Early on August 11, 2008 I began my climb from Guitar Lake towards the summit of Mt. Whitney along the final section of the John Muir Trail/High Sierra Trail. A short distance beyond Guitar Lake the trail passes another small lake and then begins climbing in earnest through the rocky terrain of the high valley [...]
The most common (and only effective, in my view) mosquito repellents are based on a chemical known as DEET. As is sometimes the case with things like this, apparently scientists have known that DEET does work, but did not know why.
The old theory was, as I understand it, that DEET somehow “jammed” the mosquitos’ [...]
I’ll only post a brief note today, but I returned from a 9-day trans-Sierra pack trip earlier this week. We followed the High Sierra Trail from Crescent Meadow on the west side of Sequoia National Park to its opposite end on the east side at Whitney Portal.
I’ll be unusually busy - in a good way - during the next week plus a few days. So don’t be surprised if I don’t respond to emails right away. Please accept my advance apology, and be assured that I will get back to you eventually.
Dan
The election season has begun to bring the usual set of invented issues chosen by the candidates and their handlers to differentiate them from their opponents. My view is that the call for opening the arctic and offshore areas for more drilling is really more about that than about “solving the energy crisis.” Why?
The oil [...]
I just replied to an email from future European visitor to Yosemite who wanted to know a bit about visiting the Young Lakes region in the Yosemite National Park high country, and I thought it might be useful to share the message with others who may want to go there. Here is the text, slightly [...]
Since my outdoor adventures involve a significant amount of travel, and since the price of gas and environmental concerns make it more and more necessary to think about the impacts of such travel, I thought I’d write something about the car we bought last year. Yes, a Prius.
Nah. Not possible. But…
I am going on a rather substantial pack trip later this summer, as I do every summer with a group of my friends. (The basic idea is a west-to-east transit of the Sierra Nevada that climaxes at the summit of Mt. Whitney.) I’ve been backpacking for decades, but it seems like before [...]
A New Terrain Rating System?
Hikers and climbers are familiar with systems designed to quantify the difficulty of particular routes. Those of us who occasionally wander across trail-free Sierra passes relax when we see one rated as class 1 but prepare for some hard slogging when the pass is rated class 3. Climbers are familiar with the various sub-flavors of [...]