Well, perhaps. The New York Times Health blog notes a study linking walks outside with improving kids’ ability to pay attention. A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s…
Author Archive for tom
Alpinist magazine folds
by tom • October 17, 2008 • 1 Comment
Just found this one. We began Alpinist almost seven years ago in a moment of serendipity. What would it be like, we wondered, to create the magazine of our dreams? Twenty-six issues later (if you count Issue 0, which we…
Trinity Alps profiled in the New York Times
by tom • October 17, 2008 • 3 Comments
John Markoff, the Times’ legendary tech writer, appears to be a hiker at heart. He pens a travel piece on the Trinity Alps, which are northwest of Redding on the way up to Mount Shasta. For most Californians, the notion…
Place to check out: Roy’s Redwoods Open Space Preserve
by tom • October 16, 2008 • 0 Comments
Poking around at Bay Nature’s site, I happened upon a place in Marin County curious for its name and size: Roy’s Redwoods Open Space Preserve. It’s not more than a grove, really, at 377 acres. Check this out from the…
Angel Island fire shots
by tom • October 13, 2008 • 2 Comments
A section of Angel Island caught fire Sunday night. There are tons of great pictures on Flickr. I never watch TV on Sundays; otherwise I would’ve known about it (possibly; my potential for cluelessness is boundless). Cal Fire’s page here.…
Ventana Wilderness fire devastation
by tom • October 13, 2008 • 3 Comments
Here’s a chilling photo album from just one section of the Ventana Wilderness: It’s in the Tassajara area. Fedak tells me the whole area remains closed because of this year’s fires. This page notes that the Basin Fire burned over…
New hike video: Sunol Wilderness
by tom • October 13, 2008 • 8 Comments
About time I got some actual hiking done around here. After a four-week break (the longest in four years) I decided Sunol Regional Wilderness would be an excellent re-entry point. Sunol is my default venue if I’m too lazy to…
Great pix from the Steve Fossett crash site
by tom • October 10, 2008 • 1 Comment
A kindly commenter named Gus left this link with a bunch of pictures and maps from last week’s Steve Fossett crash discovery. My Google maps of the crash site proved to be fairly accurate. What mystifies me: if the plane…
Backpacking: solo or in a group?
by tom • October 10, 2008 • 11 Comments
The standard advice we all ignore is: Never hike alone. It seems that since backpacking is a more highly complex kind of hiking, the directive to never go solo should be even more of an imperative. If this were true,…