I love Rucking. Put on a heavy backpack, walk outside for a while. Call it a workout. And it is a fantastic workout, a fantastic way to clear your mind, and the only workout which has stuck for me. I’ve been doing it for a little over three years now, and I wanted to share with you what I have learned along the way.
The more I read about the “sport of rucking”…essentially hiking…the more I start to enjoy what the community is about.
Plus…who doesn’t like to look at and learn about more gear? 😉
Got to use these a bit…
A couple weeks ago I wrote about BioLite camp lights and all of the various options they have.
I took them with me on a recent camping trip and the SiteLite Minis were a huge hit with my family. We strung them inside of our big family sized REI tent and when it was raining in the later afternoon and evening on a couple of the days, I had the Minis powered by the Base Lantern XL that I got on sale over Memorial Day weekend.
Part of what I was trying to figure out was what all we would actually use and what would end up staying in the bin of camping gear. The minis and the baselantern worked great.
Before the trip, I broke down and bought my kids new rechargeable headlamps from BioLite too. I was tired of the batteries in their cheap headlamps running out and having to buy new batteries.
These were another hit with the family as my kids loved having their own headlamps …and I didn’t have to worry about them running out of juice since I could just recharge them from the BaseLantern XL.
Win win.
I like them.
They’re a super fun addition to the campsite, not completely necessary (except headlamps in my opinion) but they are nice to have.
I liked having the BaseLantern XL as that also serves as a powerbrick should I need to recharge basically anything…plus the light it puts off is great.
If you’re looking for a fun campsite addition to your gear box…I would recommend these lights for sure.
In keeping with this weeks outdoor theme…
I didn’t even know these existed until recently, but man they are cool. (plus I like this guy’s video style) 🤣
National Parks are opening and I wish I was there…
With a three-day weekend before them, Southern Californians will have to weigh the lure of desert vistas against the chance of crowds and the challenge of rising temperatures, expected to reach the 90s by Tuesday.
Even though I’m not back home to enjoy my state’s parks opening, I’m happy to see that they are.
Joshua Tree just opened, before a three-day weekend. Here’s what to expect
Although tens of millions of American children show no medical symptoms of COVID-19, their education, mental health, and development have suffered because of the virus. Adults need to help them regain normalcy. One way to do that is by opening summer camps as soon as possible. Children face a relatively small risk of harm from summer camps, the risk that their participation poses to adults can likely be managed, and the benefits of giving families at least the option of sending children to camp are substantial.
Amen to that.
Summer Is Approaching. Bring Camp Back.
Earlier this month, for the first time in recent memory, pronghorn antelope ventured into the sun-scorched lowlands of Death Valley national park. Undeterred by temperatures that climbed to over 110F, the animals were observed by park staff browsing on a hillside not far from Furnace Creek visitor center.
Very cool.
‘We’ve never seen this’: wildlife thrives in closed US national parks
When Italian towns began offering houses for sale for little more than $1, they inspired legions of dreamers to take a gamble on moving to a remote corner of Italy.
Although spending a few thousand dollars extra on renovating the property was usually part of the deal, it was sweetened by the prospect of a new life in an idyllic corner of a beautiful country.
And then the coronavirus struck, plunging the world into crisis, with Italy among the worst affected countries.
🤯
Start with these links for your own solar power research…
After I bought some BioLite campsite lights recently, I got interested in various solar panels to charge them.
I read about BioLite’s native 10 watt solution, big brand names like Goal Zero, and scoured various websites like Wirecutter and Outdoor Gear Lab for reviews on all the options out there.
Needless to say there are a lot of options out there.
I am currently teetering on the edge of buying one of these since my family is finally getting to the point where we can start doing some extended camping trips. I do not have a direction that I have gone yet…but I tend to err in the direction of getting a bit more than I need.
Personally, I feel that this gives me the peace of mind that I won’t need to “upgrade” in the future when/if I realize that I want more capability.
The below linked article doesn’t cover EVERYTHING you need to start your research on solar panels and other outdoor power options (see the Wirecutter and Outdoor Gear Lab articles I linked to above too)…BUT…it has some one of the best “introduction to solar panels” write up I found.
Plus it links to 4 or 5 other types of “best solar panel for…” articles. It’s a great place to start if you’re curious.
