Bike About 2025 – Glacier National Park
November 30, 2025 § 1 Comment
Back in May I posted that I had a bike packing adventure that I was prepping for in June. Later in May I trialed my equipment in a 500 mile loop leaving from my home in Ocean, NJ and riding a somewhat loop clockwise through Pennsylvania, New York and then a ferry ride back to New Jersey. By the time I started this trip my basic plan was as follows:
- Start with Glacier National Park
- Ride two weeks on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Ride (GDMBR) with Denise and Rebecca
- Ride to Orange City Iowa for Ragbrai LII
- Ride Ragbrai LII to the Eastern border of Iowa
- Ride Home to New Jersey
At this point in the trip, I was definitely planning to ride all the way home, though I wasn’t entirely confident that I would make it, not was I set on a route from the Ragbrai end in Guttenberg where there wasn’t a Mississippi crossing. I felt that to better my chances of completing this feat I should break the adventure up into some logical phases where I think I would call the GDMBR Phase 1. Why not call Glacier Phase 1? I feel like the phases should be devoted to getting home again, and my time in Glacier did nothing to advance my progress home. It was merely a destination bucket list item, where I could hone my condition a wee bit more before the ladies arrived.
« Read the rest of this entry »Michaux March 2024
December 8, 2024 § 1 Comment
This will not be the post I thought it would be, because this was not the trip into the woods that I thought it would be. It certainly started out like the trip I thought it would be, and for the most part Friday night was almost a repeat of any Friday night spent in the woods with friends. As it so happened the only friends in the woods with me that night were my Brother-in-law Walt, and my friend Dan, as no one else was able to make it out on this weekend. The reason for this early outing was that Walt was being honored as an Outstanding Alumni by the College of Engineering at Penn State, and he proposed that we do a weekend in Michaux prior to his “Big Day”, and since I was planning on going up early anyway, I was automatically a “Yes”. I have rarely observed any camping request in which Dan was an automatic, however that was where it ended. For awhile that is. It seems Walt chose an old email thread that was devoid of a few key members of our clan, and since, like most people probably, no one actually looked at the list of recipients to see who was there and who wasn’t.
« Read the rest of this entry »Zion 2024 – Segment 2
November 10, 2024 § Leave a comment
Strava
Panoramas
Relive Video
Relive Interactive
The second segment of our Zion traverse includes what I have called Death March 1, and Death March 2 based on how I felt at the end of each of those two days, which was exhausted. Just to be clear, this is not like a Solzhenitsyn march where you know from the start what kind of day it will be, but rather each day began just like any other day when you backpack and have to move camp pretty far along the trail. Don’t sleep in; Pack your sleeping bag, and deflate and stow your air pad before you exit the tent; Breakfast on oatmeal, and coffee drinks, water up, and pack the rest of the things; Groan while raise the potential energy of the pack, and start walking, a smile on your face, and nothing but happy “What will today bring?” expectations ahead.
We compared “steps” at the end of each day, where Jed and Jim were scoring around 3-4 thousand more steps than me, who marks out a fairly decent stride. More, when I go up hill. The two “Death March” days were 24,951 and 28,985 steps, and I still backpack in fairly traditional leather boots made by Zamberland (“Zambies”) that weigh in around 4 pounds so 2 pounds per foot. Jed and Jim wear something more like trail shoes that are a lot lighter. Mike is also more traditional, and I can’t remember what Paul was wearing. I think you see where I am going here. Each step moves that 2lb boot further along the trail, and as they add up, fatigue starts to set in, so that by the end of the day, you just want to get those damned heavy-assed boots off your feet and let those feetsies recover.
« Read the rest of this entry »Zion 2024 – It isn’t 2011
November 3, 2024 § Leave a comment
The last time I went to Zion National Park was to do the Trans Zion Trek. Not the entire trek, as few people ever do the Eastern portion. It was one year after I joined my Brother-in-law Walt E for a 4 day Grand Canyon adventure that I joined him and his friends in Zion for a truly wonderful 4 days in early May 2011. I didn’t own a digital camera then, and I recall borrowing one from Ed who, for some reason, brought 2. In those days you applied directly with the park staff for permits, and the permit process was pretty simple. You submitted a request with your dates, group size, and preferred campsites as most of Zion had fixed campsites and only 1 at-large area. I think the queue was FCFS, and if the sites were available, then you got your first pick, if they weren’t, then they’d suggest alternatives, and give you a day to respond.
