Photo of the Week #12

Okay, so my attempts at keeping up my Photo of the Week feature have been spotty at best. Sadly, there's always too many things that like to interfere with my true passions - hiking and photography. Anyways. For this week's photo, I'm posting one of the Nakalele Blowhole on the northwest coast of Maui. I'm still sorting thru photos from that trip (not to mention the Crater Lake snowshoe trip) and wanted to share one of the more powerful eruptions that I happened to catch. The spouting blowhole is caused by the high surf flowing up thru an old lava tube and spouting out a small "skylight." In really heavy surf, the spout can reach up to 60'. This particular attraction is located just off the highway, about a half hour north of Lahaina. A short quarter-mile walk leads down to the blowhole area.

JMT 2010: Food Safe

The black bears of Yosemite and the High Sierra have gained quite the reputation of being notorious food thieves. Especially to careless campers and backpackers. This has prompted the numerous ranger districts within the areas to implement strict food storage requirements. Backpackers are required to use hard-sided food canisters at all times in the backcountry. I'll be using two such bear canisters on my JMT hike this summer – the large BearVault 500 and the half-size BearVault 450. Both feature a screw-top lid with locking latch mechanism, and impact-resistant polycarbonate construction proven to be both black and brown bear resistant. The 500 can has a 700 cubic inch capacity, and claims to hold enough food for two hikers for a week; the 450 model has a 440 cubic inch capacity. I'll be starting JMT with the larger 500 can, and during the first half of the trip will be carrying at most 6 days worth of food and toiletries, counting for resupply stops. Pretty easy for a solo hiker. The big test will be the final resupply at Muir Trail Ranch, about half-way along the trail. From there, the only way to resupply would be to hire a very expensive packer to cache in a supply, or take a multi-day hike in to cache a supply yourself. I'm opting for a little extra weight for a few days. At the last resupply, I'll be mailing myself the smaller can, pre-loaded with food and extras, because try as I might, I just don't think I can cram 14 days worth of food into the one (though I'll probably try, just to test it).

Speaking of JMT food, I've been testing all sorts of backpacking food options, settling in on what my month-long menu will consist of. I'll be reviewing some of my choices soon...

Photo of the Week #10

OK, so I missed a few weeks, being in Hawaii, and dealing with work craziness for the couple following.  Haven't had a whole lot of time to dig into photos of the trip.  Also been distracted a bit with JMT plans and prepping.  But I have completed my transfer of over 1,100 photos and will now start sifting thru, as well as start working on the five GPS tracks that will soon be going up on Backpacker.com. The areas around the island that I wound up photographing the most were Haleakala Crater, the northwest coast and the Nakalele Blowhole, La Perouse Bay in the south, and the Wai'anapanapa State Park and Waimoku Falls trail near Hana.  And whales - lots of whales.  Even managed to catch a few breaching!  Quite an incredible sight to see.  I probably won't be overloading the site with photos, but rather post a small sample selection from each area.

In other news, I just completed my second feature article for Washington Trails magazine - this one about waterfalls and wildflowers in the Columbia River Gorge.  Look for that piece, along with several photos in the May/Jun issue coming out in about another month.  Also, I'm especially looking forward to the May issue of Backpacker as there will be a short feature about me (!!!) and my favorite hikes around the Northwest.

This weekend its off to Crater Lake in southern OR for some snowshoeing and - of course - photo shooting.  More to add to the already long list of imagery to sort thru...