Solar power varies according to multiple environmental conditions. Solar irradiance values, shadings, temperature, and the amount of direct sunlight exposure changes the output power of your solar panel and can change the charging speed of your solar charger. Moreover, if you are purchasing solar panels for off-grid boat applications, you will probably use a battery pack and a charge controller. Some energy will be lost in the energy conversion process as well. Therefore, you must estimate the size of the solar panel a little above the specific demands if you want it to charge within a single day.
Ecotality.com
Let me know your thoughts on your favorite solar power options!!!
Here is another great website that gets more into the technical style reviews…VERY thorough.
These are great for camping or your patio….
I had heard about Bio-Lite a few years back from their innovative wood burning camp stove.
Now they’re having a sale on their Nano Grid system and I jumped right in – beginning with these inexpensive SiteLight Minis.
I love the fact that this company is focused on renewable, eco-friendly system of outdoor gear. This light system is pretty neat too:
Bring indoor-inspired lighting to the outdoors with this rechargeable system of modular lighting & power. Anchored by 3 edge-lit lanterns providing bright, even light without any wasted space, the NanoGrid can light multiple spaces efficiently and easily with minimal setup. Included SiteLights provide overhead illumination, replacing harsh shadows with welcome ambient light. Designed to work together seamlessly, find the right light for any job with this kit.
You can find the individual lights here on Amazon. (the minis are only $15-$20!!!)
The freedom and stress of climbing my first “big wall”…alone.
In 2010, I scraped together a couple days off around the first weekend in March. I hadn’t planned on going to Zion by myself and climbing my first big wall solo…
But there I was.
“Oh shit”, I thought. “Am I stuck on the side of this rock wall? Am I going to have to cut my rope? But if I do that how will I rappel?…”
My thoughts began to race as my desperation increased and my heart slowly sank in to my stomach.
“What the f#$k am I going to do?”
Zion National Park was established in 1919, is located in southwest Utah, and is best known for its dramatic desert canyon landscapes and natural rock arches.
A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to 2,640 ft (800 m) deep. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. (Via Wikipedia)
If you have never been, I’d put it on your list. It is incredible.
I had been trying to get a climbing partner to head out there with me but hadn’t received any definite yes’s from my buddies. This led me to practice my roped soloing just to get SOME sort of practice. Finally I got someone to answer the siren call that is familiar to all climbers and we made plans to drive out to Zion.
However, a few days before I left, he got a job he’d been interviewing for and had to bail.
Damn!
So it was off to Zion all by my lonesome.
I loaded up all my climbing gear in to my black Jeep and drove that stick shift beauty across the southwest from one beautiful location to the next. Driving across that part of the United States can feel like driving in another world. You cruise across rust red landscapes and suddenly dive in to sheer canyons that are hidden until you are right on top of them.
The freedom you feel in a landscape this beautiful is difficult to describe.
All I can do is encourage you to stop hesitating and just drive….which is what I did. Eight hours after leaving San Diego, I was in beautiful Zion National Park.
Watchman Campground the next morning
March in Zion is still pretty cold and I awoke to the sight of my breath and frost on the outside of my tent.
Nevertheless, I had to get my day started, and the anticipation to start this climb pulled me out of my warm sleeping bag.
After breakfast, I drove over to the pull-out across the road from the Cerberus Gendarme climbing area. Here is a shot of where I was climbing…not a bad spot huh?
That little red pin on the left?…that is Angel’s Landing (a well known tourist attraction and hike).
Touchstone Wall
A mixture of anticipation and worry began to creep in as I looked at 800-1000 feet of climbing that I was about to try.
Am I really going to climb that without a climbing partner?
Normally you have a climbing partner to split the work with you, alternating between climbing and belaying. Yet, when you rope solo, you actually end up doing 3 times the amount of work you normally would.
Here is the partner climbing equation as a baseline for comparison:
climb the 100ft pitch, fix anchor, belay your partner up to you = 100ft of work (for 1 person)
Repeat by number of pitches (8 for this climb) = 800ft of work
Here’s the rope solo work equation:
climb the 100ft pitch, fix anchor + rappel 100ft back to your previous anchor + ascend the 100ft of rope you fixed to the anchor you just climbed up to = 300ft of work
Repeat by number of pitches (8 for this climb) = 2400ft of work
I was about to climb 2400ft to ascend 800ft!
