A Hiking Blog for L.A. and Southern California
I’ll be moving my apartment this weekend, and doing some light touch-ups over the next few days early on in the week — so posting may be light. Or nonexistant.
Apologies for the delays, but there’s some exciting developments on the horizon. Honest!
On the plus side, I hear moving boxes and furniture items is excellent conditioning exercise for the trail.
While the field of ‘heating up water’ hasn’t been begging for significant scientific advances over the years, gadget makers have been happy to oblige.
Get Outdoors got the scoop on the Heatgear Firestick, a way to heat up a water bottle to near-boiling without having to light any fires. Based on military technology, the Firestick automatically adjusts its output for various elevation and fuel levels, and even shuts itself off once the water reaches 90 degrees Celsius.
Heating up water in a gas stove isn’t the hardest thing to do, but the idea of just sticking this tube into my Nalgene in the morning and catching a few more z’s while my tea water heats up is pretty appealing. Although, as this video demonstration shows, the canisters would take up a bit of room in the ol’ backpack:
The product site appears to be in the early stages, so it may be a little while before this hits any store shelves near you. But it may be worth checking out if you’re looking for new and exciting ways to warm up some H2O.
Via Get Outdoors Blog.
Reader Bruce was poking around a post I did on free Garmin-compatible map alternatives from a while back. In the post, I wrote that I hadn’t bought any MapSource maps for my GPS unit for three reasons: 1. You can’t transfer maps from a National Geographic Topo program onto the Garmin units and I HATE closed systems. 2. Hiker-friendly 24k resolution for Garmins was limited to National Parks and recreation areas, and 3. They’re expensive ways to get information that is essentially free to the public … given a reliable printer and some free time.
What can I say? I’m a New Englander. I hate spending money.
Bruce was similarly frustrated — and since the free options GPS Tracklog rounded up have made little progress in making more California based maps, it appears we’re up a certain scatalogically named creek without a paddle … or map.
Garmin has been working on solving one of those problems, and may have convinced me to drop 99 bucks on some maps — because they’ve finally started releasing regional 24k resolution map packs.
Right now, they have one pack for California and Nevada, and another for Washington and Oregon, available only on MicroSD cards. There are no announced planned release dates for further packs, but we can assume (and hope) they get here quickly.
That whole “recession thing” may be taking a toll on the horrible pastime of ‘glamping‘ — the glamorous resort camping trend that was all the rage last year — but it looks like gadget manufacturers are still hard at work helping our car-camping friends have an easier time when they venture into the Great Outdoors … that’s a few feet off the asphalt of their campground’s parking lot.
The Gear Junkie just wrapped up a two-part round-up on luxury camping equipment. Ten Essentials they ain’t — we’re talking things like a ten-person tent with three electrical outlets and a blender that runs on a 4 cylinder Honda engine.
Check out the write-ups for a list of things you’ll probably never, ever buy. Except maybe that water heater. And maybe the solar charger. And those pink flamingo tent poles …
Over the weekend, I led a small group hike down the East Fork of the San Gabriel River to the Bridge to Nowhere — one of my favorite hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Over the next few days, I’ll be updating my existing post with more detailed information, pictures, and a GPS track. You know, the stuff you’d expect.
But it may be a while, as I’m in the middle of moving the Modern Hiker offices back to the Miracle Mile. While you’re waiting, please enjoy this video of one of the many bungee jumpers we saw on Sunday.
You might see me up there later this year …
Last week, I came across a post from a local blogger about a place in the Angeles National Forest called “Monkey Canyon.” Not on any maps and unofficially named, the area appears to be a popular swimming hole and rugged hike for those in-the-know. It has rough canyons, big drops, and cold streams.
It looks like it would be a lot of fun to get to — if the area wasn’t nearly covered over in graffiti.
Regardless, this is not a leisurely stroll-in-and-swim hike. This is some serious off-trail scrambling and climbing, wading through waist-deep water in flash flood zones, and maneuvering around steep drop-offs. It is not for anyone who doesn’t know exactly what they’re getting in to — a lesson two men learned today when they were rescued from the canyon and hospitalized.
They’d both fallen off the trail — one 50 feet onto land, the other wedged between boulders in the water.
State & Lake has a post with some great information on Monkey Canyon, including some directions to the ‘trailhead’-ish area and some more warnings. Also, there’s a story about Bigfoot hiding out among the cliff-divers.
Huh. I always figured him for more of a Pacific Northwest boutique-coffee kinda guy.
Image by em crack.
In other hey-that-expensive-gadget-I-just-bought-is-now-obsolete news, GPS Tracklog got their hands on the New Hotness that is the Garmin Oregon.
They only had time to take it on a quick bike ride with an older Garmin 60CSx to compare accuracy, as well as fool around with the touch screen for a little bit.
Preliminary impressions look good — although it appears to still have the screen brightness problems that bothered me about the Colorado. This new unit may be worth it for vastly improved text entry alone, though.
Read the first impressions at GPS Tracklog.
Forget everything you know about low-priced handheld digital camcorders for the trail — because Kodak is about to rock your on-the-trail video-recording world.
The new Kodak Zi6 costs below $200, records 720p HD video at 60 frames per second, stores video in an SD card slot expandable to 32GB, and runs on included rechargeable AA batteries. No zoom included — but these units typically don’t have them, anyway.
Hiking magazines have gone crazy for the Flip series of handheld camcorders, and I’ll bet this Kodak model will get their salivary glands when it hits stores this September. Check the Kodak press release for more details.
Via Uncrate.
Commenter and global hiker-blogger Olivia was trolling the tubes for some new packs to write up, when she came upon this new take on the Bear Canister from Utah’s Wilderness-Solutions — the Palisade EST.
Like other bear canisters, it’s sturdy, keeps your food safe, and proven effective. Unlike other bear canisters, it shoots an electric pulse of 5000 volts every 1.2 seconds when something touches it.
The canister itself is soft and lightweight — a 900 cubic inch container only weighs in at 6.4 ounces. Even though a necessary controller will add to that weight with an extra 9.4 ounces, you’ll still weigh in at-or-below most of the hard plastic bear containers that most people use. Plus, you’ll get to shoot electricity at things, which is cool.
Not light on the wallet, though. These babies cost up to $265 bucks.
Via the wonderful Hiking Backpacks
If the name of an animal has the word “monster” in it, it probably won’t take kindly to being hoisted up off the ground and wrapped around your shoulders. We can all learn a valuable lesson from this man in Saguaro National Park …
… a lesson most of us probably already knew.
Click here for a Google Map of Los Angeles hiking trails.
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