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I've been going to the park for years and have never encountered crowding problems in GSMNP either, except for the very clearly popular things like Clingman's Dome. It's a pretty big park, so if you want to get away from all of the other tourists it's pretty easy to do so.
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May 27, 2016 16:14
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mAlfunkti0n posted:Looking for suggestions for sleeping backs. Camping into November in Ohio and surrounding areas. Is it realistic to expect $250 to get something good enough? If you're looking for specific recommendations, I bought a Mountain Hardwear Lamina Z Flame from REI a few seasons ago. I slept in it while backpacking Rainier and was comfortable down to ~30° F. I only spent $175 or so on it. If you want a lower min. temp, the Z Spark seems pretty good too for about $20 more. E: I spent extra to get the long size too, so you should probably be able to find it for about $150.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:47
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If you're looking at Thermarest in that price range, I use the ProLite Plus and have had no problems with it. It packs up the same size as the Neoair and weighs only a few ounces more. It's a pretty good compromise between straight foam and an air pad IMO. ^e: what made you pick up the Flash? I tried it at REI but no matter how I laid on it it seemed to want to curl around me, which I found really annoying. Freaquency fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 19:35
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liz posted:Hello hikers! I'll be going on a road trip through most of the Utah national parks/grand canyon the last two weeks of October, any suggestions or tips? Starting in Phoenix, ending in Vegas and plan to see Horseshoe Bend, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion and of course Grand Canyon. We will be coming from sea level, so we're planning to spend the first night in the Sedona area to adjust, since the last time I went to Colorado, I made several mistakes and ended up with terrible altitude sickness! We've never been to any kind of desert so any useful advice or tips would be appreciated. :-) Thanks! Heck, we might run into each other on the Arches/Bryce/Zion leg of your trip. Are you backpacking or staying in the campgrounds?
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Oct 6, 2016 03:27
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 3 days here at Zion, then on to Bryce, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands/Arches. Apparently the weather is supposed to get colder pretty quickly this week, but we tested our preparedness at Great Basin last night and were fine down to about 30 F or so. I'm sitting by a campfire, enjoying approximately a zillion stars, and listening to crickets. Life's pretty good.
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Oct 17, 2016 04:25
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Interesting story on Zion -- Zion National Park considers limiting visitors due to increased land erosion, ‘overwhelmed’ facilities Thanks for this article, it was interesting. We definitely noticed how crowded it was here, especially since our last NP trip was to Olympic where there was almost nobody at all. We got out early and did a side canyon in the Narrows so we never really ran into a lot of people, but I did have to intervene when we ran into someone who started etching their name into a rock while we were on the way back. I think most people want to make sure that everyone has access to these places, but when people can't even figure out that you shouldn't vandalize stuff that isn't yours it's hard to argue against some sort of metered access.
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Oct 18, 2016 02:19
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theroachman posted:I was looking at 2p tents today as I'm thinking about doing a few solo overnighters this winter and I don't own a tent yet. I own the MSR Hubba Hubba and it's really solidly built, easy to carry, and easy to put up. I'm 6'3" and just barely fit with maybe 8 inches of space at my feet for storage. It fits 2 sleeping pads+bags side by side, but it's pretty tight so make sure you like the person with you if you're not going solo. Mine has only seen two seasons worth of moderate backpacking, but it seems like it'll hold up - no cuts in the nylon, broken straps, or anything like that.
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Nov 4, 2016 01:20
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We use the Jetboil when we're backpacking, and have no complaints. We're mostly doing dehydrated stuff though/making tea, so I can't comment on how well you might be able to, like, cook-cook with it.
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Nov 23, 2016 18:09
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nate fisher posted:Over the last half of May (I mentioned this before in the thread) we are driving from Knoxville, TN to Grand Canyon (2 to 3 days there) to Las Vegas, NV, and then we are heading back thru Utah and Colorado. We will have around 7 days in those two states. My girlfriend and I did a trip to Utah this past October. Zion is cool and the Narrows is fun, but it may not be open yet due to the snowmelt. If you're backpacking, head to Canyonlands and try to get a backcountry site in the Chesler Park area. It's gorgeous, and the Joint Trail was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Even if you're not camping out there, you can still do the trail as a day hike, I think it's about 10 miles round trip. Backcountry camping is not allowed in Arches at the moment, and their campground is closed, but there's plenty of BLM sites around Moab. Otherwise you're stuck at one of the places that charges $40 to pitch a tent in a parking lot. Enjoy the trip! We loved every minute of it.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:23
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marsisol posted:I don't think you can predict how you'll react on angels landing until you actually start out on the ridge. That being said, I was more excited than scared when I did it, and there are only a few 10-20 foot sections that have no protection and are sketchy. The trail is actually pretty slippery in spots from the sand so wear good boots. The scariest part is all of the other dumbasses who are wearing sandals and dragging their 5 year olds up. I don't know when you're going, but hit the trail as early as possible to avoid the crowds ( seriously, start before the sun comes up). But most of all, enjoy the views, it's incredible all the way up. Seriously, beat feet up there as early as possible to avoid the crowds. We started about 20 minutes later then we wanted to and almost got pushed off of the side on the way down by some moron who was trying to get their kid down to the bathroom. The fewer people you're trying to navigate around the better. You do have chains in most of the trickier places so if that's all you need to feel safe then you'll probably be fine.
