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To all you wonderful people out on the interwebs,
There's no doubt about it. 2011 was one hell of a year. We hope you have a great holiday season and get to spend some well-deserved time with friends and families.
We're going to try and sign off Cold Splinters for a little while (though who knows how that will actually play out), so we'll see you back here when the clock strikes 2012...
Thanks for everything,JNT
After being laid off from his job in April 2011, Kolby Kirk (The Hike Guy) decided he would attempt to complete as much as he could of the 2,650-mile PCT. Starting at the Mexican border near Campo, California, he walked for 159 days and nearly 1,700 miles. In that time, Kolby wrote 850 pages in his journals. a few of which he has started to scan for a major dose of visual stimulation. The pages are filled with charts, drawings, receipts, beer labels (nice), stamps, crushed poison oak, and much much more. He's even added descriptions under a few of the pages to give us better insight on the process:
"Hiking journals shouldn’t be clean unless your hike is clean. In this example, you can see dirt and smears of ink, a subtle clue that I was grimy and had just applied insect repellant to my hands. At the time, I was a little upset that the chemicals had smudged the ink, but I have learned to appreciate that my journal records more than just the words I print on it, for better or worse."
Kolby is now working on a book that will help hikers and travelers start and retain their own journals while on the trail. And after looking at his Flickr for the last couple of hours, that is certainly a book I'd read.Congratulations, Kolby.
In 1948, Earl Shaffer hiked from Mt. Oglethorpe in Georgia (the Appalachian Trail's southern terminus at that time) to Mount Katahdin in Maine, making him the first person to hike the trail's entire length. He did it with no expert advice, no previous footsteps to follow, or fancy mile-by-mile guidebooks to help him. At the time, experts believed that a hike of the entire Trail was impossible. So, in 1965, he thru-hiked it again as a southbounder, starting in Maine and ending at the new and present southern terminus, Georgia's Springer Mountain. Good ol' Earl's "Advice for Long Distance Hikers on the Appalachian Trail, circa 1950" includes the following:
On his 13th (!) hike along the 2,663 mile Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from British Columbia down to the California/Mexico border, Scott Williamson, a tree climber from California, set a new speed record, finishing the length in 64 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. That is insane. He added 20 miles to his hike with only 12 (another !) drops for food and gear. Interesting part of a recent interview with Mr. Williamson:
“There is more trash, more impact on the water sources and fires have really adversely affected the trail in the 19 years I’ve been on it, particularly in the last 10 years,” Williamson said. “The trail, especially this first 700 miles through Southern California, is radically different due to fire and tree disease. There are stretches that used to be pine forest that now are just chaparral because the trees died due to different diseases or fire. The first 700 miles of the trail are now shadeless.“The positive changes are that, since there now are about 500 plus people thru-hiking it each year, the preservation and maintenance of the trail is exponentially greater than when I first started hiking this trail,” he added.“I think the positives in the last 20 years vastly outweigh the negative changes. The maintenance level that is occurring now is much greater than 20 years ago, and I feel there is an effort to preserve the trail from the various threats, the development, things of that nature.”
(via The Goat)
This past Saturday Nate Damm wrapped up his 7+ month walk across America, taking the ceremonious final steps into the Pacific at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Nate walked lonely roads and highways mostly alone from Delaware, pushing his gear in a jogging stroller. He kept a blog during the trip, and maintained a facebook page with some great photos, videos and anecdotes along the way.Get caught up.
I'm kind of a backcountry-coffee-snob (like so many of us are), but not in the sense that I'm really picky about what I'm drinking. It's just always one of the first things in my pack. Second best, alongside your Knorr sauce packets and ramen, is powdered apple cider. Super light, and one of the best fall-time recovery drinks. Sure, your palette becomes a little more critical this time of year when the cider mills are really gearing up, but who's lugging a gallon above the treeline?I take mine straight, but I'm sure this would be great hot-toddied-up. Got some recipes? Share 'em.
