The 5:30am alarm came as early as ever, this time with the added realization of just how cold a night it had been. Each bundled in our warm layers, we broke camp as quickly as we could to start moving and even then still kept on down jackets and wind shirts longer than usual. It’s the easily forgotten dichotomy of the desert—sweltering days matched by equally chilling nights.
Search Results for: canyon
Horseshoe Canyon
Today’s highlights: Tons of blueberry picking on Moxie Bald Mt. and our first real river ford across the West Branch of the Piscataquis River. Hiked most of the afternoon with Camel talking about cycling, and it made me anxious to be home on my bike for a nice long ride.
The Golden Staircase
The confluence of two creeks, a mere stone’s throw from our proverbial bedroom window, seemed not to care that morning had broken. Nature’s white noise machine chugged along, ignorant of day and time. The alarm on my wrist was more particular about exactly what time it was, and its buzzing was as inescapable as the reality it brought with it. Everything ahead of us was in one and only one direction: up.
Nüümü Poyo: The People’s Trail
Reality came knocking early. Saddled with 6 days of food for the final stretch to Mount Whitney, we could delay the inevitable no longer. In accordance with the first law of hiking—that what comes down, must go up—we pointed our steps back up toward Bishop Pass for the second day in a row, aiming to reverse everything we’d done the day before.
Uncharted Territory
To wake with the realization that you’re not on the trail you’re supposed to be, might normally be cause for alarm. But in this case, it was by design.
Mysteries, Revealed
Morning broke with a chorus of crashing water and overlapping birdsongs, melodies and harmonies, calls and answers. To hear these as the first sounds of morning, and then to open your eyes to the scenery you’d almost forgotten in your dreams, is very nearly the definition of waking up in paradise.
The Other Side of Yosemite
The Sierra must be seen to be fully believed. And Yosemite is the beating heart of that Sierra. Of the more than 4 million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park, the vast majority never leave Yosemite Valley, however. With highlights known the world over—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point—you can hardly blame them.
The Residentially Challenged Life
Ever since June 2020, when Mountain Man and I embarked on our hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) we have been what some may call “location independent,” “nomadic”, “wanderers”, or even “homeless.”
We prefer to call ourselves “residentially challenged.”
Stone and Sky Wall Art
For all its challenges, long-distance hiking has one obvious upside: it affords you a front row seat to some of the world’s most spectacular scenery. Escaping to wild places via images on a webpage is one thing. Now, you can bring those landscapes into your home, with Stone and Sky wall art created from our...
Up Close
Stars, sunsets, sunrises, distant mountains. This trail has been full of them—atmospheric settings abounding in a land of vast open space. Day after day your eyes are drawn to them, these obvious sights, and yet to focus only on them is to overlook that which is right in front of you.
Desert Solitaire
To watch the desert sunrise or sunset is, in some sense, to witness it for the first time. An expanse of land brought to life with color beneath an equally expansive sky, only to have the sunset slowly steal those very same colors in exchange for an ocean of stars. Blackness yielding to layers of gray before deep hues of blue, red and orange bleed away
Nadir
Along with two other hikers, we rode along in the car of trail angel MJ, watching the comforts of Superior shrink out the back window on our way back to the trail. Another zero day gone in the blink of an eye, it was back to the work of shrinking the distance between us and Mexico.
Pit Stop
Strange. I don’t remember there being rocks under me. In the trance-like state between dreaming and waking, not a whole lot makes sense. Yet, as the dust from my recent slumber settled, it was starting to making quite a lot of sense. I just didn’t like what it added up to.
Resistance
Aside from our plunge into the depths of the Grand Canyon and our subsequent reemergence, the trail since Utah has been largely devoid of any significant climbing—until today. In the first minutes after leaving our camp at the base of a climb, any pretense that our legs might have been under about the leisure with which we’d stroll our way to Mexico had vanished.
Mogollon Rim
The morning discovered us in a state now quite familiar: strolling past a shallow depression full of dark brown water. Fine crystals of frost on nearby meadow grasses sparkled in the first rays of sunlight, while those that had been warmed for but a few minutes had already melted into droplets that now weighed heavily on the blades to which they clung.
Cache Conundrum
Bang. Silence. Another bang. The gunshots reporting in the not-so-distance were all the reminder we needed that hunting season was in full effect. Exiting our camp site that was nestled into a cozy thicket of pines, we turned down the trail and passed a succession of pickup trucks, presumably belonging to nearby hunters out stalking their prey on another chilly autumn morning.
I Left My Heart in the San Francisco Peaks
The lightning flashed without even a whimper of thunder, so distant was it. The crescent moon that hours earlier had tucked the sun into bed and took its place in the sky was nowhere to be found, obscured by banks of thick, dark clouds that should not have been there.
North Star
They were right there. The same place they always were. At least until—apparently—they weren’t. The mittens that had been dangling from my sternum strap were nowhere to be found. Not exactly the start to the morning you dream about.
Atonement
After two days of what can only be described as sensory overload, my first thought was: did I really just see that? Getting up close and personal with one of the world’s greatest natural wonders will do that to you. My second thought was more akin to wondering what price the trail would now exact in exchange for those past two days.
The Grand Staircase
One hundred miles north, far from the banks of the Bright Angel Creek on which we slept, Bryce Canyon National Park sits at the top of a geological feature few will notice. Known as The Grand Staircase, layer upon layer of sedimentary rock stretches from the high elevations of Bryce Canyon all the way to bottom of the Grand Canyon, telling the story of 600 million years of the planet’s history.
