• Background: my reading devices are small
• Test case: reading Ink & Switch paper on a small device
  • problem: web-exported PDFs do not look good on small devices
• Solution: export to PDF with forced mobile view

>Background: my reading devices are small

For unholy reasons that defy all design personas, I read on a phone-sized device (I will NOT give up my vacation power-position of laying down and holding the device above my face with one hand ok??^[1]). For TEN YEARS an iPhone 13 mini sized phone was my only reading device for ebooks, online articles, papers, RSS feeds. If I got truly frustrated with an article format, I’d dig out my laptop, but this is the last resort since the laptop precludes laying down. When I got my iPhone pro max sized e-ink device this week, the size upgrade was conspicuous!

>Test case: reading Ink & Switch paper on a small device

The research lab Ink & Switch drops banquets of knowledge on their website. Reading their papers is an hour-long beast mode affair and certainly requires of me the horizontal power-position. Immediately after I got the Palma, the Lab dished out their latest feast, an ode to malleable software. I used the encouraging “print/view as PDF button”^[2], and load the PDF on the e-reader.

>problem: web-exported PDFs do not look good on small devices

The Ink & Switch papers have super cute marginalia notes. In a phone-sized viewport, the marginalia takes up half the screen, causing the body of the article to squeeze into only the left half of the screen, which is aesthetically and morally uncomfortable:

The simplest solution is to rotate the screen into landscape mode (then I had to fiddle around to set up the correct zoom distance):

That’s acceptable. The text is a readable size. The pagination is awkward since the page size is mis-matched with the screen size, but I could go back and re-export the PDF in landscape mode. But the screen ratio doesn’t lend itself to this view, and holding the reader horizontally with one hand while laying down is unwieldy. I think I can do better.

>Solution: export to PDF with forced mobile view

I read phone-shaped articles for years before the e-reader, so why not go back to that tried-and-true format that developers already have on their checklist to support. Here’s how I forced the print dialog to use a small viewport, as if a mobile device:

1. Open devtools
2. In the “rendering” tab, set “Emulate CSS media type” to screen (as opposed to “print”, which is the usual mode in the print dialog.)

   

3. Bring up the print dialog (cmd-p) and click “more settings”. Set the following:
   1. Destination: Save as PDF
   2. Paper size: pick a default that’s small (such as A5), or create a custom paper size^[2:1] with a ratio that matches your device (but it has to be small enough that it triggers the mobile view instead of the desktop view).
   3. Margins: none
   4. Scale: play around with scale until the font ratio is what you want to see on your e-reader
   5. Options: enable background graphics (shows background color in divs)

   

4. Save!

How I got here aka What didn’t work, ordered in increasing complexity and desperation (and because I wanted to exhaust all non-devtools possibilities):

1. Loaded it on the e-reader’s browser. This didn’t work because I’d like to make highlights and annotations, and read offline, which I can’t do in the browser.
2. Print -> Export to PDF on my laptop. The original attempt, which only allowed desktop/print format^[4]
3. Tried #2 again but with “paper size”^[2:2] set to the miniature dimensions of my e-reader, and modulating the “scale” setting, hoping it would trigger the mobile view. It would not.
4. Tried #2 but on the e-reader’s browser. Images were missing??
5. Tried #2 but on my phone, reasoning it was already displaying the mobile view I wanted. The resulting PDF was still desktop/print format, which makes sense in retrospect, since when people print from their phones it’s usually onto a paper-sized piece of paper, not a phone-sized piece of paper.
6. Time to go back to the laptop and open the browser devtools^[5].
   1. Used the device toolbar to set view to “iPhone 13 mini”. nope. huh.
   2. Opened “sources” tab, and deleted @media print styles from the CSS. Surprisingly that didn’t do it.
   3. Thought more about the media type query, figured out how to emulate it: in the “rendering” tab set “Emulate CSS media type” to screen. Woah!!! Now when I bring up the print dialog (cmd-p) and set the paper size to something small, it switches from desktop to mobile view as if the printer was just another screen. yay!