Today it is a wee bit different. First of all, almost everything in Zion requires a permit now, especially the famous Angel’s Landing. A certain number of sites were opened to long term planning back in March, which is when I would have had to apply to get both the back country permits as well as an Angel’s Landing permit, but I didn’t get the date straight (again) and was left with the second option which was to be ready at 2AM Mountain Time on September 5th to see if I could get a permit for up to 12. I was staying in Bend, OR with D2 and her husband Will, and you may recall my adventures in the Three Sisters the previous weekend, so I was an hour behind, and I set an alarm for 12:50 am.
« Read the rest of this entry »Three Sisters Loop – 9.1 9.2
November 1, 2024 § Leave a comment
The first part of this story went on a wee bit longer than I felt could be covered for a 5 day trip. I left off where we had blundered our way into a shortened day camping in a burn-out along Soap creek. I may have missed that we were the first ones to throw stakes into the soil, but as we the evening wore, others moved into the area as well, so there was quite the little community there by the time the sun set.
Will and I put our heads together, and using my paper map, and his online map, which basically looked like the same map, using the mileage between marked points, we were able to determine that it was 9.8 miles to Matthieu Lake, which was high up and right along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). We both felt that if we got up and didn’t dawdle, we could make the lake by noon, where we would take a nice long break, and then we would shoot for a water camp somewhere on the West side.
« Read the rest of this entry »A Return To Michaux
December 15, 2021 § Leave a comment
The plans for a late Fall adventure began to take shape during the 3 day Indigenous Peoples Day weekend in October when I accepted an invitation (I invited myself) to spend some time with my longtime friends Larry and Melanie Butler at their cabin in the woods behind Woodward, Pa. As it so happened, this was also the weekend of Pennsylvania’s tremendously successful gravel bike ride UnPaved, which Larry and I planned to “Bandit Ride” a shorter segment. I brought all my Pennsylvania Lizard maps with me so we could take some time to glance at “possibilities”.
« Read the rest of this entry »Mid Fall Long Weekend New Jersey AT Hike
November 30, 2021 § 3 Comments
I was preparing a Purple Carrot dinner when the first group text came in.
The Weminuchi Wilderness – 2021
June 27, 2021 § 4 Comments
Before we even finished The Eagle Cap Wilderness, we had our next destination decided. It started with a discussion around one of our camp fires where Larry (and maybe Drew) brought up the subject of “Where next?” Now, they came prepared to propose the Weminuchi, but they pretended to let me think I was in control of future destinations. Like I am some kind of adventure tyrant who says “This is our plan, take it or leave it”. In fairness, that is how the 2012 Grand Canyon played out. I chose the route, the dates, and simply said “Be there or be square!”, and they all complied. On a return from Phoenix, my favorite brother-in-law, Walt, gave me a copy of Backpacker magazine which had a lengthy article on The Highline Trail that crossed the expanse of the High Uintas, and I was immediately taken with it, and that is where I picked, and that is where we went in 2014. Banff was next, as Mike B asked me if we could target that and bring him back to the mountains he visited many cycles of the sun earlier in his life. There might have been a woman involved, but I investigated, and picked a route, and that is what we did. Scott attended that trip which his partner home pregnant and a baby girl in their future, and while we were on that trip he mentioned the Wallowas, and the Eagle Cap Wilderness, and that is how 2018 came about. The idea of Oregon allowed our Oregonians (Scott, Mike S, and possibly Dan) to attend, however circumstances always get in the way, and Scott was unable to join us except on our last night in Oregon after the trip before we all flew out. Dan and Mike S camped with us before we went into the back country.
« Read the rest of this entry »Planning a Brokeback Mountain Weekend
February 14, 2021 § 1 Comment
When non-camping friends I have ask me just how do these weekend trips get planned, it’s hard to really comprehend all the negotiations that occur to determine a weekend, then to determine where we go, and finally to determine what we will do, besides build a big fire, consume the hauled-in assortment of quality craft beers, cook and share the equally well thought out food stuffs and smoke the many fine cigars and cigarette tobaccos. What is going to be posted here, for all to read, is some, maybe all the correspondence that flies around that great echo chamber known as The Internet as we work these details out.
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Big Bird's Adventures 