History Book
When you take your first step off the North Rim and onto the North Kaibab Trail, it is your first step into a different world. Gone are the ponderosa pine, traded for pinyons and eventually catclaw acacia, yucca, and all manner of cacti. The white Kaibab limestone yields to red sandstone which gives way to band upon band of other rock formations of varying colors and textures.
Flash
I can see the flash through my eyelids. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand....boom. From our snug little tent tucked into the trees it went on like this for an hour as I tracked the movement of the storm without so much as opening an eye, counting from lightning to thunder as it approached, passed above us, and then receded into the distance.
The Prestige
There are—apparently—two constants to the soundtrack of hiking atop the Kaibab Plateau in autumn: the telltale crunch of small, angular stones beneath each step; and the trembling of aspen leaves in even the slightest breeze, a sound that could easily be mistaken for gentle raindrops.
Starting Line
Since I’d first heard of it in 2016, the Arizona Trail has captured my imagination. Completed only five years earlier in 2011, it stretches nearly 800 miles north-to-south down the length of the state, from Utah all the way to Mexico. Along the way, the vast and often unsung diversity of Arizona is on display
Pancake Power
Pancake Power is serious power. Just ask Gazelle. She’ll tell ya. My little Canadian friend and fellow lover of pancakes would have approved of the way this day began, with coffee, eggs, sausage, and the most divine blueberry pancakes courtesy of our hosts at Nye’s Green Valley Farm B&B.
Trick or Treat
When I was a kid, Halloween was my fascination. No, obsession. Every year, I'd read the same Halloween-themed books and even dress up in the same Dracula costume. Every....year. There was something that drew me in about the season and about all things macabre, which was surprising considering how much it terrified me.
This is Not the Gila
It wasn't supposed to work out this way. Watching the snow fall and the temperature plummet yesterday, we knew that our plans were about to change yet again. The adventure along the Gila River that we'd been looking forward to—tracing the river at the floor of the canyon and crossing it some 100 times or more—was about to meet an unfortunate end before it even began.
A Trail Runs Through It
By the time we'd laid our heads to rest last night, the official CDT was miles away. Turning away from the Black Range, we'd opted instead for an alternate that would take us along the course of the Gila River and today would grant us our first glimpse of it.
The Last Summit
Not 200 miles from the border of Mexico, the Pacific Crest Trail arrives at the foot of something very unexpected. Rising up from the desert floor as if conjured from the earth and into the sky, Mt. San Jacinto looms impressively above the tiny town of Idyllwild. With an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet and a prominence of over 8,000 feet, it would be hard to miss.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
A Eugene O’Neill play isn't typically the first place one would go to feel uplifted. There's a depth and darkness to the themes he explores, none more so than his semi-autobiographical masterwork, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Addiction, despair, depravity, familial dysfunction—it’s all there. And if you were waiting for a Hollywood ending, keep waiting.
Dream Beneath a Desert Sky
I never thought much about the stars. Not until I shared a tent with my Dad in the wilderness. He would gaze idly at the night sky, pointing out constellations, shooting stars, planets, and the Milky Way. His awe of what hung above our heads was infectious.
The Bob
The trail beyond Benchmark Wilderness Ranch is not what you'd expect. As the Divide becomes sharper and more picturesque, the CDT opts not for its usual lofty place where it typically follows the physical contour of the Divide itself, but instead it descends and follows the course of rivers far below. Not that it's a bad thing as far as walking is concerned…
Benchmark
The wind that swirled and shrieked finally died away and morning dawned in our valley of death. The trusty dead trees we'd hung between had been more than stout enough despite their frail outwardly appearance. Most noteworthy was the sudden drop in temperature overnight, as the warm evening morphed into a cold chill during the small hours of the morning.
The Legacy of Water
Its fingerprints are all around us. The lingering patches of snow that still cling to the coolest of high alpine corners. The lifeblood of the thick carpet of tundra-thriving grasses, bold enough to color such a forbidding landscape with their flowering blooms. Even the glaciers that long ago sculpted the waves of stone we've called home for these past 6 weeks.
Identity
A few years ago, I came to a simple realization that if I had time to hike, to cook, to read, and have a project to dedicate myself to, life would be pretty satisfying. Those felt like the minimum ingredients for happiness, everything else being more or less superfluous.
It Always Ends Too Soon
If you’re looking for signs that you’re on the MRT, keep waiting. They don’t exist. That will change one day when word of mouth begins to work its magic on this little known route, and for many of us, it’s exactly that untrammeled state of infancy that makes the hike that much more appealing.
No Country For Old Men
The sweltering oppressiveness of a Deep South summer in To Kill a Mockingbird that hangs in the air with the same suffocation as that of the story’s racial injustice. The silent and hopeless expansiveness of the Texas desert that is nearly as menacing as its villain in No Country For Old Men.
Roots
Nearly one year ago, I arrived at an unassuming stripe of cleared forest that would never have been identifiable as an international border had it not been for the small silver obelisk marking precisely that. A few feet away, a collection of square wooden posts also declared this the end of a Pacific Crest Trail adventure that had begun 2,650 miles and…
A Golden State of Mind
Today marks my last full day and night in California, and although the trail is positively pulsing with excitement at the prospect of reaching Oregon, it would be impossible to forget the nearly endless string of beauty that has been on display as we've followed these first 1700 miles.
I Love a Good Steam Bath
I'd almost forgotten what humidity felt like. That unpleasant stickiness that had been a constant companion growing up in the heat of the upstate New York summer and had followed me for months of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike has been nearly nonexistent on the Pacific Crest Trail. Oh, how that would change today.