Alright. Time to read that paper while laying on the ground in my ideal focus position: head in the shade of trees, feet in the sun. ☀️

Another trip from the archives. Usually a wet week (you’re supposed to budget extra days in case of floods) of backpacking through the northernmost temperate rainforests of Vancouver Island, we got super lucky and had a relatively sunny West Coast Trail experience in mid-August.

My memory is hazy about the details about this trip. What stands out is the unique beach camping, super lush forests, minding the tides for the beach talus-hopping, and heavy logistics (permit lottery, trailhead/end shuttles).

I forget how I originally heard of this trail, maybe I read about it on a “best backpacking trips” list, or maybe a friend suggested it. It’s a very special place with the rainforest and the sea meeting in a moody tide of fog. But nearly 10 years out, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of special places that require less logistical backflips, and feel less contrived. I suppose a lot of popular trails now have similar levels of timed-entry and competitive permit gathering, so maybe the rest of the world has caught up.

Today my erstwhile home Mammoth Lakes officially smashes the biggest snow year on record, and I’m bundled up inside reminiscing on warmer times, and the stupid shit I miraculously pulled off in my younger and more durable days. Nearly 10 years ago, I accidentally went on my first solo backpacking trip. Without a clear reason, I’d always wanted to visit Spain, and after a series of tragi-comedy no-goes, I was extremely broke and hitchhiking from Barcelona to the Spanish Pyrenees by myself.

I took the last leg by train, to Puigcerdà (pronounced Poo-chair-da).

Europe is not the temperate Sierra Nevada, or the deserts of Utah (the only places I’d backpacked previously). These mountains are juicy, and I was immediately schooled by many hours of pouring rain! I wrapped my backpack with my tent tarp, which did the job, but I remember my fingers being SO COLD.

My first time in a mountain outside the US, I was shocked to run into refugios, huts, cabins, and villages. Why was there civilisation in the mountains? How is there so much livestock? Imagining cows stomping my analogous home mountains of the Sierra felt so alien.

I remember trying to infer the culture from the artifacts, like the unmanned refugios–was I allowed to stay the night? I peaked inside a collection of them, the range of quality was very broad:

I didn’t do any trip planning aside from a vague goal to exit from Andorra (the mini-country sandwiched between Spain and France). Since it was 10 years ago, I bought a paper map, and stitched together sections of the GR-11 and Haute Route. I had primitive offline gps phone maps (probably OSM), but didn’t load tracks or route names.

Maybe this is a factor of it being 10 years ago (pre-backpacking explosion), or perhaps my pieced-together routes rather than sticking to a single JMT-like superhighway, but I remember the trek being so desolate. There were hardly any people after leaving the villages. In my last day, I remember feeling so lonely I was singing out loud just to hear my voice.

I have a distinct memory of the trails to and from the alpine passes feeling much steeper than American trails, and wondered if they’d been cut before switchbacks were invented. (Would I still feel this way, with all the fitness and experience I have now?)

The tldr of any plastic dying project is, don’t do it! It’s time-consuming and messy. (In contrast, dying organic material is relatively straightforward, which is why tye-die clothing is traditionally cotton). Even though I was successful, I would anti-recommend this project to anyone. In any case, here’s my field notes.

Reference video: I watched this video to gain a baseline sense of the task. In my post I include additional details gathered during my own process. (Also I am too cheap to sacrifice my nice cookware like that LOL)

>Dying a polyester sun shirt

The patient is a minty pastel Patagonia sun shirt. I like how soft the material is, and it’s thicker than my running sun shirts and thus durable enough for my bad-technique trad climbing flails. But over time I wanted to appear less cake-like and more moss-like. So the goal was to make the shirt more green, but not too much darker (or it’ll get hotter in the sun).

It may not be easy to tell from these low-fi climbing video stills, but I love how the colour turned out. It led to 300% more wearing of this shirt and 400% more compliments (including delightful bewilderment at the rouge-patterned Patagonia item). The dying step turned out to be a breeze compared to the unwrinkling step, which was extremely manual and somewhat finicky.