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Feb 6, 2017 16:28
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Anyone have any experience with the Channel Islands, particularly Santa Rosa? We're going to be there for 3 days and we have some stuff planned (Lobo Canyon, Carrington Point) but I'm wondering if there's anything else super cool there that we shouldn't miss.
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May 25, 2017 18:13
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Rodenthar Drothman posted:I can't remember what the hike was called, but my friend and i went past lobo canyon (I'm pretty sure) on a 15 mile hike. Went past 3 large canyons, then off to the coast. It was absolutely gorgeous, i really recommend it. You go out past the point where most other hikers stop, and you start seeing things like foxes that probably haven't seen a human before (or enough to know what we are), and the abandoned ranch stuff. It is well worth it, I'll find some pics and edit them in here soon. Thanks for the info! We stopped by the visitors center this morning and got some of the same advice from the ranger there, so that sounds like a winner.
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May 26, 2017 05:21
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Psychobabble! posted:Thanks! Please do let me know. Reading the specs it looks super legit. I don't have that Anker solar charger but I will vouch for the company as a whole. Any third-party charging accessories I have are made by Anker, and if I was in the market for a solar charger I'd probably pick one of these up without a second thought.
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Jun 4, 2017 23:29
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Kaal posted:Yeah pretty much. The only thing you'll end up shooting out in Joshua Tree is rocks or other humans. It sounds like they got lost while hiking the Maze Loop, the girl ended up falling down into one of the slot canyons, they quickly ran out of whatever meager food and water they had, and decided to end it before they baked to death. Pretty lovely tragedy, and it's too bad they weren't better prepared. From looking at pictures of the trail online, it seems like getting lost out there is a pretty easy thing to do, since it's mostly a cairn route. When we went out there this year, we had a hiking GPS and it was absolutely essential. The trails are basically non-existent, especially for some of the old mining/homesteading sites, and just having something that was putting down virtual breadcrumbs went a long ways towards making the trip more enjoyable.
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Oct 24, 2017 17:20
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svenkatesh posted:Which GPS device did you use for this? I bought a base Garmin eTrex a few years ago and it still holds up. You can put in the coordinates of where you want to go and it will draw a solid line to the destination, and as you walk it leaves a dotted line that you can follow back.
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Oct 24, 2017 17:59
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Oh yeah, as a dedicated leave-no-trace-er, I'm totally down with making some of these things as difficult to get to as possible, but it doesn't change the fact that ill-prepared people are going to venture out anyway. It would probably be better to do a permit system or something that requires you to have certain gear when going out into the backcountry. I know that this is something that NPS and state agencies have been dealing with for decades, and in a way I guess it's a good problem to have, since more interest in the parks should mean better funding and more dynamic management. More often than not though, you wind up with damage to the parks and injuries or worse to visitors because the parks system can't handle the number of visitors and a lot of those visitors don't have the experience needed to safely navigate some of the more difficult terrain out there. I'm worried that sooner or later a lot of the parks are going to have huge off-limits areas put in place to protect the environment, which will suck, but I'd rather they be protected than be lost.
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Oct 24, 2017 20:13
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Yeah, neither Platypus nor Camelbak has ever done me wrong. I've even hiked with one in a compartment of my camera bag and had zero issues.
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Nov 18, 2017 17:56
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We camped at some eco-co-op in Moab that turned out to be only like 200 yards from the road with no real sound break, but the thing that wound up being most frustrating was the kid that had croop or something a few tents away from us. Traffic noise I can get used to, but a toddler sporadically coughing and crying all night long sucks.
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May 23, 2018 03:58
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If you do any hiking at all you should be fine tackling Old Rag. I took a group of people who basically never hike and I was able to shepherd them all through in a day with no problems. I would recommend getting there a little early because it can get crowded, but go for it! The scramble is fun and you'll probably have a blast.
