still fuckin with climb cuz climb pays: the ILX hiking thread

Nice shots, the place looks amazing.

It's one of my favorite corners of the universe. To see it properly, you absolutely need to load up a pack, hoist it, and get more than one day from any road. That's where the best magic happens.

wow

bad fuzzy pic but i saw this guy today:

http://i39.tinypic.com/2z59e9z.jpg

himingood

him was!

I'm going back to this place sometime this year, will strike a pose this time...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3079/2706419643_6893fec3ea_b.jpg

I'm kind of glad you didn't try to upstage the clouds.

nice photoshop work! j/k

Hope you don't mean me?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carljgodwin/sets/72157606398062088/

i was kidding. it is such an amazing picture that it almost does not seem real.

oh, sorry for minor tantrum.

aw. no worries. i should have been more clear. where is that picture exactly?

Austria, see the link.

hahaha nice photoshop work made me lol

do y'all work out in preparation of getting back into hiking?

i'm starting back into my routine of doing several hikes a week and it's like coming out of hibernation. i feel like i lost all my butt muscles, so maybe i'll just concentrate on that

ITT a butt

i dunno part of the appeal of hiking for me is that it's a sport/activity that i can wholly divorce from "fitness"---like i'm not gonna sweat getting into shape for it because that just happens the more you do it. but yeah, squats oughta sort you out right quick

i agree w/u gbx, though it is hard to wholly divorce it from fitness when you return to your usual caliber of trail and find yourself having heart attacks

omgosh dont have heart attacks, they're dangerous!

i guess i meant i like to mentally divorce it---hiking, though sporty, is something i like to keep as a relaxing "i'm just walking in the woods thinkin baout thangs" activity

oh me too. i guess i like to divorce my walking thru the woods thinking baout things hikes from my getting ripped/really hard hikes tbh

Hiking is separate from fitness for me, which is why I LOVE it. But... it's hard to enjoy the first few when I am fucking winded as shit. I promised myself this year that I would work out all throughout the winter so I could hike 14-ers this summer BUT OF COURSE I DIDNT

bet if you start now you will be hikin 14ers by august

yeah, I plan on hiking this weekend if the weather's nice!

i miss mountains.
i want to hike.

so yesterday the wife and i backpacked out to this very isolated rustic campsite in the middle of kettle moraine state forest, wisconsin. our first actual backpacking trip where we're not basically camping in a tent next to the car. anyway, around 4 in the morning (cause it started getting light out about an hour afterwards), we were woken up by this EXTREMELY loud, EXTREMELY close cougar scream. i had never actually heard one before, but when we got home today i looked it up and yep this is exactly what it sounded like, no doubt about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKw4OFAu1WM

needless to say, it scared the SHIT out of us. almost sounded alien at first and it took a few moments for the reality of what we just heard to sink in. it was LOUD, very loud. it sounded like it was probably a couple hundred feet from our tent at most. we woke up and just stared at each other, pretty much paralyzed with fear, not wanting to move or even whisper anything for five minutes or so. started imagining all these nightmare scenarios in my head where the cougar would come over and smell us in the tent and start ripping it up and gorging on our insides. i had a very weak, hand-crank flashlight and a hammer in the tent, and i was trying to decide whether i should should put on my shoes and go out there in the pitch black forest and flash the light around and blow the whistle, try and scare it away. but i also didn't want to catch it off-guard and scare it so bad that it would attack me. opted to stay in the tent, wide awake until dawn, holding my hammer and flinching over every rustling noise we heard, telling myself that it's not a bear and it won't seek us out.

of course, it didn't help that the day before we left, there was a report of the first cougar attack on a wisconsin cow in over 200 years. but that was 100 miles away.

anyway, mountain lions screaming near your tent in the middle of the night with nobody else around you for miles. good stuff.

ugh there was only the one scream this morning, but listening to that video again, i get goosebumps.

jesus christ!! reminds me of "37 days of peril"

the more i think about it (and i've been thinking about this a lot since it happened), the cougar wasn't "a couple hundred feet" from us. it was seriously within a hundred feet. it's difficult to describe the effect of hearing this noise, when you're sleeping in a tiny two-person tent in the middle of nowhere. i still can't believe it! especially after reading about how rare it is to encounter a mountain lion in fuckin' wisconsin these days. i called the rangers' office and reported it; the receptionist just kinda laughed and said "i'll make sure to pass this info on to my boss."

Just as deadly, but not as big.
I found some ticks stuck to my legs after trekking in the lake district, has anyone else had ticks/mites attached to them and what did you do about it?