>The polyester process

On a warm summer day because I wanted to keep the fumes outside :D

1. Prepare the shirt: wet it, then pinched off parts of the shirt and rubber banded them off.
   • This is a standard tie-dye technique called “crumple dye”, nothing special here. You can look up normal tie-dye videos for reference.
2. Prepare the dye: Heat up filtered water in a sacrificial pot until it is about to boil, add dye
   • The dye must be specifically for synthetic fabric. Normal tie-dye will not work. I used iDye Poly, it worked great. You can mix the colours to adjust to taste (only taste with your eyes). Note that the dye bath will always look darker than the result.
   • I didn’t want the result to be too dark, so I used not much dye. Maybe a teaspoon of powder for a small pot.
   • Anything that touches the dye will be rendered un-food-safe! I used a pot from a thrift store and plastic takeout utensils to stir.
   • I made a setup outside with a hot plate and extension cord because the dye fumes are supposedly not great to breathe in (my kitchen doesn’t have a real fume hood, although I don’t know if I’d trust it even if I did).
3. Boil: Set the temp to be slightly below simmering, about 200f, and plopped the shirt in for about an hour, flipping it occasionally so the dye had a chance with both sides.
   • A concern with synthetic clothes is the low melting point (that’s why the synthetic setting on your iron is super weak, compared to cotton mode. That’s also why fire spinners never wear synthetics). The shirt was floating so I wasn’t worried about it touching the bottom and getting melty, but it’s something to watch out for.
   • If your clothes sink, I imagine you can put a cotton rag between the bottom of the pot and the synthetic item as a buffer.
   • I hung out within eyesight to supervise in case of disaster (didn’t want it to splash or melt)
   • I live at 8000ft, where water boils at 198f. So it was actually slightly below the recommendation.

     

4. Rinse: Filled a small trash can (or other food-unsafe bucket) with fresh water. (With plastic gloves on) removed shirt and try to squeeze as much dye water out as possible (it’s difficult because it is hot), then transferred shirt into fresh water. Rinse rinse rinse.
   • I poured this water into my bathtub drain (making sure it was cool, so it didn’t dye the bathtub LOL). I think you’re not supposed to just toss this water into the yard or your street because it’ll leach into the environment.
   • Maybe too paranoid, but I avoided rinsing in my kitchen sink because I didn’t want the hot food-unsafe dye to touch my food prep zone.
   • Rinsed a couple of rounds, taking off the rubber bands after the first rinse to get at all the creases.
5. Air dried shirt flat (in direct sun for greater speed)
   • The colour result: The tie-dye look is on the sparse side, I went overboard during the rubber band step and it was too tight to allow much dye penetration. (the video I linked had a similar result with the dress). However, this is great for not letting the shirt get too dark. I could have rubber banded again and gone for round two.
   • At this point the shirt is SUPER wrinkly and not wearable! It seems like the dye temps was high enough to set the wrinkle shape into the polyester fabric.
   • (I actually don’t know if all polyester would wrinkle like this, of if it’s just this specific shirt.)

     

6. Unwrinkle the shirt:
   • I ironed the shirt one side at a time by putting a small wooden board into the body of the shirt, stretching the shirt so it’s flat and not wrinkly, putting a damp cotton fabric down (so the iron never directly touches polyester), and then applying the iron firmly but slowly a few swipes across the area
   • don’t stretch the shirt TOO much because it’ll result in your shirt to be a bigger size than it started. Just enough so it’s not wrinkly.
   • Experiment with ironing temp, starting lower and increasing if you find the wrinkles aren’t being pressed out.
   • The tricky part is the iron has to be hot enough to unset the wrinkles, but not too hot as to melt the polyester and create scratchy stiff areas (I’ve ruined leggings this way!)

All done! Great results, I’m super happy with it.

>Dying a nylon crop top

The patient is a mauve-pink crop top. I like the built-in bra and thin straps, but I felt like the colour clashed with my skin tone and wanted more purple.

>The nylon process

The steps were similar to the polyster shirt, I will note only the differences:

1. Prepare the shirt

   • I rubber banded less aggressively this time, after the learnings from the previous shirt.

