So I’m sitting on the end of fallen redwood six miles into the semi-wilds of Big Basin State Park (it’s far too popular with humans to be truly wild). I’m in a lush valley near a creek that burbles, roars…
Overnighters I've done
Big Sur, for sure
by tmangan • July 10, 2005 • 0 Comments
“No camper has ever been turned away from Andrew Molera State Park,” Teresa told us. Teresa’s the co-founder of the East Bay Backpacking Club. She planned an easy weekend trip at the park, which is perched on the Big Sur…
Cache Creek Wildlife Area
Cache and dogs
by tmangan • June 27, 2005 • 3 Comments
If you hike the trails around the Bay Area you’re bound to see people hiking with their dogs, who always seem to be having about 19 times more fun than their human companions (people don’t own their dogs out here,…
Henry W. Coe St. Park
Everything’s heavy at Henry Coe
by tmangan • June 20, 2005 • 5 Comments
I proved yesterday that I can walk five miles uphill with 40 pounds of camping gear strapped on. Actually, I sorta knew I could because I’d done it with a bit less weight last month, but I hadn’t done it…
My Gear list
Call me a galley slave
by tmangan • June 12, 2005 • 0 Comments
No hikes or camp-outs of note this weekend. For the past month or so I’ve been doing a couple training hikes a week with 40 pounds in the backpack and I keep thinking there’ll be some time when it doesn’t…
Angel Island State Park
Touched by an Angel
by tmangan • June 5, 2005 • 1 Comment
Angel Island is this hunk of rock poking up out of the middle of San Francisco Bay. The island’s a state park now, but over the years it’s been home to an anti-aircraft missile base, a prisoner of war camp…
Eagle Spring
Backpacking at long last
by tmangan • May 30, 2005 • 2 Comments
Every week it’s a new class of Outdoors 101 in the University of the Great Outdoors. Hiking is the land-grant college — economical, close to home, plenty to offer to motivated students, just tough enough to weed out the slackers.…
Big Basin Redwoods
Among the giant trees
by tmangan • May 22, 2005 • 0 Comments
Big Basin Redwoods State Park is one of those places where you walk into the woods thinking of trees as expendable implements of human intent like any right-thinking Republican but you walk out of the woods a confirmed tree-hugger. The…
Mount Madonna County Park
A-camping we have gone
by tmangan • May 2, 2005 • 1 Comment
The storyline could’ve been "city slickers go camping, hilarity ensues," but there are no disasters to report — primarily because Melissa had our camp-out worked out to the tiniest detail. If an earthquake had ravaged the region, we’d have been…