I noticed them in the evening after having a shower, i thought it was a little spider and tried to brush it off, but it was stuck. I got some tweezers and pulled it out, had a look at it then googled it. It looked like a deer tick/lone star tick (not sure if lone star tick in uk?), anyway i checked and found about 8 in all. managed to get them all off in one piece and have another shower with added scrub action. I did some more googling and found they can give you lyme disease. Managed to get appointment with doctor next day who said i was right to come in as 12-24 hours after being bit, infection can get in blood. I'm now on a 2 week course of antibiotics which will clear up bites and stop any chance of the lyme disease hopefully.

Can't stop itching :(

you pulled them out the right way... all the other things you hear (burn them off, cover them in vaseline, cover them in nail polish remover, etc.) are more of the "old country wisdom" variety and don't really work. you're supposed to grab it firmly with a tweezers and pull it straight out (not twisting).

8 of them is pretty hard core, though - i've only ever had one at a time. and you generally have around 72 hours to get the ticks out before there's a real danger of lyme disease, so even if you had 8, if you got them out right away and then went straight to the doctor, you'll probably be fine.

(the company i work for makes tick removers, among other things, so i've had to learn a lot about ticks.)

keep reading your name as 'a bold plan drawn up by assholes to screw mormons.'

figured this would be the best place to ask, so how safe is DEET to use exactly? been having major problems with biting flies/midges. I bought some 3M DEET cream, but am a little worried about it being a cream. are sprays better/safer? it's around 35% DEET fwiw. citronella oil based patches/sprays are also available but I'm a little worried about smelling like a forest. we also have something apparently based on tomato extract. any thoughts?

i work for a company that makes insect repellent, so i'm kind of biased, but i think the concerns about deet are overblown. also, the 3M ultrathon cream (which is the best deet repellent i've ever used, and i prefer it over my company's product) is good if you're worried about deet, because the actual chemical is suspended in the cream, meaning that it doesn't come into contact with your skin as much as it would if you were using a 100% deet spray. i have never had good luck with the natural stuff, so i usually either use ultrathon or 100% deet, because it works. there's also a chemical called picaridin that supposedly works really well in a 20% concentration - i've never tried it, though. but i've read the studies about it, and it's tests as good or better then 30% deet in almost every case.

thanks!! yeah I got the ultrathon, used it today, worked great

Hey now I have my hiking gear back! Now I just need a vehicle so I can get to mtns O_o

Feelin this exactly ^^^^

u_u

I cannot answer the question about safety with and degree of accuracy.

I worry more about DEET when it leaves my skin and just enters the world-at-large than I do about personal health effects. When I am backpacking, I use it as sparingly as I can for this reason. I don't like washing it off into lakes and streams, or acidentally ingesting it from my hands after applying it.

There's no question DEET is the most effective chemical repellent. The only good non-chemical alternative requires wearing mosquito-proof clothing, such as a very tightly woven nylon windbreaker, or a headnet. This works well, but on hot days it has very limited applicability.

BTW, as of 1 pm today, I am on summer break. I plan to hike my eye teeth out. Now, if it would only stop snowing in the Oregon Cascades and start melting. Sheeesh, it's been one cold, wet spring around here.

just settled on great smoky natl park for major summer hiking vacay (vs cobbled together state parks in ohio, virginia, and west virginia).
EXCITED! i'm sure the state parks would have been ok, but i am excited about staying in one place for a little while. would love some recommendations when the time gets closer! (rox, lookin at you :)

<3!

I know everything about the park, I have devoted my life to it and I am dying to give you recommendations. lol

that's what i figured. you're a ranger-in-training or something, right? i'd like a weather prediction if you have the time too ;)

also if there is a natural repellent for large families traveling en masse/annoying people please let me know

there are very quiet, unvisited places. no repellent needed. the park is really big!

and yes, i am a ranger in training.

awesome! i'll pop back in when i have actual questions.

thinking of kicking it here for a couple of weeks in the month between submitting thesis and doing viva http://www.banja.no/en/index.html

Re bug repellent, my fam always got Ben's from the camping supply store. I think it's Ben's? Little orange bottle. Was considered pretty hardcore at the time but that was 20 yrs ago.

caek, that place sounds most excellent.

I just returned from a five-night camping trip with my wife. We hiked every day. Nary a soul about, just us. A good time had by all. When the dust settles, I may post a pic.

My pack sitting near a small creek along the trail, last thursday.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4117/4761926614_64e3cc1ecf.jpg