2. Prepare the dye

3. Boil. Nylon supposedly dyes faster than polyester. I wanted to try some experiments this time.

   • 3a. Dip-dye experiment: I tried to do a slow-mo dip dye by raising the fabric higher every couple of minutes. This didn’t really work, you could barely see the gradient. Maybe I didn’t use enough dye? Or should have gone even slower?

4. Rinse

   • This shirt retained a strong chemical smell after multiple rinses. This caught me off-guard because the polyester sun shirt held no dye smell at all.

   • 4a. Double tie-dye experiment: I rubber banded the shirt again, added more dye powder to the dye bath to darken it, and tie-dyed a second round for 20 minutes. The idea was to have multiple layers of overlapping tie-dye pattern. This worked out pretty well! The effect would have been even more dramatic if I had dyed the first layer darker.

5. Air dry in the sun

6. Remove chemical dye smell: The lingering chemical smell made me worried the dye hadn’t set, so I tossed the shirt into the washing machine by itself and ran a cycle on cold water. That reduced the smell but I could still detect it. I left this shirt hanging on a chair for several weeks until it stopped being smelly, which took way longer than I expected.

>Aftermath

1. Disposing the dye
   • I had poured the leftover dye bath down the bathtub drain back when I had dyed the keycaps, but there was so much more liquid this time. I ended up transferring the dye to a sacrificial plastic yogurt container and setting it outside to evaporate back into powder form, then tossing the power into the trash. Probably unnecessarily paranoid.
2. Is it machine wash safe? Will it leach colour into my other clothes
   • If you used a craft dye that’s meant for clothing, probably not? but I don’t know. (I don’t wash my outdoor clothes often). I may have machine washed the polyster shirt with other stuff on one occassion with no issues.
3. Will you do it again?
   • Not if I can avoid it. I definitely wouldn’t go about purchasing clothing with the goal to dye it. The polyester de-wrinkling was a nightmare, whereas the nylon smell was awful. It could have been bad luck with those specific items rather than the entire class of fabric, but I just don’t know.

Cumbersome process notwithstanding, I’m happy with the results of these two items and they’ve returned into the rotation!

I usually feel the big Sierra days calling as winter melts into spring. Last summer, coming off a nonlinear second-year-in-a-row hip labral tear recovery (and a mysterious chronic gut bug that prevented me from eating hardy veggies, beans, and dairy for half a year??) wasn’t compelling me towards my usual summer pastimes of weighed stomping and thousands of feet of vert. So even as all my friends were packing up to get fried like eggs on big backcountry missions, my stoke stayed at ground-level and I continued perfecting my deadpointing between razor crimps.

Summer in Tuolumne is like a dream. I’ve been coming here for years to cry on the scary dome slabs, but only last season realised the bouldering is really really awesome. The rock is textured Eastern Sierra granite with plentiful crystals and improbable knobs. There’s overhanging 3D route shapes and unique movement, like stacked pancakes tipped sideways. Living an hour’s drive away in Mammoth, I wanted to get out there as much as possible, undeterred by the early summer road construction or the permitted entry. I had to rally friends to take bouldering detours on the way to Tioga Cliff or between their big objectives, since the usual strategy of finding spotters under your project doesn’t work when you run into 3 other parties total all season. The masses have shockingly failed to take notice of Tuolumne boulders, which retain their solitude despite their relatively short approaches, and being attached to the top-mobbed National Park of the country.

I find the easy range to be pretty underdeveloped, with v3 and below sparse or hair-raising, but the v4-5 zone was very engaging for me! and plenty of v6-9 for my friends to play on. Fun for the whole family. Here’s my 2022 season roundup:

>Tuolumne v5-6

• Kauk problem v5 (The Knobs). this is the send that led me to finally believe I can climb v5. powerful, crimpy, precise moves (I guess this is my style??)

  

For next time:

• Cellulite Eliminator stand v5 (The Gunks) - need to refine my left heel hook!

• Black matter v6 (Tenaya Lake Boulders) - so powerful so sharp! gotta go back with more pads. I do love a crimp. Looks like it’s been downgraded to v5 on the Proj.

