Welcome to my hiking journal. I’m going to use this page as a collection point for my posts concerning one of my favorite leasure activities – hiking and camping. It’s something I’ve been involved with off and on for most of my life and as I get older, hope to pass on to my daughter. I’m lucky because not only does my wife also enjoy it, she’s been a huge motivator in keeping me involved even as our lives continue to get more and more complicated.
May
19
2008
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park
Saturday 5/17/08
Trip: 9.76 miles
Elevation: 1811ft (max) 981ft (min) 1620ft (total accent)
Time: 3h 44m (moving) 38m (stopped)
Moving Avg: 2.6 mph
Temperature: 71 F
Wind: Light breeze
Conditions: Clear, no precipitation
Pack Weight:
Summary:
This was a solo hike through part of the [Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park]. The weather was perfect – clear skies, no rain, 71 degrees F the whole day with a light breeze. It was surprisingly harder than I was expecting due to some of the technical sections and the vertical takeoff right at the start. The West trail starting at the Visitors Center is basically 700ft straight up via a switch-back trail that’s heavily traveled by visitors coming down from the bus ride up to the peak. From there, it’s all downhill through boulder fields and some technical rocky switch-backs. At the base of Kennesaw Mountain it eventually levels out and you start walking through some really nice open meadows and canopy forest. The trail at this point is well groomed walking/running trail. I hiked counter-clockwise from the Vistor’s Center along the West Trail down to Highway 120 and then back via the East Trail. No pictures this time unfortunately (the views from the crest are amazing) because my wife has both cameras in Sarasota.
May
12
2008
MSR HyperFlow™
I finally found a replacement for my heavy (read: bombproof) [Katadyn Pocket Filter]. At ~20oz, it’s kind of a pig for lightweight backpacking so I’ve been keeping my eye out for a replacement. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my Pocket Filter, it’s one of the best personal ceramic water filters on the market imo – I’m just trying to shave as much weight off my pack list as possible for my upcoming 7 day AT hike here in Georgia.
[MSR (Mountain Safety Research)] finally released their Hyperflow™ model and after reading nothing but great reviews, I decided to drop the rest of my [Cabelas] gift certificate on it. Can’t beat getting a $100 piece of gear for $9!
Weighing in at ~7.5 ozs it’s roughly half the size and weight of my Pocket Filter. The unit is easy to disassemble for cleaning and contains only a few moving parts. It ships with the core filter unit, pickup hose, pre-filter for sediment, and a nifty bottle adapter. I probably won’t use the bottle adapter – I’ll just plumb in some quick-disconnects so I can fill my hydration bladder directly off the Hyperflow™. MSR claims .2 micron filtering (standard for personal filters) which will grab just about all the nasties except viruses (not too worried about water borne virus contamination in the US) via mechanical filtration.
So far my sink tests show it’s pretty easy to use and the published high-flow pump rate seems doable as long as I keep the filter clean (the unit can be back-washed via a flow-valve reversal). I think I’ll be happy with it. I’ll keep the Pocket Filter around for my BOB and use the Hyperflow™ for backpacking when I know the water isn’t going to be particularly nasty (ie. Georgia mountain streams vs. Florida swamp water).
Apr
20
2008
Gahuti Trail
Saturday 4/19/08
Trip: 8.8 miles
Elevation: 2744ft (max) 1030ft (min) 2178ft (total accent)
Time: 3h 55m (moving) 1h 28m (stopped)
Moving Avg: 2.2 mph
Temperature: 75 F
Wind: Light breeze
Conditions: Partly Cloudy, no precipitation
Pack Weight: ~26lbs (2L water, 1 day food)
Summary:
Mark, Cecilia, Miya and I set out to hike the entire 8.8 miles of the Gahuti Trail. This was my first long distance hike at pack weight. We parked at the Big Rock Nature Trail (BRNT) trail head and picked up the Gahuti trail on the backside. Since Campsite 3 was just .25 miles south of the BRNT, we decided to head North and hike the trail clockwise, ending with a camp out on site 3 after we finished the entire trail.
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Apr
17
2008
Ft. Mountain Part 2
It’s time to tackle Ft. Mountain again. Hopefully this weekend the weather will cooperate and we won’t freeze our butts off like last time. Mark, his girlfriend and Miya are driving up from Gainesville and we’re going to tackle the 8.8 mile Gahuti Trail loop.
[Weather report] for Chatsworth looks much better than last time. High in the 70′s, overnight lows in the 40′s and a 40% chance for rain. I probably can’t get away with using only my summer bag but I should be able to drop a couple heavier winter items from my kit and still be ok.
Apr
11
2008
Satellite Personal Tracker
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this nifty gadget while I was looking for a [summer weight sleeping bag] from REI. As I dug into the details via [Find Me Spot], I started to think more and more about picking one up for a couple of reasons. First, the cost: at ~$150, it’s the cheapest upfront hardware cost of any Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) on the market (traditional PLBs run upward of $500 or more). Second, it works a bit differently than a standard PLB, combining a GPS receiver with simplex satellite communication via [GlobalStar's] commercial satellite network. This allows the SPOT user to not only “call” for help in an emergency but also send pre-defined “check in” and “track” messages to an email/SMS distribution list. Pre-defined messages are limited to approximately 75 characters but that’s more than enough text to send a quick “ok” or location track to your contacts.
Once you create an account online, you simply sign up with your SPOT serial number and authorization code and you’ve got a working PLB. [Geos] provides the “911″ monitoring and coordinates any local Search and Rescue (SAR) effort. It even works globally – basically, anywhere the SPOT transceiver receives a decent satellite signal, you’ve got SAR coverage.
I’m still playing around with the unit (it arrived today) but so far, it seems like a solid, well built, lightweight, hybrid PLB. If the messaging system works out I think it will be a perfect addition to my safety gear when I go hiking or on some other outdoor adventure. I’ll try to post some updates after I’ve played around with the features and tested the messaging system a bit more.
Apr
01
2008
Trip update
Some good news! It looks like my youngest brother Scott will be joining Mark and I on our Georgia section hike! In order to accomodate his RL schedule, we’re pushing the start date back to June 1st, 2008. Right now it looks like Scott will fly into Atlanta late on the 31st – we’ll pick him up right at the airport and then head for our cabin in Ellijay, GA. This will let us get an early start on the 1st since the cabin is only 45 minutes from the trail head.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on reducing some of my pack weight. Right now I’m at roughly 37 lbs total skin-out weight (pack, food, water and worn clothing) – that’s a bit on the heavy side. With the hike getting pushed back into warmer weather, I think I can do better and strip or lighten my pack load down some. After reviewing some weather [history] for Brasstown Bald, GA over the last couple of years, it looks like I can probably drop my 35 degree bag and go with something a little lighter. After some research on bag liners and sleep sacks, I found a perfect summer weight bag, the [REI Travel Sack]. $60, rated to 55 degrees and I can use it during colder weather as a bag liner for my winter bag. It cuts my sleeping bag weight down from 3.5 lbs to 1.5 plus it compresses to almost half the size. Perfect!
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