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Jun 3, 2018 18:44
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theHUNGERian posted:I'll be camping for the first time since ~1997. The only electronic item I will be carrying with me will be my camera, and I will perhaps want to charge its batteries while camping. The trouble is that the camera cannot be charged via USB. So I think I am stuck with the regular 110 V charger. How do I power this thing while camping? I do expect sufficient sun light. How long are you going to be out? If your camera has a removable battery it's probably better to pack one or two of those as spares. I hike with a Canon 70D and am usually able to get away with 2 or 3 days of charge on one battery.
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Mar 2, 2019 23:02
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Go check out the Joint Trail in Canyonlands, it's awesome and you won't see another soul.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:29
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If you don’t have a dehydrator yet you should definitely grab one. I’ve been able to make better-tasting and healthier meals for a fraction of the cost. Just make sure you buy a coffee or spice grinder to go along with it if you’re dehydrating things like sauces - I learned the hard way that if you turn a tomato sauce into a leather and leave it that way it doesn’t really reconstitute  Also keep in mind that it may take a little experimenting to find the right balance when dehydrating, so you should try making a few meals well in advance of a trip. When I first started I made a big batch and pulled out smaller samples as it went along to see how well they kept and rehydrated. There’s nothing worse than sitting down to a meal on the trail and finding that half of the bits in it are still rock hard.
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Feb 22, 2020 17:51
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Rolo posted:I got Mushrooms of the Southeast, specifically the Timber Press guide. It’s just funny because while flipping around the very first section I looked through was the amanitas. I first encountered that book at a visitor center in Redwood National Park and wish I had just picked it up that day. It’s been almost a decade since I saw it and I can still vividly recall that goofy cover.
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Jun 26, 2020 19:47
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Yooper posted:I made the mistake of trying to spend two nights at a State Park Campground in a tent. Spent most of the time exploring and day hiking which was great, saw the comet over Lake Superior too. But man, being surrounded by aluminum boxes sporting Christmas lights and the constant hum of AC was kind of lovely. I should have known better, next time I'm going to either stay in a Federal Campground of just do the dispersed thing. Wish there was more of a "tents" only area. They designate certain sites as camper only, no reason they shouldn't do the same with tents. I grew up camping in North Carolina and Maryland and the state parks that I visited in that time were predominantly tent camping, so I just assumed that all state parks were like that. Then I went camping in New Mexico and booked a campsite in a state park and realized I’d had it good on the east coast. The “tent pad” was filled with sharp rocks and every single site except ours was occupied by an RV. Now I make sure to do my research before committing. The real gems are the parks that have tent camping where you have to walk in 200-300 yds to your site - then you don’t have to deal with the annoyance of your site neighbors going in and out of their car all night.
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Jul 13, 2020 00:21
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Oh that reminds me of the time I went on a trip to Moab at the end of October. I went during the week thinking that it would be no problem finding a spot to camp because school was in session, but apparently there’s some yearly break right around then and everything was full. There are tons of official BLM sites near town, but no vacancies. We should have cut our losses and just found a place to dispersed camp, but by that time it was way too dark to try. We wound up paying more than 40 bucks for a place that was basically a gravel parking lot right off of the main strip through town with groups partying around us all night long. Fortunately we had reservations in the Canyonlands backcountry the next two nights, but that one night was rough. I’ve gotten better at planning my trips out, I swear.
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Jul 13, 2020 02:55
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The inReach mini works fine for those things, yeah. You can connect it to your phone to get maps too, but if you have a preferred app that does that for you then you can just use it solo. I have noticed that it takes quite some time to pick up satellites, so I’ll turn it on before we even park at the trailhead. By the time we’ve got all our stuff together it’s usually got a signal, but I’ve gone 30+ minutes with a decently unobstructed sky before it’ll grab them. Getting weather updates is pretty nice too if you’re in an area where it’s more unpredictable and you don’t get cell service.
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Jul 30, 2020 04:34
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I would recommend ensuring that your dog is well-trained to heel and won’t bolt after a squirrel or something if you’re going hands-free. It’s very convenient up until you get whiplash from your dog sprinting away when you’re not paying attention (I unfortunately know this from experience). As for water, I usually carry some for the dog but won’t stop him from drinking from a creek or something. A leptospirosis vaccine would probably be a good idea just in case.
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Aug 8, 2020 03:28
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Yeah, I backpacked in the Mt. Evans Wilderness this weekend about 45 miles south-ish of one of the fires, and halfway through our hike the wind shifted and started blowing smoke and ash our direction. It was eerie watching ash float down on us at camp, but the sunset it made was fantastic.