(warning: lots of climbing jargon going forward)
With a nice short approach I was looking up at the bolt ladder first pitch in no time:
While I was very happy that this well established climb had some fixed hardware, the first 5 or 6 bolts are definitely REACHY. I’m 5’8” with a reach a little longer than my height and I had to top step in my etriers like a mo-fo. But I got them all and made my way to the second pitch with the short roof.
I rapped the 1st pitch and got ready to clean.
I was surprised at how straight forward the roof section was. The 3rd pitch was pretty straight forward and went smoothly.
Tired but happy, I called it for the day; fixed my two lines and headed back to camp.
The next day I didn’t expect how tiring re-ascending 300 feet of fixed ropes can be. Once I got back up to my previous day’s high point, I snapped a couple pics of Angels Landing behind me:
Here is a closer shot of Angel’s Landing. Other climbs like, ‘Prodigal Sun’ goes up to the right of the light, square notch and ‘Angel’s Hair’ follows the crack system to the left of it:
After about 500 feet I think I got off route because I ended up doing some very sparsely protected face climbing way to the left of the next anchors.
My ability to curse like a sailor was made well known by my echos throughout the canyon…but I got through ok (even though I had to run it out some). I don’t think it would have been as bad if I wasn’t solo, but climbing solo always adds in that extra factor that spices up a climb. Being off route doesn’t help any either.
Now it was on to pitches with more free climbing.
The 7th pitch was another interesting one with the long crack that took #4 C4s, but as I only had two I had to leap frog them all the way up (at least 20-30 feet) to the short chimney squeeze.
I stopped there as there was a bunch of slings/ropes around a huge fixed chock stone and I was running out of light and just ran out of water.
I knew the top of the 7th ends at the tree but I made the call to start rappelling from where I was and thanks to all the fixed anchors, rappelling the route was very straight forward even by headlamp.
Rappelling by yourself is a lot quicker than with a partner, but the risks are all your own and thus MUCH higher.
I had already descended over 400 feet and had about 300 to go, when I stopped at an anchor station and began to pull my ropes down to me.
Now the key when pulling your rappelling ropes is to make sure that all of that rock above you won’t snag the rope you are pulling up through the anchor you rappelled from…on the way up OR on the way down. A stuck rope can mean a long cold night stuck to the side of a rock wall while you figure out how you get down, or hope to flag down rescue in the morning.
I was pulling my rope at the top of the 3rd pitch (so the ropes were through the 4th pitch anchor) when all of a sudden I couldn’t pull it any more. Thinking I was just tired I gave it a bit of a whipping motion to get it away from the rock, hoping that the momentum would get it to move again.
It didn’t.
As I whipped the rope more and more hoping I could free it from whatever it was snagged on, my heart began to beat faster.
“Oh shit”, I thought. “Am I stuck on the side of this rock wall? Am I going to have to cut my rope? But if I do that how will I rappel?…”
My thoughts began to race as my desperation increased and my heart slowly sank in to my stomach.
“What the f#$k am I going to do?”
Hanging from the side of the wall, darkness now fully descended on the canyon, my thoughts settled. Then an interesting thing happened…a moment of calm and clarity came like the sudden ceasing of a storm.
I really only had three choices.
When you are backed in to a corner with nowhere to go, clarity can hit you like a slap in the face.
”Full body weight pull it is then” I thought.
I have never pulled so hard on a rope in my 10+ years of climbing.
All of a sudden I dropped…
Then…just as suddenly…I was jerked to stop by the anchor I was tethered to. With a whirling, whipping sounds that zipped through the air, my rope flew by my head.
It was free!!
Somehow I had pulled my rope free and it was now hanging below me patiently waiting to be of use again.
With a hoot that echoed down the canyon I set up my rappel and started down to the dark canyon floor. A couple pitches later I was finally down to the car and utterly exhausted. I threw my gear down and made my way back to camp once again:
Knot terminology:
Bitter end: the very end of the line
Climbing big walls is a push-pull relationship.
You will get psyched to have a project to work up to, obsess over the details, read about it, and even dream about it as the rock pulls you to it.