• Unnamed v5 next to Detached (Medlicott Boulder) - it’s the sit start to the unnamed v4

>Tuolumne v4

• Solar Flare v4 (Sunrise Boulder) - moderately overhanging crimps to a tall but protectable mantle. fun! Sunrise boulder is a lone, massive boulder on an open slab, with all-time views of Tenaya and Cloudsrest. Great hang.

• Short Train v4 (Pywiak Boulder) - start horizontal and escape from a chilly creekside cave. very workable, kind of enduro. nice to have a couple pads for the talus-y landing. fun!

  

• Summer Vacation v4 (Summertime Boulder) - it’s a hike, and difficult to find, but the climb has unique granite features in a scenic location. another tuolumne escape-the-cave triller. Directions: Turn left (uphill) off the lake trail at (37.83242, -119.45311). Boulder is at (37.82888, -119.45279)

  

• Knobs Creek v4 (The Knobs) - tall but straightfoward, for vertical crimping enthusiasts

• Spaceballs v4 (Raisin Creek) - tough!!! the tension required for shorter-spanned people is incredible. proud v4 for me. Location: (37.82868, -119.47559)

• Slopers and Dopers v4 (Drug Dome Trees) - another route with cool movement for granite

  

• Unnamed v4 next to Detached (Medlicott Boulder) - crimpy, technical sequencing and footwork, a bit overhanging, playing with body tension, funky visual feature. love it!

  

• Unnamed v4 (Arena Boulder backside) - overhanging lowball transitions into surprising mantle topout! more harder (tall) stuff on this boulder, including the ominous Buttermilks Simulator.

  

For next time:

• Cave route v4 (Olmsted Canyon) - very cool big moves between crimps under the roof felt SO hard. there’s a wild mantle move at the top as a treat

  

>Tuolumne v3

• Medlicott warmup boulder unnamed v3 - fun big movements! 1 min south of Medlicott boulder, location: (37.86200, -119.42924)
• Unnamed v3 at Pywiak Boulder - The finish to Short Train
• Sunshine stand v3 (Sunrise boulder)
• Solar eclipse v3 (Sunrise boulder) - both worthwhile and at a super pretty location

For next time:

• double dyno v3 - the dyno feels super sandbagged if you’re shorter
• leap of faith v3 - just feels impossibly tall at the top
• Machine World v3 - I kept meaning to come out here to work long traverse on a solo day, but I was busy all summer. 2 min approach and looks super fun.

>Tuolumne v2

In the classic Eastern Sierra style, there is no shortage of extremely sandbagged, harrowing v2’s. Standouts for me:

• Dark Helmet v2 - worth checking out if you’re at Spaceballs, warning about the spicy topout!
• v2 on Sunrise Boulder - I actually thought this was pretty fun, managed to do a ridiculous hand-foot match piano

>Tuolumne v0-1

Carefully read the descriptions in the book because many of the 0s and 1s listed are actually super scary slabs and not necessarily beginner friendly! Areas to play around it:

• The Knobs - People love to pull on knobs, fun for the whole family. Many v0s and v1’s that are fairly vertical.
• Puppy Dome - mostly scary slab highballs but you can find lines self-discovery style. and bail to swim in the river if you’re over the sandbagged routes!

After writing this all out and riffling through last year’s photos, I am so so so homesick for summer, missing the carefree days and the merry crew. It’s also a celebration of the friends I made this year who stuck with me through snow, heat, t-storm, mid-summer smoke scares, bushwhacking, injuries, loneliness, and getting super sick. The Eastern Sierra will always be home and I know I will be back. <3

