Of the 7 excellent films we saw last night, one stood out for originality and attention to detail.
Life Cycles tells a spectacular story of the bike, from its creation to its eventual demise. A visually stunning journey, with thought provoking narration, Life Cycles uses Ultra HD to document the many stories surrounding the mountain bike and its culture. …
In Rome I bought Lonely Planet Hiking in Italy, difficult to find, actually.
(… later I wished I’d bought Lonely Planet Cycling in Italy, instead.)
Of the Tuscany hikes listed in LP, I chose the Tuscan Hill Crests out of gorgeous San Gimignano.
loop, 7hrs, easy, 20km (12.4mi)
the medieval Manhattan
Sounded great:
Low rolling hills, fields full of barley, elegant cypresses and silvery green olives, vines ripening in the late summer sun, an old ruined monastery, a priest careering downhill in a rusty Fiat 500, potted geraniums, cyclists in multi-coloured jerseys, a rustic farmhouse reborn as an agriturismo …
Not my usual wilderness adventure, … but any excuse to travel to Tuscany. Right?
Departing Porta San Giovanni:
This is a “hike”?
I love Lonely Planet trail descriptions: terse. But in a populated region like Tuscany, landmarks change often. By about half way round the circuit — entirely on roads — I was lost.
I relaxed snacking on both white and red grapes fresh off the vine …
October is grape harvest.
… I pondered my options. Should I backtrack?
Never.
Happily I stumbled upon this monk:
He’s the icon of the Via Francigena, a pilgrims path from Canterbury, UK to Rome.
… one of three great medieval pilgrims’ routes (the others were the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain and the long route East to Jerusalem) …
The good monk led me back to San Gimignano on small footpaths over private property. This is the kind of hiking I wanted in Tuscany.
I soothed my disappointment in not finishing my intended hike with a Gorgonzola gelato in the Piazza Duomo.
Evidence we made the summit – Amber writing us up in the summit log.
Of our group of five hikers, three were gymnasts. Here’s Krista celebrating the summit.
_____
We cycled in 6.5km (4mi), then had trouble finding the small cairn marking the start of the rough path to the river crossing. Our experience was exactly that posted on peakware:
Description – by Dow Williams:
Mount Remus is part of the horseshoe shaped Fisher Range at the front end of Kananaskis Country in the Elbow-Sheep Wildland Provincial Park.
Kananaskis Country is a maze of provincial parks which encompasses over 4,000 square kilometers of foothills and mountains bordering Banff National Park in the central Canadian Rockies.
Mount Remus starts one end of the horseshoe and Mount Fullerton the other. In between lies Mount Romulus and Fisher Peak. Mount Remus was officially named in 1940 along with Mount Romulus after the legendary twin brothers and founders of Rome.
The only published route up Mount Remus is the moderate to difficult scramble up its eastern slopes to its summit block. The guide book determines the chimney up the center of the summit block to be difficult with an optional moderate approach from the north. I found the chimney did not present a difficult challenge and rate this scramble moderate at most.
The most challenging aspect of the day involves crossing the Little Elbow River. This aspect of the trip more than likely explains why there is no trail and few, if any, cairns, thus little evidence of any traffic up this mountain. …
That’s what Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch is calling it.
… Google Earth released a new edition of its desktop app which hikers, runners and cyclists are going to love. They call it Google Earth 5.2. I call it the Hiker’s Edition.
One of the new features allows you to recreate the path of a hike or bike ride by ingesting geo-data from one of your GPS devices. The visualizations show you the speed, elevation, and other stats from your hike, which you can see as an animation inside Google Earth. …
This video features an example of the new track feature in Google Earth 5.2, showing a bike route to work. Download the latest version of Google Earth …
Astonishingly, Oregon has kept it’s coastline mostly undeveloped.
… 1967’s Oregon Beach Bill allows free beach access to everyone. This Bill allows private beach landowners to retain certain beach land rights, but it removes the property tax obligation of the beach landowner. In exchange, the beach landowner grants an easement passage to pedestrians. …
I’m looking forward to the second annual ASW. Will you be there?
2010 Dates June 4-13
Each June in Northern Idaho, Adventure Sports Week offers 10 days of racing, training, clinics, gear demos and more. ASW features triathlons, mountain biking, trail running, adventure racing, open water kayaking and swimming.
Our venue is located on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille at Farragut State Park.
From there I road on to the Calico Tanks trailhead:
… fairly strenuous, 1.2-mile hike and scramble runs up a canyon and over sandstone slickrock to a large natural depression (a tank or tinaja) near the top of the Calico Hills ridge. The tank sometimes holds water. There are great views of Calico Basin and the Las Vegas valley from a saddle just beyond the tank. …
besthike.com 