3 posts tagged “backpacking”

I was listening to a podcast from Backpacking Light today about a couples' trek from the central coast of British Columbia to Jeuno, Alaska, and the subject came up that youth today don't spend as much time outside as they used to, opting, instead, to play video games, or spend time on the computer generally. They called this Nature Deficit Disorder. The term intrigued me, and when I got home, I entered the phrase into Google, and it seems, the term is bigger and more widely known and used than I thought it was. There is a book review on Salon.com (which, apparently, is a blog) that discusses NDD: what it is, what are the causes, etc...I, myself, haven't read the whole article yet (I can only get so much done in one evening), but it seems pretty interesting.
The conversation then seg-wayed to wilderness and nature, and they said a lot of things that really apply to my parks project. It was (and this is a horrible paraphrase; I'm going to need to go back and give that part of the podcast a second listen) said that some people are scared to go into nature or the wilderness. There is a lot of unpredictability and unknown in nature, and people, in my opinion, and as stated in the podcast, are scared of what they can't control and what they don't understand. So as it applies to my project, some people go to parks to stay away from the uncontrollable nature and go to a "safe" nature.
It all needs some more thinking and stewing to get my thoughts on the matter organized well enough to incorporate into my ever evolving artist statement, but it was all very interesting. I think anyone who is into the outdoors should give this one a listen. I just tried to dig it up on their website, but I didn't see the episode there, but it can be found on Itunes. Just search for Backpacking Light, and it's the episode entitled Journey on the Wild Coast: Survival Risks and is episode number 27.

So I guess it's been about a year since I've done any blogging, on Vox or on my Blogger account, and decided to start trying to make regular posts again.
I've begun to build my climbing rack. I finally got my own rope, but only have six quickdraws right now, which is just enough to do most of the 5.8-5.9 climbs in Big Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork Canyon, and I think a few in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The next goal is to start building my trad and aid rack (cams, pitons, nuts, hexes, etc...), although it's going to take a while to build a full rack. Trad gear is really expensive. But with goals like climbing El Cap, and, later, Cerro Torre, I'm going to need quite a large selection of gear.
A few weeks ago, my bosses switched me from the framing crew to the log setter crew in preparation of splitting up and making to logging crews. Setting logs entails a LOT of walking to find all the logs for the house and craning them into position, or a LOT of swinging sledge hammers. I've been the one walking around finding and craning the logs, so I've been walking about 4-6 miles each day, roughly. Thursday, I decided to make it into a bit of a training program, so I brought my technical pack, and stuffed about 50 lbs. of rocks in it, and put it on. I felt pretty good at the end of the day. Well, I actually felt pretty tired and worn out, but it's the good kind of tired. I'm hoping to get at least one 50 mile pack trip in before the snow flies (with luck I might be able to do two), and carrying all the rocks around will really help me get reconditioned. I know I could do it anyways, but I think, to make things easier on the pocket book with having to take time off of work, I'd have to really push it. I'm thinking 4 days, which means 12.5 miles/day average. Depending on the terrain, I can do 20-25 miles in a day easy, but I don't know yet where I'll be hiking, so I don't know what kind of terrain I'll encounter. Best to be prepared. That way if I make really good time the first two days, or even three, I can take it easy the third or fourth day(s).