Indian Chickpea Burgers

If you've read any of the previous posts about camping food in these parts, you'll notice that most of them contain some sort of tofu/TVP/peanut butter ingredient, so it might be obvious at this point that I don't eat meat. Though after years of practice, it's rather simple to work with while in the woods, and if I'm really being completely honest with myself, all I crave after a full day of hiking is a massive amount of carbs.Chickpea flour, or Gram/Besan flour, is a mainstay at home and is easy to pack into the backcountry as a source of protein. Here's a very easy recipe for Indian chickpea "burgers" to try instead of those god awful freeze-dried packs of "food." Man, I get the easy cleanup and preparation of those suckers, but they're all just so bad. So so bad. It's like eating McDonalds at your wedding. Sort of.Recipe after the jump...Ingredients:Chickpea FlourCurry PowderBaking PowderPita BreadTomato/Avocado (Make the burgers on your first night)While your pan is heating up, mix 1/3 cup of Chickpea flour, a pinch or two of baking powder, curry powder to taste (I mix these at home before I leave) and water for every person eating. The consistency should be a little thicker than pancake batter. (You can really add whatever spices/vegetables you want, they don't have to be "Indian.") Pour the batter into the pan, making a burger shape and cook until each side is a little brown and crispy. Take it off, put it on a pita and add some tomato, avocado and whatever other fixings your little heart desires. Nothing ever tasted worse with a little hot sauce on it.

Mountain Misery

On our drive back to the Bay Area from the JMT/PCT, we stopped several times along the road, smelling this and looking for that. (This is what you do when your friends/hiking companions run a wildcrafted soap/incense/perfume etc. company.) One of the most aromatic plants in the area - one that you could instantly smell as soon as you rolled down the windows - is Chamaebatia foliolosa, more commonly known as Mountain Misery. It gets its name for the wildly resinous and sticky leaves that adhere to just about anything. It's scent is unpleasant to some, but a few of us (including me), were absolutely transfixed by the somewhat innocuous fern-looking plant.In any case, look for Mountain Misery next time you're out in the Sierras. Kitkiddizze, Gary Snyder's famous homestead built in the early 70s, is named after the local Wintun Indian word for Bear Clover, also known as - yes, you guessed it - Mountain Misery.

Bigfoot Museum

God only knows what's going to come up in conversation when you're hiking 15 or so miles a day, and one of the topics that kept popping up on a recent adventure was Bigfoot. For those of you living in the PNW, I'd imagine this comes up a lot more than on the Appalachian Trail, so it was good to listen to all the good stories that my friends from Portland have come up with over the years."What would happen if he was found?"- It'd crush the logging industry. Everything would be shut down."Is he real?"- What do you mean? Of course.."Why haven't you been to the museum in Felton, CA before?"- There's a museum? Where is Felton?Not sure if I believe in the big guy, BUT, if you want an interesting take on the history of the Yeti in Tibetan culture, read Matthiessen's Snow Leopard. One of our favorites in these parts.MP3: Ted Lucas - Now That I Know

Plantasia

Thanks to the ladies of San Francisco's Gravel and Gold for hipping me to this album. Recorded in the mid 70s by weirdo electronic musician Mort Garson (who also did the backing music to Richard Burton's interpretation of The Little Prince), this was given out with the purchase of a Simmon’s mattress at Sears in 1976, and as a bonus, came with extensive instructions on plant care. Track names include "Symphony For A Spider Plant," "Ode to An African Violet," and "Mellow Mood For Maidenhair." Perfect.MP3: Mort Garson - Plantasia

Chocolate Nut Butter

As mentioned previously, I spent a few nights on the JMT last week with friends from Juniper Ridge and beyond. Because I was in a foreign land, I made a stop at the Whole Foods in Oakland before we headed out to Yosemite and made it a point to buy only things that I'd never eaten on the trail. Of course I always eat loads of nut butter (everyone told me to stop calling it that), but surprisingly enough, I'd never bought these little packets of Justin's. Game changer. Anyone? Yes, probably everyone. Chocolate Hazelnut and Chocolate Almond literally taste like brownie mix. And they're vegan too, if that may matter to ya. Score.Have the goddamn weekend of your lives, alright?MP3: Angel Olsen - The Waiting

For Jeff

Apologies for the last week of crickets. Cold Splinters was out on the John Muir Trail for a couple of nights (more on that to come) with some lovely new and old friends. At the end of our trip, we shacked up at cabins in Inyo National Forest (more on that to come too) and while building a fire the first night, we found an old book of cowboy poetry with this humdinger, "For Jeff." Perfect. Here's the beginning:

PB and P

A few months back, Christine Mitchell sent out an email asking people to contribute recipes that she would illustrate for her wonderful site, N'East Style. I must have been excited about it at the time as I was the first the respond. Works for me.See the Cold Splinters Peanut Butter and Pasta recipe over at NES. Hope y'all had a great weekend.

