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February 19, 2014

Earl—the Rugged, Revolutionary Tablet

Leave the iPad at home.

Outside:

This new backcountry survival Android tablet works where your smartphone or iPad would fail. The rugged tablet can forecast the weather, determine your location, elevation, and let you communicate with folks back home.

About the size of an iPad mini, Earl is one tough gadget. It’s waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, and it will work in temperatures from 32 degrees to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. You can submerge it in three feet of water for up to 30 minutes with no ill effects.

Earl’s GPS uses an internal magnetometer, accelerometer, and gyroscope to track your position. It’ll guide you even if you’re navigating dense vegetation or an urban jungle without a line of site. It also gives you access to more than 300,000 trails through the site everytrail.com and high-resolution topographical maps of North America. With Earl in your hand, you have no excuse to get (unintentionally) lost. …

Outside

February 20, 2013February 19, 2013

where’s Dead Burro Canyon?

… I really need to start hiking with a GPS. 😦

I set out into the Arizona desert with typically vague details I found online.

Dead Burro Canyon Trail is a loop hike for the adventurous around a mountain block through a deep scenic canyon in Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness setting where very few trails exist. Look for wild burro and Bighorn sheep! …

As expected, I was quickly lost.

One wash looks much like the next.

On the other hand, I enjoyed a solo morning off trail. It’s all good in the desert outside Lake Havesu, Arizona in February.

I dropped a Summit Stone atop one random stone mountain.

The highlight was finally spotting wild burros. LIVE ones.

There were over 2000 of these beautiful animals running wild in Arizona as of 2010. They are regulated by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

more photos

If you actually want to reach Dead Burro Canyon, my advice is to download the GPS track.

May 4, 2011May 2, 2011

Sprawson – Overland Track

A new guidebook for our favourite trail in Australia.

The Overland Track: Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair

by Warwick Sprawson

details on Red Dog Books. ($39.99) Check also the website for the book.

Just the other day I recommended the classic hiking guidebook for The Overland by Chapman. About half the price.

On the other hand, this new competitor by Sprawson garnered some praise from Frank in Oz. His site is definitely the best source of information on the Overland, online.

In fact, you might simply want to download Frank’s Overland eBook, and refer to that PDF from your mobile device. It’s also less expensive than Sprawson.

All good options.

Check our Overland Track information page. It’s one of the top 10 treks in the world.

March 18, 2011March 16, 2011

Google Sherpa-Cam on Everest?

Daniel on the CheapTents Outdoor Gear Blog:

… The next development for Google Street View will involve getting off the trike and moving onto mountain trails, which will require leg power alone. For this Google … developing the Sherpa-cam. Prototypes are currently being trialled in the Lake District and in the Nepalese Himalayas. …

Here’s some Photoshop speculation on what that might look like.

… It’s only a matter of time.

Google has updated their Street View website, by the way.

March 11, 2011

check out peakery.com

Scott announced the cool new site – Peakery.com

Featuring over 150,000 peaks from around the globe. Find peaks by browsing lists, maps, and photos.

Use peakery to envision your next peak objective with photos, trip reports, stats, and maps. Then get out there and bag it.

peakery is the place to log your summits. Add trip details, triumphant summit photos, and get summit badges.

Check it out – Peakery.com

November 28, 2010August 3, 2014

trekking Dientes, Patagonia

Ace and Patricia hiked the most southerly established major trail in South America, part of the Circuito Dientes de Navarino.

I read their trip report with interest. I’d once traveled to Punta Arenas intending to do Dientes, but ran out of time to arrange the tricky transportation to the Puerto William, Chile, on Isla Navarino. That’s the jumping off point for Dientes.

Ace and Patricia ended up taking the Zenit’s 15 passenger boat from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Puerto Williams. And later found a flight back on a 3-seater plane.

Extreme weather in this most extreme part of the world makes all manner of transportation a gamble.

Was it worth it for Patricia?

Yes.

… We reached the dip between the peaks and were rewarded with breathtaking views of the spiky Dientes and across Isla Navarino to sets of islands beyond. It was a clear day and we saw the islands of Cape Horn. It was definitely the highlight of the trip. …

Painted stones & cairns mark the trail. Unfortunately many of those were covered by snow.

Everyone has navigation challenges on Dientes, this adventure more than most. Their goal on day 2 was to cross Paso de los Dientes. The guidebook said to “stay high”. … They stayed too high, eventually having to backtrack when the risk of a mini-avalanche got too great.

