Archive for March, 2007

Ken Burns Wants Your Park Pics

Published on March 29, 2007 in National Parks and Monuments and in the media. 1 Comment

Would you donate your old National Parks home videos and snapshots to America’s finest living documentarian? Of course you would! Why wouldn’t you?

Ken Burns is starting work on a new documentary about the history and human experience of our National Park system, and he wants your pictures, movies, and stories.

He’s specifically looking for materials from the 1980s and earlier, and the folks at National Park Traveler have all the contact info you’ll need.

If you send something in, you won’t get it back, but if it gets in the finished documentary you’ll get a free DVD of the series … which is pretty nice. Those PBS box sets can get pricey.

Federal Judge Blocks Mountaintop Removal Ruling

Published on March 27, 2007 in Environmentalism and Politics. 2 Comments

Well, would you look at that?

Federal Judges in West Virginia just overturned an old ruling that made mountaintop removal permits easy to obtain — even without getting an environmental impact statement.

Hopefully, this is the start of a broader investigation into this practice and its effects on the surrounding environment…

ViceTV on Mountaintop Removal

Published on March 27, 2007 in Environmentalism, Web Sites and Apps and in the media. 1 Comment

Google Earth files and pictures are great, but nothing does the injustice of Mountaintop Removal like full-motion video.

Luckily, ViceTV takes care of that for us, with a five-part mini-documentary called Toxic West Virginia.

Eco-Chick was kind enough to embed the first episode of the series, which has some nice production value to it. Well worth checking out.

Via Treehugger.

Hiking Fox Mountain

Published on March 26, 2007 in Angeles National Forest, Trail Write-Ups and hiking. 2 Comments

A long, strenuous hike to one of the more remote peaks in the western Angeles National Forest. A great cool-weather route with some challenging sections of scramble, this hike is an exercise in mental drive — and the enjoyment of some pure seclusion amid the mountains.

Continue reading ‘Hiking Fox Mountain’

Doctor’s Orders

Published on March 23, 2007 in site news. 2 Comments

“No hiking for two weeks.”

That is one bad-tasting prescription. But if it’ll get my knee back in working condition and help me avoid some of the nasty medical problems that snagged some of my hiking-blogging brethren, then so be it.

I will continue to update and write until I can get back on the trail, so stay tuned. I still have last week’s misadventures to post.

My Annual Hiking Odometer just hit 99 miles of distance for 2007. I guess this’ll make mile 100 a bit more special. But man, that wait’s not going to be fun.

*** update ***

According to the doc, it appears to be a simple ‘repetitive stress injury.’ I’m getting a precautionary x-ray tomorrow, but hoping this is just one of those things that fixes itself if I chill out … ’cause I’ve been eyeing some long distance backpacking trails and I’d hate to miss out. I’ll keep you posted.

10 Most Magnificent Trees

Published on March 21, 2007 in Environmentalism and Web Sites and Apps. 1 Comment

We couldn’t call ourselves treehuggers if we didn’t occasionally link to great pictures of trees.

Neatorama just posted a list of the ten most magnificent trees in the world — some of them individuals, and others just groups or whole species.

I’m sure there’s no scientific method to the list, but it’s always interesting to read up on some of the world’s lesser known areas. And half the list is in California, which is cool by me.

Cell Phone Lederhosen

Published on March 20, 2007 in Gadgets and Gear. 1 Comment

You’ve got a problem. You’re a hiking traditionalist, eschewing the high-tech nylons and wicking technology for a classic pair of German lederhosen. But you still live in the modern world, and would like your pants to be able to be able to send and receive cellular phone calls. Then, my friend, the cell phone lederhosen are for you.

These all-weather fancypants are made by the olde-time German clothing company Lodenfrey. They’ve got a cell phone sewn into the leg and an embedded mouthpiece in the suspenders. No word on whether there’s an earpiece or not. I kind of hope the pants just talk to you.

I’m not a huge fan of jackets with built-in MP3 players, but I will go on record as saying that I would wear this in a heartbeat.

As long as I didn’t have to leave my apartment.

Straight outta CeBit via Textually.

Best / Worst Boots Ever

Published on March 19, 2007 in Gadgets and Gear. 2 Comments

Sometimes when you get to your summit, the prospect of the long hike back to the car isn’t necessarily the most attractive one. Especially when you’re trekking back the same exact way you came in. Now you can wish for your very own pair of Russian gas-powered boots.

The boots have miniature pistons inside that fire when you step down, propelling you forward at speeds of up to 21.7 miles per hour. They travel three miles on a third-cup of gasoline … and apparently are heavy enough to not effectively decrease the amount of work your body does to travel that distance. Otherwise, pretty cool.

Just ignore the fact that you’d need gasoline to hike. Or that they probably sound like a truck when they’re on. Or the very real and likely possibility of you accidentally launching yourself off a cliff.

OK, clearly not practical. … but still. I mean, wouldn’t you want some outdated Cold War technology?

NY Times via mental_floss.

Missing Mountains

Published on March 16, 2007 in Environmentalism, Politics, Web Sites and Apps and in the media. 4 Comments

Google Earth is a great program. You can use for anything from casual sightseeing, browsing a hike, or spying on your neighbors. Now it’s also being used as a visceral visual aid for a continuing environmental tragedy that somehow continues to go unnoticed.

“Mountaintop Removal” is the surprisingly accurate name for a popular type of mining in Appalachia. Basically, to get at coal veins, the top of a mountain is deforested and exploded, with the debris pushed into neighboring valleys. The coal is processed, leaving huge lakes of toxic slurry behind, and then the mine operators plant some non-native vegetation and move on to the next mountain.

Obviously, this causes some problems. Deforestation increases the risk of landslides, and several slurry ponds have burst through their dams or through old mine shafts, wreaking havoc on the communities below them. The 2000 Martin County Sludge Spill contaminated the drinking water of 27,000 people and was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valez spill.

As the push for “clean” coal escalates in the coming years, mountaintop removal is likely to increase … unless more people know about it. And that’s where Google Earth comes in.

I Love Mountains hosts a comprehensive Google Earth “Memorial For the Mountains,” which shows the mountains before and after mountaintop removal mining began. It’s also got detailed information on each mountain, written by local residents, maps of all the sludge dams in the mountains, and an overlay of the larger mining sites on top of major cities — so us urbanites can get a good idea of just how huge these things are. Here’s one of the mines nearly covering the entire island of Manhattan:

Pretty crazy, eh?

And if Google Earth doesn’t float your boat, they’ve also got some Flickr pools of photographic evidence:

Suggestions?

Published on March 16, 2007 in site news. 1 Comment

So I’m going to be in Saratoga Springs this May for a wedding, and noticed the city is tantalizingly close to the Adirondack Park.

Anyone out there have any trail suggestions in the southeastern part of the park, should I happen to sneak away from the wedding party for a few hours?