Chicago Camping

From the Chicago Journal:

Chicago kids hoping to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city to go camping won’t have to go as far soon, the city and park district officials announced Thursday morning.Northerly Island, the lakefront park in the South Loop formerly known as Meigs Field, will expand its camping program in 2013 as part of the city’s plans to rehab the south end of the peninsula into a nature preserve.The park district already offers 320 camping spots throughout the year, most of which are at Northerly Island. But under the new plan, an additional 900 camping spots will be added at Northerly Island, 600 for family campers and 300 for 12- to 15-year-olds in the park district’s wilderness camping program.Some of the new spots will open up in 2013, when the southern end of the park begins to reopen as a nature preserve with multiple habitats; most of them will be in place by 2014.

Interesting view from your tent...

Trail Mix Volume XIII

Yes, Trail Mixes usually come on Fridays, but the schedule is a little off around here/there/everywhere these days, so we're giving it to you today, Monday. Volume XIII comes from Coyote and Thunder, aka Obi Kaufmann, a guy who has taken on a laundry list of roles in Cold Splinters land over these past couple of months; friend, gracious host, camp counselor, artist-in-residence, cousin, drinking buddy, tour guide, botanist and many many more. Obi, artist and former art critic at the East Bay Express, is now curating a show in Oakland called World Saving Device, so if you're around this Friday night, get your ass over the Bay Bridge.It's a soft one, perfect for the drive home as the sun starts going down. Enjoy it. See you on the PCT.Download: Trail Mix Volume XIII

DamNation

by Bryce CowellDams serve three primary purposes that are vital to us humans: water supply, agricultural irrigation, and electricity. However, not all dams are created equal. Some no longer serve their original purpose and their environmental impacts are well-documented. So do we really need all of these dams? And which ones are appropriate for Hayduke, Seldom, Doc and Abbzug to take out?The Patagonia-sponsored documentary film DamNation attempts to answer these questions from both sides of the debate. Slated to be released in early 2013, this film is the cornerstone of a campaign to restore US waterways to their former untamed glory while taking into consideration the socioeconomic consequences.Each dam in this country needs to be objectively analyzed on a case-by-case basis to determine if removal is beneficial to the majority. And of course, there are potent political and financial goliaths that are going to try to prevent that from happening, even if the costs outweigh the benefits.One such controversial dam, the O'Shaughnessy Dam (pictured above) is located within Yosemite National Park. This fall, San Franciscans will vote on whether to keep the damn thing in place or restore Hetch Hetchy, which John Muir referred to as "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples," and devise a modern water plan.**So the question is, which dams do you think should be removed or improved?

Tent Read

Not a bad choice for a night under the stars. That is, if you're into this type of thing. It's the first biography written after Jerry's death. From Bob Weir's intro:

Jerry was only fifty-three when he died. I am older than that now, but he looked a lot older then. Was it the drugs that killed him? I think it was the burgers and pizza. The drugs enabled him, but it was the whole lifestyle. The drugs didn't stop his heart. It was the fat. And the sleep apnea.

Grateful Dead on Archive.org

Yuba River State Park

The Yuba River, a tributary of the Feather River in California, is located about 2 hours outside of San Francisco in Sacramento Valley. The main stem of the river is about 40 miles long and its headwaters are split into North, Middle and South forks; the confluence of the former two is considered the beginning of the Yuba.South Yuba River State Park stretches from Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park to the Bridgeport Covered Bridge, which has the longest clear span of any surviving covered bridge in the world.CS and friends spent the day swimming and hiking in the park this last weekend, and despite a pretty brutal fall by yours truly that left some cuts and bruises on face, ribs and hand, it was a pretty beautiful (and hot as hell) day.

Jeffrey Pine

My favorite tree. The Jeffrey Pine, named in honor of its botanist documenter John Jeffrey, occurs from southwest Oregon through much of California (mainly in the Sierra Nevada) and all the way down to northern Baja California in Mexico. In the north of its range, it grows widely at 4,900 to 6,900 ft and to the south, anywhere between 5,900 to 9,500 feet.The tree gets between 82 to 130 feet tall and the leaves are needle-like and grow in bundles of three. The cones are 4.7 to 9.4 inches long and dark purple when immature.See you soon, Jeffrey Pines.MP3: Metallica - Master Of Puppets

MG Turns 40

One of our favorites around these parts, The Mountain Gazette, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, they put out a special edition that includes some of the best quotes from years past and a drawing of one of its most famous contributors, Ed Abbey, on the cover. Also included in the 40th Anniversary Edition is an article by the magazine's Editor-In-Chief, M. John Fayhee, who describes a speaking engagement in Durango, CO where he was unknowingly the keynote speaker at an Ed Abbey tribute that he had originally tried to decline appearing at. He then goes on to compare Abbey and Hunter S. Thompson and, well, read it yourself...Even if you're not a Mountain Gazette or Abbey fan, the Patagonia ad on the inside cover is worth your time.