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Aug 16, 2020 21:34
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Pham Nuwen posted:Coyotes don't bug me too much but hiking a couple moonless miles, alone, above Los Alamos had me pretty concerned a goddamn mountain lion was going to jump onto my back at any moment. A few years ago my SO and I camped at Point Reyes National Seashore just north of San Francisco. Our campsite was on a bluff about a mile inland but we wanted to hike down to the beach to watch the sunset and the trail to do that was about 5-6 miles round trip. We started off down to the beach and about halfway down we passed a trail cam tied to a tree with a sign mentioning that it was part of a big cat study. No big deal, it’s still late afternoon, sun is out, plenty of light and nothing to worry about. We watch the sunset and then pack up to head to camp; as soon as we get out of the dunes our headlamps capture a pair of eyes staring us down about 50 ft up trail and that sign is all I can think about. It turned out to just be deer, but it set the tone for the trip back up!
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Aug 20, 2020 17:00
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I just got back from a weekend hiking the Comanche-Venable Loop in the Sangre de Cristos. We encountered only a handful of other groups on the loop and the smoke wasn’t too bad - visibility was greatly reduced but it didn’t feel like it impaired breathing. Plenty of spots to camp around either of the lakes and it’s a fun hike if you like gaining altitude quickly.   
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Aug 24, 2020 01:07
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We only did it as a long day hike since this was our first time out there and we weren’t sure of the conditions or how our dog would handle the elevation gain, but will probably do it again this season as on overnight staying at Comanche Lake. For this trip we got a front country site at the Alvarado campground which we reserved a few weeks ago, but there were also quite a few open walk-up sites. The trailhead parking lot was decently full at 7am but we ran into only one other group for the first 4 miles or so and then maybe half a dozen for the rest of the route, so I think you should be in the clear to avoid the crowds, especially if you can do a weekday. We also did an overnight trip last weekend on the Tanglewood Trail in the Mt. Evans Wilderness. It wasn’t too crowded either, but the smoke situation was pretty rough out there so I can’t recommend it right now.
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Aug 24, 2020 05:18
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I’ve had luck with transporting all sorts of small liquids using small Nalgene containers. I can’t seem to find them on their website, but at REI there were a bunch of bins that had varying sizes. They were near the GoToobs and other stuff you might throw in a Dopp kit or something.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:23
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Gripweed posted:This is for a gift. I want it to look nice, not like I made it out of garbage. If you live near a national or state park, check the gift shops there. I’ve seen them in places like that before, but never at a place like REI.
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Nov 30, 2020 03:03
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If you’re in an area with lots of BLM land you can pretty easily car camp without the car camp downsides. This was our spot a few nights ago in Escalante: 10 minutes down Hole in the Rock Rd., not a soul in sight.
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Apr 22, 2021 22:05
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Pennywise the Frown posted:No BLM land here. Ah, I feel for you then. We relocated a few years ago and Chicago was on the list, but the fact that to get to any good wilderness area was a 5+ hour drive pushed it down the list. I’m sure that there are still nice areas to explore, but your best bet might be finding someone local and picking their brain about it. Maybe try a MeetUp group or something? Bonus could be that they may organize outings so that you can go on a backpacking trip with people that have some experience to help you get acclimated to what’s required.
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Apr 23, 2021 01:02
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Chard posted:im too lazy to actually make an Animal Danger Ranking but moose would be near or at the top. ive only seen moose in person once but they're terrifyingly massive, horse-sized really undersells how enormous they can be Yep, I saw one tear off at full speed in a meadow at RMNP, and even from a hundred or so yards away how much power the thing has was apparent.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:15
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xzzy posted:I'm the idiot that doesn't like smartwool socks, they're too thick and my feet feel like they're in a sauna, especially if I'm wearing heavier duty shoes. Trail runners are okay.  I’m wearing some thin smartwool socks right now.
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Dec 14, 2021 15:55
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xzzy posted:Well I don't have their entire lineup memorized! To be fair I went to their website after being snarky and I have no clue which are the ones I have. They are like the thin running socks but are the crew length. They’re really nice for summer hiking.
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Dec 14, 2021 16:01
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I buy what REI has on the hangers and they always have insanely thick socks.
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Are you moving to CO and/or plan on snow hiking regularly? If so, we raved about the MSR Evo line a few pages back ago. If not, REI will rent you the snowshoes and poles for like 20 bucks for a weekend. e: sorry, it was in the gear thread, not this one. Discussion on snowshoes starts here. Freaquency fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 03:39
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 21:48 |
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Glad you enjoyed the trip! Sounds like it was a solid first experience for the two of you. Just wait until you’re bit by the gear bug and continually buy stuff because it’s lighter/warmer/brighter/etc. 
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Apr 5, 2022 23:12
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