How to Fold a Topo Map

Map in ZipLoc
Not long ago I was hiking in a remote area. Remote meaning I didn’t expect to meet any people. There wasn’t a trail to follow, no signs, and I knocked down the accurate cairns while leaving the inaccurate ones standing. I was heading to a sensitive historical area to which some bonehead had posted detailed directions on the Internet, which usually means morons will start visiting and damaging the site.

While I didn’t expect to see anyone else hiking in the area, there is always the possibility someone else will be in the area, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I ran into a fellow who asked if I had a topographical (topo) map he could look at. Before continuing with the rest of the story, a brief discussion of topo is in order.

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Roads Closed – Go To Plan C

Last week I was in Texarkana. The one in both states of Arkansas and Texas.

2014-02-28 TexarkanaWhen I left the hotel it was brisk 23 degrees F, but it didn’t seem that cold. I guess with all my trips to the east coast this year I must be getting acclimated to the cold. I had to meet with my client and then fly out to LAX at noon.

Once the meeting was over, I began to think about the weekend. I had a couple options, knowing the weather wasn’t going to be great. One was backpacking in the San Jacintos, which was going to require snowshoes, given that the incoming storm was predicting 2 to 4 feet of snow. The second option was we could go camping, but forecasted heavy rains can make desert travel difficult with road closures and flash floods.

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Rock Camping

JT Feb 2014-1-14A couple weeks ago I wrote about a backpacking trip that didn’t happen. I don’t particularly care for cold weather, especially since I have easy access to warm weather hiking in the desert. If I am going to take a trip in cold weather with the obligatory warm (and heavier gear), then I figure I might as well do it in the snow. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much snow in California the past couple of years. Last year I even headed up to the Sierras for snow, since the local mountains didn’t have much, and I struck out on that trip too.

After spending two weeks this month in sub-freezing weather (a week in Panama City, Florida and a week in Columbia, South Carolina) I decided to finally spend a few days in some really nice weather with Joyce and Corky. Daytime highs in the 70’s and nighttime lows in the high 40’s (F).

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Ready for Prime Time: amazon.com

MANAGING YOUR INVENTORY OF FREE TIME WITH AMAZON PRIME

2014-02-13 Amazon Prime Logo

In Managing Your Recreation Inventory, I talked about Time as something that could be banked or managed as inventory, akin to how a warehouse manager manages the physical inventory. To me Time is a valuable commodity to be saved for productive pursuits such as backpacking or camping.

Shopping can be detrimental to your Time inventory. Time wasted by wandering from store to store, aisle to aisle, shopping center to shopping center. Not to mention time wasted driving to and from stores and the fuel consumed.

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You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em

As you probably know, I often do short backpacking trips when I travel on business. Most of these trips don’t lend themselves for a lot of advance planning. I look at a map, determine the elevation differences from where my meeting is and where I might hike, look at the weather forecast, pack what seems to be the required gear, and then hop on a plane. Often I don’t know exactly where I will hike; that is something I sort out when I get to my destination.

And that is how it was this week.

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It’s Time to Shit-can the LW, UL, SUL, and XUL Labels

2014-01-27 Shit Can Labels

If you have been reading my website for a while, you probably know that LW, UL, SUL, and XUL are backpacking categories for base weights. Base weight is the weight of your backpack and contents minus any consumables such as water, food, and fuel.

Most people define these as:

  • Lightweight (LW) = base weight less than 20lbs.
  • Ultralight (UL) = base weight less than 10lbs.
  • Super Ultralight (SUL) = base weight less than 5lbs.
  • Extreme Ultralight (XUL) = base weight less than 3lbs.

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