Sharon Allen, Class of 2007 Pacific Crest Trail hopeful, has the answer: But how do you know if you are Gearhead? It doesn’t have to be the BEST gear, you just have to love it as though it is. I…
Tom's travels
Update on the Turkey Day hike
by tmangan • November 20, 2006 • 2 Comments
With apologies to our beyond-the Bay-Area brethren, here’s the latest on our daring attempt to summit Mission Peak at sunrise on Thanksgiving morning. Current weather forecast calls for sunny skies and an overnight low in the mid-40s. We’ll be donning…
Hiking
Looking for lost planes
by tmangan • November 20, 2006 • 0 Comments
Following up on a hike Calipidder did a couple weeks back, I hiked up the Monument Peak Trail on Saturday (words & pix here) to see if I could find any remnants of a fighter jet that crashed there 55…
Travel
Thru-canoeing
by tmangan • November 20, 2006 • 0 Comments
Last night, way past bedtime, I did one last look at Trail Journals and noticed a reference to the Mississippi River. Further study revealed a journal kept by woman who paddled a canoe the entire length of the Mississippi last…
Castle Rock State Park
Why Castle Rock, uh, rocks
by tmangan • November 19, 2006 • 0 Comments
Castle Rock State Park is not my favorite place to hike. Not even in my Top 3 (Henry Coe, Big Basin, Sunol Wilderness) … too many people, too few butt-buster trails. I’ve gone there twice in the past three weeks…
Ed Levin County Park
Out looking for some wreckage
by tmangan • November 18, 2006 • 0 Comments
I’ve hiked up the Monument Peak Trail at Ed Levin County Park dozens of times but only recently did I learn I had been walking right past remnants of a plane crash on the hill back in the 1950s. I…
Blogs
We’re No. 8
by tmangan • November 18, 2006 • 7 Comments
According to the blog of Base Camp Communications, a PR agency for outdoors companies. Base Camp’s rankings: The Piton – Well-connected industry insiders slinging velvet-tipped stones near and far. The broad sweep of their BS radar has marketing execs and…
Blogs
Why it’s good to be named Tom
by tmangan • November 17, 2006 • 0 Comments
Because yet another of us has an outdoors blog. Here’s one called Out There With Tom, by Tom Kotynski, a retired associate editor with the Great Falls Tribune. It’s all snowy in the Montana peaks these days so he’s talking…
Backpacking
AT thru-hiking off by more than 50 percent since ’99
by tmangan • November 17, 2006 • 1 Comment
This story from a Connecticut paper about the waning interest in backpacking drops this interesting tidbit: Even more dramatic is the drop in long-distance backpackers who set out each year to hike the entire 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to…