Then you actually start climbing.
Over the years, I have heard people describe Big Wall climbing as “Type 2” fun.
Type 2 fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect.
That is spot on.
So, even as the fear of being stuck, the nerves of climbing off route, and the exhaustion was still fresh…that very next day, I drove around and just enjoyed the park.
Reveling in the fact that I had just been a speck on the side of these thousand foot monoliths, I sat in the back of my Jeep, ate my lunch, and stared up at what might be my next climb.
This is a peice I wrote a few years ago. I am reposting because I am missing my gym family…
Six months ago I had only heard of Crossfit in passing. I didn’t know what a wall-ball was, had never heard the term Olympic Lifting, and would have checked to make sure my kids weren’t around if someone had started talking to me about snatches or improving their clean and jerk.
I am a Crossfit New Guy.
I am not new to fitness. As a former collegiate gymnast turned rock climber, I spent much of my life in a gym and have been a part of some sort of fitness family for about 27 of my 33 years on this planet. Rock climbing has consumed the majority the last 10 years of my life, but due to a nagging injury that seems to only surface whenever I climb, I begrudgingly have been keeping myself out of my home away from home.
My wife and I have some friends who are part of a local crossfit gym and we have seen the transformation it has had on them. Thus, with some prodding from my better half, I decided to go check it out. I had always been skeptical about crossfit gyms as I thought they had a certain reputation that I wasn’t a fan of, but judging things by their reputations is something I try not to do. So on a sunny Saturday morning I drove myself to our friends’ gym.
Boy was I shocked by what I discovered.
Crossfit is so much fun! The reputation of aggressive weightlifters that talk about eating nothing but meat and more crossfit was completely unfounded. In fact the coaches don’t even use terms like “box” or “paleo”. The first coach I met was super mellow and quite receptive to my newness to the crossfit world and quickly tailored my first basics class to my strengths and weaknesses. Being that I have an extensive gymnastics background and came from 10+ years of climbing we mostly focused on how to do the barbell movements and olympic lifts.
What shocked me the most on that first day, was the family feel that the gym had that was so similar to my current climbing gym and gymnastics gyms of the past. In fact there seems to be almost more of a family centric feel since the crossfit gym doesn’t have college night, birthday parties, boy scout troops earning badges, or boyfriends trying to get their girlfriends to “just grab that hold!”. Fewer transients coming through the gym means you mostly see regular members…something that only strengthens that family aura.
Now crossfit isn’t for everyone. I LOVE to work out and leading a life of fitness is a big part of who I am. For me crossfit is perfect for what I want in a workout regiment and once I figured out that all that crossfit is, is a bunch of people who really like to workout and be healthy, I was all in. Perhaps I’ve been lucky with some great coaches, but I think that I have found a sport/workout routine that I’ll stick with for a while.
Good question.
I don’t actually know yet. Due to that climbing injury I mentioned, I’ve forced myself to stay out of my climbing gym which can be really tough to do. I’m sure that my climbing specific endurance is not good but I know for a fact that if I went out and climbed a moderate 1,000 foot climb I’d have a lot more overall stamina. If you ever get to jump on a big wall like Half Dome in Yosemite, you’ll find out that 75% of your energy isn’t spent climbing but doing everything from hauling, ascending ropes, and more. You have to be in shape if you want to last on a big wall and I know that crossfit has whipped me back into shape fast.
Is crossfit for you? I don’t know but I encourage you to at least give it a shot. Even for just a workout or two.
As for me, I have some big Yosemite plans this spring and I know I’ll be ready…thanks to my Crossfit family.
This was first posted over on Medium. If you like these longer form posts, you can get early access to them by becoming a Patron for $1 a month.
Such a simple thing can be so useful…
I discovered Buffs quite a few years ago when I was hiking and camping a lot more. (translation: “before kids”)
These are great for a variety of things while you’re outdoors. So much so, I even had one stolen out of my Jeep once. (I used to keep it unlocked when it had a soft top)
With COVID-19 everywhere and CDC guidelines recommending face masks in public; I thought that sharing the versatility of the Buff would be perfect for those who can’t get their hands on a medical grade mask.
You can get them for a pretty reasonable price too.
Scott from California 