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24 Hours on the Border Route

Another Fast & Light video – Brought to you by Timberland

Gear Junkie Stephen Regenold:

… Gear Junkie and crew traveled to northern Minnesota to trek the renowned 65-mile wilderness route. The video reveals the rugged beauty of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters as well as the remote and little-traveled nature of the region, where bears roam and forest fires wash unchecked over vast lands. …

Gear Junkie

Spoiler – they don’t make the 24hr cutoff.

Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.

For more and higher quality, check their dedicated “Fast & Light” video channel.

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NEW – Great Eastern Trail USA

The Great Eastern Trail Association, working with American Hiking Society and local trail partners are creating America’s newest long distance hiking trail. This path is 1800 miles long and crosses nine states. …

official website – maps page

(via TakeaLongHike)

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Mt Asahi hike, Japan

trip report by besthike editor Rick McCharles

Mount Asahi (旭岳 Asahi-dake) is the tallest mountain in Hokkaidō, Japan. … it is located in the northern part of the Daisetsuzan National Park.

The mountain is popular with hikers in the summer and can be easily reached from Asahidake Onsen via Asahidake Ropeway.

Sugatami Pond, directly below the peak, is famous for its reflection of the peaks, snow, and steam escaping from the volcanic vents. …

Lovely and welcoming … in Summer. Unfortunately I arrived Oct. 25th, closer to ski season. Many warned that the weather was too uncertain. In fact, it had been completely snowed over the week before I got there.

Eschewing the chair lift, instead (in about 90min) I walked up from Asahidake Onsen townsite to the main “hiking destination”, the top of the rope.

Emergency Shelter

I rang this bell, assuming it to be a “tradition” for new arrivals.

From there it’s about 2hrs to the top of the volcano. … But I only lasted about 1hr before high winds and horizontal rain forced me (and Kim from Belgium) to turn back.

The trail, wet and muddy on the way up …

… was in flood on the descent. Yuck.

Happily, there was a hot springs and gourmet dinner awaiting me below in Japan’s best and most expensive alpine hostel.

This ain’t the usual hostel grub.

So … the “highlight” of the hike, in the end, was my stay at Daisetsuzan-Shirakaba-So hostel.

Check out the “Canadian log cabin” annex.

More photos from my day hike.

No bicycles. No tenting except at designated sites. No fires. Fishing is allowed.

_____ Update: Next morning the village and mountain both covered with snow. Time to move on.

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hiking the GR5, France

Richard Tulloch is a blogger I follow. Over the past 10yrs, and 5 separate trips, he and friends have hiked the GR5 from Lake Geneva to Nice.

Richard’s a professional writer, and his blog’s both readable and amusing:

… We’re hiking the GR5, one of the French Grand Randonnees (Great Hikes), a classic long distance route that officially begins in Belgium and ends in Nice, on the way passing through Luxembourg, the hills of the Jura and the mighty French Alps.

This week’s stage is from Briancon to Barcelonnette, 109.78 kilometres according to my trusty Garmin GPS, with 6,524 vertical metres to climb along the way. …

… My rule for buying French sausage is to pick the ugliest, most misshapen specimen available. If it doesn’t taste good I can at least pride myself on being a daring gourmand francais. …

… The sign over the entrance, made from old horseshoes, says ‘CAF’. It’s not that someone has stolen the ‘E’; this is an auberge of the Club Alpin Francais.

And oui naturellement, monsieur, they do have beer. …

… All offers of photography contracts from National Geographic, Lonely Planet and manufacturers of jigsaw puzzles seriously considered. ….

Richard Tulloch’s LIFE ON THE ROAD – FRENCH ALPS – hiking the GR5

grfive.com has a good English description of the route and the GR5 experience.

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British Colombia – Worst slogan on Earth

I love British Colombia. It’s beautiful.

“Beautiful British Columbia” the license plates (formerly) confirmed.

Then the morons of the B.C. legislature decided to change the Provincial tagline to:

“The Best Place on Earth”

That’s been universally mocked.

via Van Shitty – Worst slogan on Earth

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Mount Takao, Tokyo

trip report by site editor Rick McCharles

Mount Takao …

Standing 599 metres (1,965 ft) tall and located within an hour of downtown Tokyo, it is a popular hiking spot, with eight hiking courses and more than 2.5 million annual visitors. …

There did seem to be 10,000 or more the day I was there. Hordes of school children, too.

… choose to start climbing from the base, or take a funicular or ropeway ride halfway up the mountain. …

Climbing the paved trail #1 was mainly interesting for people watching. I had hoped to see monkeys (there’s an enclosure for them en route) but spotted none this day.

Trail 1 is nothing special for hiking. But there’s plenty of interesting history and culture, en route.

Most signage is in Japanese only, so I’m still mostly ignorant of what I was seeing.

You can sometimes see Mt Fuji (photo) from Tokao — but not the hazy day I was there.

On the descent, I started on Trail 4 — unpaved and far less busy.

This is more like it. … Still, there were men in business suits “hiking”.

At one point I left Trail 4 in the direction of “waterfall”. On this path there were only myself, one trail runner and this protective land crab.

I learned that it doesn’t take much to get away from the crowds in Japan. … On the other hand, I came off the mountain far from where I had started. Lost.

Yet anywhere in Tokyo you can find a map directing you to the nearest train station. I was quickly unlost.

see more photos from my day hike
_____

This is one end of the 1,697 kilometres (1,054 mi) Tōkai Nature Trail (東海自然歩道 Tōkai Shizen Hodō) which runs all the way to Osaka.

But I’ll take the train to Osaka today, instead.

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Africa Trek – Alexandre & Sonia Poussin

Alexandre and Sonia Poussin are two impressive adventurers.

I’ve just finished vol. 1 of their 3yr, 14,000km, walk of the length of Africa epic. They traveled the Rift valley.

Amazon – Africa Trek I: From the Cape of Good Hope to Mount Kilimanjaro

Here are some video highlights. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Volume 1 was translated very quickly into English resulting in some interesting word usage. Most entertaining en Anglais.

I’m keen to follow up with Africa Trek II: From Mount Kilimanjaro to the Sea of Galilee. Unfortunately it’s not available as an audio book in English, so it I may never get to it. These days it’s pretty much audio or nothing, for me.

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hiking Cordillera Apolobamba, Bolivia

Two places I really want to hike:

1) Bhutan
2) Bolivia

I keep waiting for Bhutan to open to independent trekkers. … sigh …

Bolivia I’ve actually hiked once, but did not have nearly as much time as I wanted.

Bolivia is Peru, but still little visited by trekkers.

… South America’s highest nation is known as the “Tibet of the Andes” for its altiplano, a plateau where valley bottoms sit at 13,000 feet. Above that, mountains are so big and buried in snow and glaciers that you really could mistake them for the Himalayas. And the best place to see it all is western Bolivia’s pristine and barely known Cordillera Apolobamba. Hard against the Peruvian border, the region is home to Andean condors, herds of vicuñas (related to alpacas), endangered speckled bears, and the 65-mile Apolobamba trek, which runs from Curva north across Apolobamba National Park to Pelechuco. The weeklong high route crosses five passes between 15,400 and 16,728 feet. …

Backpacker – CORDILLERA APOLOBAMBA, BOLIVIA

Safety is a real issue in that range. I’d likely sign on with local guides, like trek apolobamba

They are advertising a new adventure, by the way, … the Kallawaya Circuit.