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch gang. It was considered ideal because of the rough terrain and large amount of lookout points. Robbers Roost was easily defended, difficult to navigate into without detection, and excellent when the gang needed a month or longer to rest and lay low following a robbery.The Robbers Roost is also where, in May 2003, Aron Ralston was canyoneering when a boulder pinned his arm to the wall, forcing him to cut the limb off in order to survive. Danny Boyle has gone done and made a movie about Ralston called 127 hours, and the trailer, courtesy of The Adventure Life (Mr. Casimiro worked on the movie), can be viewed after the jump...MP3: Burt Bacharach - Come Touch The Sun

Jonathan Levitt

After a few months of emailing back and forth, I asked Jonathan Levitt if he would write captions for a couple of my favorite photographs that I could post on Cold Splinters. The above, "Hedgelings and I Bothered By:" is what he sent back. Lordy. Click here to see a much larger version.Jonathan Levitt's photos are of pet wolves and rural Maine, swimming in ice cold rivers and old Coleman stoves. It's the morose side of being in the woods, the feeling that I most long for when I'm not camping. When you live in the city, that loneliness, even when felt in the company of loved ones, is the best part. Needless to say, I've been spending a lot of time on his photoblog, Grass Doe, over the last couple of months, admiring "Ducktrapia." (From Jon: "Ducktrapia is a small settlement along the shores of the Ducktrap River in Ducktrap, Maine. For ten years, anthrophotographist Jonathan Levitt has been living among the Ducktrapians, documenting their way of life.") I couldn't be more excited that he did some artwork for Cold Splinters.Go to Grass Doe and get lost for a couple of hours.

Winters Of My Life

For the last 35 years, Howard Weamer has been a hutkeeper at Ostrander Hut, 8,500 feet high, 10 miles from the closest motor vehicle access. The hut was built in 1941 by the Civilian Conservation Corp for cross-country skiers. Johnny Burhop, a producer for Discovery Channel, National Geographic and Animal Planet has made a short documentary, Winters of My Life, about Weamer and the winter trips he takes to the Yosemite backcountry year after year.MP3: Tim Bluhm - California Way

The Great Daylight 1972 Fireball

The Great Daylight 1972 Fireball, or US19720810, is an Earth-grazing meteoroid which passed within 35.4 miles of the surface of the Earth at 20:29 UTC on August 10, 1972. It entered the Earth's atmosphere in daylight over Utah (2:30 pm local time) and passed northwards leaving the atmosphere over Alberta, Canada.Watch a pretty amazing home movie of the meteoroid that someone shot at GRTE right here. (The video is a little less dramatic than Woody Harrelson watching Yellowstone erupt in 2012.)MP3: Bob Dylan - Shooting Star

Good Ol' Kathy Mumford

A few days ago, Kathy Mumford (pictured here) became the first woman to finish the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a 740-mile canoe route through New York, Vermont, Canada and Maine. Along the route, she passed through 22 rivers and streams, 56 miles of lakes and ponds, 45 communities, three national wildlife refuges and more than 55 miles of portages in 62 carries.“My kids were grown and gone, I’d been laid off from a job that I loved and was sending out resumes but getting no response,” Mumford said. “So I said, ‘You know what? I’m going camping.’”The trip took 58 days, and because of the size of her boat, a 35 pound kayak not rated for anything above Class 2 rapids, and a promise to her mother, Mumford portaged around the big rapids. She also kept a journal everynight ("really just one long run-on sentence") that I can imagine will be a book soon enough. Rightfully so.Nice job, Kathy Mumford. That's pretty studly. Full story at the Bangor Daily News.

Dehydrators

Apple season might be a few months away, but if you've been meaning to dry out that fish in your refrigerator or those bananas on your counter, go to NESCO, find out what food dehydrator will work best for you and have yourself a bunch of dried fruit/meat/pasta sauce on your next hike.

Trail Hankie

If you've ever wanted to clean the dishes, wipe your brow or finish up a splint with your trail map, you're in luck. And if you've ever wished that the bandana that was keeping the hair out of your eyes could help identify trees, stars and hiking safety tips, you, my friend, have found your match. Meet the Trail Hankie.While most of their hiking, river and lake maps are from places in the south and midwest that I've never visited, it doesn't matter much. Trail Hankies bandanas are a damn fine alternative to the classic design, and if you don't want a map of Devil's Den State Park to adorn your neck, Hiker Hank has general use prints of stars, trees, knots, tracks and trail maintenance that you should probably own.

Platt National Park/Oklahoma Oasis

For seventy years (1906-1976) the Platt Historic District in Chickasaw National Recreation Area was designated Platt National Park. Only 800 acres in size, the park was the smallest in the United States to be designated a National Park.From The National Parks Traveler:

The dawn of the 20th century found Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians in Murray County, Oklahoma, fearing that private developers would create a spa resort like the one at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and bar their access to around 30 strong-smelling mineral springs with reputed healing powers. To prevent this from happening, they sold 640 acres of their land near the town of Sulphur to the federal government, which earmarked it for public use. On July 1, 1902, Congress designated this one square-mile tract (soon expanded to 858 acres) Sulphur Springs Reservation. Few national parks could have had more humble beginnings. None was launched for more blatantly political reasons than helping Indians retain access to healing waters.In one of the more conspicuous examples of “park barrel politics” to emerge in the early 20th century, Congress redesignated Sulphur Springs Reservation as Platt National Park on June 29, 1906. This nondescript tract with its cluster of mineral springs was now, at least conceptually, in the same league as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake National Parks.The new designation honored Orville Hitchcock Platt, a U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Though seemingly bizarre, this label made sense when viewed through the filter of national politics. Platt, who served with distinction in the U.S. Senate for just over a quarter-century (1879-1905), was not only very actively involved in Indian Affairs and the Dawes Commission, but also sponsored the legislation that established the Sulphur Springs Reservation in 1902. By the time Platt died on April 21, 1905, the idea of formally recognizing his contributions to the country, and in behalf of Indians and the new park, was well established. Congress redesignated Sulphur Springs Reservation as Platt National Park just 14 months after the Senator’s death.

Watch: Oklahoma Oasis, a 1974 film made by the NPS that is narrated by Chief Dan George (see below), about the "colorful history connected with the establishment and development of Platt National Park."