>Tuolumne tips

• The season is whenever Tioga pass opens until whenever it closes (roughly May/June - Oct/Nov), with spring season possible (depending on snow pack) and fall being pretty cool and bug-free.
• There’s usually a few weeks of mosquitos in the summer. The timing depends on the snow pack, but I’d count on July or August being the most intense. most areas that aren’t under moist trees don’t get that bad, but definitely bring bug spray (or permethrin-treated clothing if you want to swim without getting bug spray into the super clean waters).
• You kind of need the book (or a friend with the book), because even with all its inaccuracies (I’ve taken a sharpie to some of the gps points in my housemate’s copy out of frustration), Mountain Project is very incomplete for this area (maybe related to its relative obscurity?)
• There’s water (and bathrooms) at the JMT station
• not much cell signal in Tuolumne, download your offline maps and beta ahead of time. Make a meetup plan and a backup meetup plan.
• The Tuolumne general store is open seasonally, don’t depend on it for food (especially spring and fall)
• There’s sometimes live music at the Mobile in the summer (Saturday?)
• If your fingers cry for mercy, there’s a great swimming spot on the river by Puppy Dome Boulders. Tenaya Lake is a classic of course. There’s some waterslides around Tuolumne, go look for them (wear shorts though LOL)
• The Tuolumne campgrounds have been closed for renovations for a few years :/ Anyway those suckers need to be reserved like 6 months in advanced
• There’s walk-in car camping outside the east gate/just past Tioga pass on the 120
• Put your food in the bear boxes (if there’s any at the parking spot) or lock your van. Bears will actually break in (they’re pros at door handles) and smash open your van fridge
• The bustability of sleeping in your van inside the park is high, I wouldn’t count on it
• Thunderstorms tend to happen in the afternoon, so you can often get a morning session in (just don’t forget to keep track of both sides of the sky)
• weather.gov is your most reliable weather source
• If the mushroom has gills, probably don’t eat it

• Trailhead: South Lake
• Route: Green Lake to Vagabond, then up the north slope of Cloudripper (class 2). Some exposed summit moves (class 3). 12.5mi, 4500ft vert (2500ft of which is easy cross-country, bits of scrambling)
• (4hr 10m to summit) + (4hr 30m down) = 8hr 40m total. (We booked it on the way up, and were knee-limited on the way down)
• PIPE HIKE
• Vagabond: aim for the notch (look behind you and identify the notch for the way back, it’s less obvious from the other side)
• Cloudripper: stay on the right side of slope

My first hike with Nicole! Excited to be a part of her knee surgery recovery journey.

Right off the bat there’s a huge show of fall colours painting the aspens. Staying on the pipe is a fun challenge, although as a dog it’s quite easy for me.

After the pipe, there’s switchbacks to an open meadow!

Soon we arrive at Green Lake, contour around the lake a bit, then climb up the scooped valley slope on nice trail to an open table.

After walking across the relatively flat table, it’s time to leave the comforts of the trail and go south cross-country. We contoured the left side of the bowl (in which a huge juicy rabbit was sighted diving into the talus). Upon gaining the lip of the bowl, a peak comes into view. That’s not Cloudripper, it’s Vagabond Peak.

Routefinding in this terrain was surprisingly pleasant! Basically you can see where you want to go, and when you get there, it’s easy-going. It’s mostly sand with easy talus. If you’re a clever human you can avoid 4-points-on scrambling for the most part (I always walk with all 4 legs though, because I’m a dog).

We’re super lucky that it’s unseasonably cold today with chilly wind blasts, because otherwise this landscape is extremely exposed with little water, and I imagine you’d get hot pretty quickly. Nicole experiments with monching salt tablets and feels great. Intriguing!

After passing through the notch, Cloudripper comes into view!

It’s wise to turn around and look back as you’re crossing the notch, because it doesn’t look as distinct from the other side. Going down Vagabond and then up the slopes of Cloudripper is easy for dogs! Humans may have to butt-scootch on occasion. Try staying on the right side of the slope, the talus gets big on the left.

A couple of exposed moves (I got my dog butt pushed; power spot) to the summit and we did it!

After a rest and some snacks, it’s time to head down. We gotta go back up Vagabond:

We’re feeling great at the Vagabond notch, so we take a couple minutes to tag the summit.

Heading down from Vagabond, the knees are starting to rattle. It’s a relief to be back on trail.

The aspens on the final stretch of pipe hike are glowing!