If you’ve ever dreamed of hiking the teeth of south South America, download Patricia’s Trip Journal. (PDF)

Check our Dientes information page.

October 6, 2010October 3, 2010

Triple Crown of Waterton, Akamina

by site editor Rick McCharles

Day 2 of my last ditch attempt to complete the Triple Crown of hikes in Waterton National Park.

(If you missed it, click back to Day 1.)

I’d have to complete Akamina Ridge first, then go back to finish Alderson-Carthew:

Akamina Ridge is a round trip hike of about 20km and the maximum elevation is 8600ft. A lollypop loop trail.

Your journey starts at the Akamina Pass trailhead about 1km from Cameron Lake along the Akamina Parkway. The trail starts out on a gentle slope. About 2km in you enter Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park, shortly after this point and once you have taken the necessary pictures at the “Welcome to BC” sign …

… you will have the options to go to either Forum Lake or Wall Lake to continue your hike. The Ridge is accessible from both but the difficulty upwards vary. This is where the trail really begins. The choice varies from the constant but relatively steady uphill trail to and from Forum Lake or the gentle long trail to Wall lake and then the sudden steep rise all the way up to the trail. …

To save time I tented on the trail.

Like most other hikers, I chose to climb up the Forum Lake trail to access the ridge, descending to Wall Lake. That’s safer I was advised at the Park information centre.

Here’s Forum.

The ridge was signed. No problem.

… until I got to the final scree approach. The trail was covered with wind swept snow. I literally had no idea how to get on top of the ridge, having never done this hike before.

Blast!

Instead I made a frantic scramble back down the mountain to Wall Lake, thinking I would reverse direction, if possible.

That turned out to be a mistake. Time consuming and somewhat dangerous.

I was quite relieved to get to the bottom without injury.

And I’d run out of time.

I dropped a Summit Stone at this cairne, far side of the lake.

And turned back.

My Triple Crown attempt for 2010 was over.

Too bad.

Next year.

September 7, 2010September 6, 2010

11 outdoor iPhone apps

… Tune in to bird songs by training yourself with this free app. Select your region to see the birds that are commonly heard there. You can sort the birds by name, how commonly they are seen, or their song style and listen to each bird’s unique tweets. The app also provides a picture of each bird to make spotting nearby tweeters easier.

Mashable – 12 iPhone Apps For Exploring the Great Outdoors

September 1, 2010August 29, 2010

review – National Geographic Trails Software

She likes.

In the Sierra Nevada the Hiking Lady compared USGS topo with Tom Harrison maps and the new National Geographic Trails Software.

… On the trail, I found I much preferred the National Geographic and Tom Harrison maps to the USGS maps. They are well labeled and trail distances are clearly marked. The National Geographic map definitely proved to the best.

Here’s why. After we set up camp near Garnet Lake, the next day we decided to take a look around and head to Thousand Island Lake. Using just the USGS and Tom Harrison maps, we plotted a route up to the saddle to take a look at Thousand Island Lake. However, as you can see in the maps below, the National Geographic map has the additional detail that shows that there is a trail from Garnet Lake to Thousand Island Lake! …

USGS – Garnet Lake Topo

Tom Harrison Map – nice shaded relief, but no trail!

National Geographic Map – the only one that includes the trail!

Additionally, the shading on the map gave me a good perspective on elevation, so I didn’t need to spend so much time counting contour lines!

I am quite impressed with the software program. The cost is $49.95 for the entire Sierra Nevada range (10 map regions), so it is definitely more cost effective than buying each map individually.

Bottom line: The National Geographic Trails Software impressed me, and I will be purchasing it for other region where I hike.

read the review

August 28, 2010August 28, 2010

NEW New Zealand hiking site

New Zealand Track Profiles (NZTP)

nzTrackProfiles.com

Outdoor route planning made easy

New Zealand Track Profiles (NZTP) provides a comprehensive solution to route planning for the New Zealand outdoors:
Elevation profiles for ALL walking tracks in New Zealand

High resolution 3D topography covering the WHOLE of New Zealand with all the essential details and features normally found only in printed maps. Each map sheet has equivalent area coverage as the corresponding commercial paper map.

Comprehensive track statistics which describe the characteristics of each track and its level of difficulty.

Navigation aids in the form of GPS and Google Earth files, for each track in the map sheet.

Each map sheet is available as a set of two ZIP files which can be downloaded independently.