It's likely that you've come across a version of the Prayer Of The Woods sign in your travels, and no matter how many times you see it, it's a pretty darn nice thing to read before walking off into the trees:
I am the heat of your hearth on the cold winter nights, the friendly shade screening you from the summer sun, and my fruits are refreshing draughts quenching your thirst as you journey on.I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie, and the timber that builds your boat.I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your homestead, the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin.I am the bread of kindness and the flower of beauty. 'Ye who pass by, listen to my prayer: Harm me not.
Last weekend, I spent a night at the Ten Mile River Lean-To, the first AT shelter in Connecticut if you're Northboundin'. We shared the campsite with two 50 year-old Southbounders who were instantly drawn to our lukewarm Coors Lights. I went to college in Colorado and haven't been able to shake the habit of taking the silver cans along when heading to the woods. After handing over a few as the sun was going down, they thanked us with a joke.Q: What do Coors Light and sex in a canoe have in common?A: They're both fucking near water.Thank you Carnivore and Purple.
Thank you to Rocky for alerting us of the new section of the Continental Divide Trail, important to the few of us that thru hike it each year. The trail has long threaded through the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, following a big old concrete road for some of the way. After months of work, the NPS has now dedicated a new 1-mile section of the CDT called the Bowen Connector, which pulls off the trail away from the road as it connects RoMo with Arapaho National Forest north of Grand Lake.Read more about it at The Coloradoan.
In February of 2010, Rob Gorski (NYC) and Andrew Ranville (UK) purchased a 90 acre island on Craigslist (seriously), 3 miles off the coast of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. They recently ran a Kickstarter which was funded to facilitate their plan to build an Artist Residency on the island. This island is virtually untouched as it stands. Rob and Andrew are breaking ground this summer to build a single small cabin which will house resident visual artists, musicians, and writers. Best Made Co. threw 'em some gear too.Dip over to their site to find out more on the project, and see some amazing photos of the island. Such a good looking, good-feeling project.Check out their site here, photos here, Facebook here.
The United States Geological Survey has loads of maps for sale on their website (shocker, right?) and some of their National Park and Forest Service maps, which come in the historic variety (the image on top is a map of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, now the Great Sand Dunes National Park) and the modern variety (the RoMo map on bottom) can even be downloaded for free. And they're huge files, so if your little heart desires, you can blow them up and hang them on the wall of your apartment/office/bathroom/yurt etc. Have at it.MP3: Ween - So Long Jerry
Christine Hewitt is a great photographer and author of the blog, Me, Van, Bike. She wrote a gut-wrenching post yesterday about watching her home, a GET AWAY hi-top camper van go up in flames (nearly with her in it). Needless to say, she literally watched all of her belongings burn to the blacktop, her computer, a few harddrives, all of her clothes, wallet, phone, everything. We should help her out. You can donate securely through paypal, linked on her blog, and should head that way anyways to check out her photos.I'm going to go write "My Own Camper Van Fund" on a mason jar, brb.
After a Swedish expedition to Greenland in 1966, Åke Nordin decided it was time to make his own coat. With the help of climber Hasse Hellström, one of Sweden’s foremost experts on Greenland and a member of the glacier researcher group, Friluftsfrämjande, he did just that, utilizing the olive green fabric that, at the time, was being used to make tents. Above is an old advertisement for that very garment, the Fjällräven Greenland Jacket, which reads “The perfect jacket for the mountain hiker and climber.” And if the previous three sentences won't suffice in detailing the history of the J. Crew catalogue staple, then click here.The reason for the Fjallraven post? Well, tomorrow, August 5th, marks the start of the 2011 Fjällräven Classic, an annual 110 km (68.3 miles) trekking event/race from Nikkaluokta to Abisko Touriststation in good ol' Sweden. Good luck to friends who flew across the ocean for one hell of a time.
Thank you to CS reader Rick Stowe for mailing us this beautiful Campmor catalogue from 1985. More pictures to come, but if you get still get these things in the mail, they're not too much different than they were 15 years ago. Except maybe for the cost of a WhisperLite. And the bear on the cover...MP3: Pearl Jam - Insignificance
