Here’s the thing: Saturday was stormy, Sunday seemed like more of the same, but turned into a beautiful day only after it was too late to do anything about it. So I have no hike hike to report this week.…
Hiking
Win free stuff in Coleman’s Twitter contest
by tom • December 2, 2009 • 1 Comment
See, Coleman has a problem: it’s the most ubiquitous outdoor brand on the planet but none of the cool Internet kids think Coleman is cool. Witness Coleman’s scant 361 Twitter followers (as of 12/02/09) … meanwhile Camping Blogger will probably…
Coming to a ‘nature walk’ near you
by tom • October 14, 2009 • 0 Comments
Geeze, I’m like synthetics from head to toe here. About the only things not produced in a factory were my wife’s cookies and the PB&J she lovingly prepared. Just thought I’d post this, seeing as how my new job implicates…
First impressions on hiking in North Carolina
by tom • October 8, 2009 • 6 Comments
I’ve figured out a few things hiking in the hills near Winston Salem that I may have alluded to on my hike write-ups; today I felt like assembling them in one place for safekeeping. Humidity is wind chill in reverse.…
Any Mountain Hardwear owners out there?
by tom • July 11, 2009 • 11 Comments
In my quest to continue providing gear deal scans that will never yield one thin dime of income (I know what you’re thinking: cosmic justice!), I added one for Mountain Hardwear this morning. I figured since they’re based up in…
Should you buy a footprint with your new backpacking tent?
by tom • July 10, 2009 • 6 Comments
Tarp, bivy and tent footprint Back when I bought my first backpacking tent at REI, I bought into the hype that by god if you put all this money into your backpacking tent, you need to protect that investment by…
REI Hoodoo 3: a backpacking tent for tall people
by tom • July 9, 2009 • 2 Comments
Anybody over 6-foot-2 has a heck of a time squeezing into most backpacking tents. This “three-person” tent from REI could be an option, assuming you’re taking a friend along. While cruising for bargains at REI I noticed they’d sliced 20%…
A penny-pinching hiker’s guide to day-tripping to the High Sierra
by tom • July 7, 2009 • 7 Comments
Round Top For the past five years I’ve been paralyzed by a prejudice against driving more than I’m hiking. It just seems aesthetically wrong to spend more time on the road than on the trail, especially when Bay Area trails…
Where do you hike when it’s really hot?
by tom • June 26, 2009 • 8 Comments
It’s supposed to be in the 90s or worse in the South Bay this weekend. Finding some Redwoods is an obvious choice: a few summers back I hiked at Big Basin with a Chinese gent and we found it north…