Well, I’m about to fly off to New England for the holidays, which means it’s probably the end of meaningful Southern California hiking for the year.
Although I didn’t get to all of the places I wanted to, I still had some pretty impressive milestones — I went on several long-distance day hikes, qualified for the Sierra Club’s Hundred Peaks Chapter, and had my fair share of backpacking adventures — both ill and well fated.
My mileage for this year was actually a bit lower than last (I’ll blame hot summers, fire closures, and my new discovery of ‘The Beach’ for that one), but I almost doubled my elevation gain numbers for ‘06. Peakbagging will do that, I guess.
Total Mileage: 209 miles.
Total Elevation Gain: 89,090 feet (15.2% average uphill grade)
Total Time Spent Hiking: 3 days, 22 hours, 18 minutes.
The site itself has taken off a bit, too. From a lil’ ol blogspot site to some adventures on my former host to the current, sponsored-hosting, I’ve been lucky to find myself a little web-niche and gain an audience of tech-savvy outdoorsfolk — as well as (hopefully) some Angelenos who are just learning our sprawling megalopolis has some great nature nearby. Traffic has been steadily increasing since I launched last November, and I’m grateful for everyone who reads and explores.
2008, hopefully, will hold more improvements and adventures. I want to get my Map working again, and continue tweaking the site design to make information easier to find and access. I also have a nice chunk of Paid Time Off stored up, and want to hit up those elusive Utah National Parks — as well as bag San Gorgonio, San Bernardino, San Jacinto, and (maybe even) Whitney.
I’ll be doing some sporadic site work from New England — and hopefully going snowshoeing, now that they have seasonal weather again.
So congrats to everyone who laced up a hiking boot this year — let’s get ready to do it again in 2008.
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Sounds like a full year of good hiking! Nice.
15.2% grade is about 800′ per mile. That seems to be a rather high average for 209 miles in the local mountains.
I meant to say 209/2=105 miles. Oops :)
I use my Garmin software to calculate these distances, and the GPS measures every bump as a tiny ascent and descent — which may explain why the numbers seem a bit high. For instance, on a hike with a 1000 ft change from beginning to summit, if the trail hit 500 feet, then dipped back down to 400 before leveling at 500 again, the GPS would measure it as 600 feet of gain for that section.
For write ups of trails, I don’t use those numbers because they’re misleading (and frightening to people looking for some relaxation on the weekends), but for the TYD statistics, it’s way easier to grab those numbers. Also, I’ve found that the GPS grade percentage numbers are pretty accurate, on the whole.
Whew!
Hope that clears things up a bit! Don’t want to unintentionally make it look like I’m over-tooting my own horn ;)
Thanks for the response. I hope I didn’t sound critical because I didn’t intend to. After all, who hikes for the glory? :)
I personally don’t like to use a gps for determining distance traveled or elevation gain (or location for that matter) - a map is much more accurate. You can set a gps down on the ground and in a few minutes it will have registered a hundred feet of distance traveled and an elevation gain of about the same just due to its normal variability in determining location. In any case, enjoy the hike no matter how far or high you go!
Happy New Year!
It was a great year out there wasn’t it…!
I will check out those elusive Utah suggestions too. We have visited there but only the parks around Moab so far.
Have a great New Year!
DSD