A Hiking Blog for L.A. and Southern California
The LA Cultural Heritage Commission voted 3-1 to recommend historical cultural monument status yesterday afternoon.
The potential update to the park’s signs will eventually be decided by the City Council, sometime within the next few months.
Nice work, everyone!
Via Daily News.
The 67+ mile series of trails that’s literally in LA’s backyard is about to have itself a par-tay!
Every Saturday and Sunday in November, the Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter will be holding its 11th Annual Backbone Trail Festival — with chapter leaders taking hikers on section hikes across the entire length of the trail, beginning with a 15 mile trek from Kanan Dume to Mishe Mokwa on November 1st.
Check the Sierra Club’s outing schedule for more information, or plan your own backpack with the National Park Service’s official information.
Apparently, the National Geographic Society decided they would start touring around with a 26 x 34 foot map of North America without stopping by my apartment.
Lame.
Instead, they’ll be taking this cartophile’s dream to schools, to teach kids about the physical and economic reasons for various city locations, and about where certain types of foods are produced on the continent — which is fantastic, because I’m pretty sure most people my age couldn’t tell you anything about either of those topics.
National Geographic says it’s for grades K-8, but if they could make an exception just for me, I promise not to get in the way of anyone — as long as I get to somersault from L.A. to New York without being interrupted.
Via Contours.
A few weeks ago, I welcomed an iPhone into my life. Long story short, it’s been mostly wonderful.
I’d read about a few trail specific applications for the Jesus Phone, and since many of them were free, I grabbed them to try them out — but I honestly don’t know what they’re good for. Anyone who hikes who wants GPS is going to have an actual GPS unit, which is far more accurate, more battery-efficient, and infinitely more droppable than the iPhone is ever going to be.
I’ll keep looking around, and if anyone’s got a suggestion or an app they really dig, leave it in the comments for me — but this week, Google unleashed a brand spankin’ new iPhone version of Google Earth.
The same usefulness arguments apply here — but this is notable in that it is essentially the complete desktop version of Google Earth — only it runs on your phone. And y’all know how much I love Google Earth.
And if that weren’t enough for you, the touch interface is an INCREDIBLE way to interact with this program. Dragging your fingers across the screen is an intuitive and effective way to navigate the world, and tilting the phone — while still a bit wonky right now — still works well to view areas in 3-D. I’m sure Google will have some good updates to smooth out the wrinkles in the next few weeks.
Check out this video of the program in action, then go fire up your App Store and give it a try yourself. It’s free!
This Thursday, October 30th, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission will be holding a meeting to determine whether or not to recommend Griffith Park as a Historic-Cultural Monument.
The title change wouldn’t just give the 4200+ acre park a fancier title on its business cards, either — it would protect both the open space and existing structures from future development plans without extensive review — including bizarro plans like the 2005 proposal to add multi-story parking garages and aerial trams.
The designation is notable in that it would protect the park in its entirety — preserving its overall character and design in the face of anyone trying to make a quick buck — and elevate it to the level of Golden Gate Park, Balboa Park, and Central Park, which all also share the same Historic-Cultural Monument title. Additionally, as an LA Times Letter to the Editor points out, preventing development inside Griffith Park would essentially force L.A. to develop new parks throughout the city, instead of focusing all its efforts on one central park.
If you can make the meeting, it’s at 10AM in Room 350 of City Hall. Otherwise, visit the Friends of Griffith Park site to sign up for info, and be sure to contact your city council member to let them know how you feel.
Image by Marcy Reiford.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an optimistic report about the Angeles Crest Highway potentially being fully-open by Turkey Day, but also wondered when the heck the Crystal Lake area was going to open up again.
This morning, I got a message from Frederic Rice, who runs a web site devoted to the Crystal Lake Campground. Apparently, even though we don’t hear a lot of news from the Forest Service, there are some dedicated volunteers who are helping to repair the fire-damaged area — and they’ve got a good opportunity coming up for anyone who’s interested in helping!
He writes:
The old wood foot bridge across Laura Gulch is going to be replaced with a modern foot bridge shortly, with the San Gabriel Mountain Trailbuilders doing the actual assembly and coordinating volunteers.
We work with the U. S. Forest Service which will be providing the helicopter transport of as much of the materials as can be carried across on two trips, and we will be working with the Horsemen’s Association which will hopefully carry in much of our drinking water and whatever else we might get the horses and mules to carry to try to limit what the volunteers carry in on our backs.
Fun! Exercise! Adventure! And yes, really hot sweaty work, but it’s rewarding and allows hikers to do something good for the forest and for fellow hikers.
They’re still getting together all of the details, but if you are interested in volunteering some time and work to help improve your local National Forest, email Frederic and keep an eye on his web site for more information.
Image by Lost Albatross.
If you’re like me, once you get into a sleeping bag, you don’t ever want to get out of it. This can be a problem, like when you’re snuggled up in your tent, but you forgot your flask of winter warmer in your backpack outside. Now you don’t have to get out of your bag to be mobile.
The Chilean-designed Lippi Selk’bag are the outdoorsy equivalent of footie-pajamas, and allow full sleeping-bag level coverage with sleeves for your arms and legs.
The company has two models — a $149 bag
… or so sayeth the folks at the Backpacker blog, after stumbling upon a pro-beard promotional web item for a SF-based dating site, titled Ten Very Good Reasons You Should Grow A Giant Beard.
The site has reasons such as “it instantly turns any man into a badass” and “in times of crisis, people always flock to a bearded person.” As a beard-owner for five years and running now, I have to agree.
Shockingly, the post reveals that no one — not a single person at Backpacker Headquarters — sports a beard.
They do, however, issue a call out there to any nature loving, big-bearded denizen to send in a picture of their soup-strainers to dailydirt@backpacker.com. They’ll post the best once they sort through all that manliness.
Image by svanes.
I’ve been a bit swamped with some work and other developments over the past few weeks, and that - combined with a trip back home to New England to surprise the family - has greatly reduced the amount of writing I do for this site.
I’ve got a few hikes on the backburner to write up, and will start refreshing all my RSS feeds to see what’s going on in that crunchy world called the hiking blogosphere. Stay tuned!
The L.A. Public Library’s Central Branch is opening a new exhibit on Wednesday, called “L.A. Maps Unfolded.”
At the library’s Getty Gallery, a series of historical maps will be on display, ranging from 1900s classroom maps to topographical maps, gold claims, and a Spanish map of the California coast from 1791. The L.A. Public Library has one of the nation’s largest cartography collections, so this exhibit is guaranteed to please map nerds of all stripes.
Beginning October 26th, the Library will also host a lecture series from artists, cartographers, and historians on the various ways maps can shape society and vice versa.
I am definitely going.
The exhibition itself runs through January 22nd. Check out the Central Library’s site for more information.
image by M.V. Jantzen.
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