• Trailhead: Convict Lake Marina
• Route: West slope, class 2. 17.5mi, 5380ft vert, 3200ft of which is cross-country
• (5h 30min to summit) + (4h 45min down) = 10h 15min total. Extremely unrushed day with gratuitous swimming and frog-gazing breaks
• North slopes approach to Bright Dot Lake was not nice for humans, crumbly and dirty and borderline class 3. Descended south out of Bright Dot Lake, slightly longer but much better.
• Gaitors nice but not mandatory. Summit slopes were a lot less sandy than anticipated, pretty pleasant, use trail all the way up from Bright Dot Lake.
• On the summit slope, stick to the left side (cliffs out to the right)

It has been a slow summer for me, I’ve mostly been mountain biking and sleeping the days away on the sunny balcony. But it seemed like this morning, daiyi woke up with the sudden notion to climb a mountain. So after breakfast, we drove 15 minutes from Mammoth to Convict Lake, and it was nearly 9am when we started hiking!

The problem with starting late is that it is hot. I immediately jumped in the water when the trail met back up with Convict Creek after the exposed ascent out of Convict Lake.

We tried the north slopes approach to Bright Dot Lake, despite being discouraged by Secor, because there’s other trip reports about it. We first went up the switchbacks a bit to gain elevation on trail before cutting cross-country northeast towards the streams/drainages. Cutting over was awful and bushwhacky. And then the drainages were crumbly and dirty, steep, and slippery too. Comically easy for dogs to scramble, bad for big-footed humans. Not fun, not recommended, maybe even dangerous if you’re not used to bushwhacking/third class dirt.

Easier cross-country brings a view of Baldwin!

Bright Dot Lake is crisp and clear, surprisingly no one was fishing there already.

We were surprised to run into a great use trail that pretty much goes all the way to the summit.

Partway up are the crystals mentioned by Secor, who says it was a mine (no signs of human structures though).

Aside from short sections of steep dirt, the route is pretty straightforward as far as Sierra peaks go. There’s trip reports of sloggy sand at the top, but it seemed packed pretty hard and honestly not as bad as the sand skiing of e.g. the Emerson descent or the Lone Pine Peak descent.

We hang out on the summit, I rest in my donut form, and then we descend.

On the way down we try the Secor recommended access to Bright Dot Lake, which is to aim for the meadows 0.5 miles south of Mildred Lake. There’s some cairns, which lead to a choice of steep dirt slopes, or steep marble dry waterfall. The waterfall is pretty and looks fun, and is easy for climbing-trained humans to descend, but it doesn’t look great for ascending (maybe pick the dirt slopes for the way up).

The slopes open up to a flat, dark plain:

Once we got to the meadow, there’s a use trail on the right side (east) that goes to Mildred Lake. Mildred Lake is beautiful and clear, a great opportunity for a swim (washing off the grime before the chill maintained trail descent). Spotted on the banks: a very tiny frog, half the size of a pinky nail!

We bomb the trail back to Convict Lake, where we met a lady who likes red heelers and took a lot of photos of me. We’re back in Mammoth before sunset. Nice day out! SPS 13 for me.

Last year (2021 our year of Luigi), I made a goal to make 200 pizza in my home oven, and now I’m really good at making pizza. I love to eat but I hate to cook, although za is an exception because it feels more like a ✨craft✨ than a chore.

What I love is really dialing in my technique and process to my home tools (baking steel, bottom-heating oven) and za preferences (infinite cheese! infinite garlic!). Controversially, I don’t think you need an expensive fancy pizza oven to make ridiculously good za, what’s more important is that you reflect on and adjust your technique (like projecting a climb), and you make a LOT of pizza (send, send, send).

I have condensed my eldritch za wisdom into two single-sheet-of-paper zines, so that you can glean the skills without first messing up 200 pizza! JK it’s actually more about the za you make and eat along the way, but maybe these will still be of interest to you:

>ZA ZINE: dough

This is how I make the dough, time the rise, and shape it into the cheese delivery disk we know and love. Physical version, download/print version.

>ZA ZINE: recipes

I made this za-shaped zine filled with the top pizza recipes I kept coming back to!

You can get me to mail you a physical copy, or you can try to print and assemble it yourself: download link. (I’m sending you there in hopes that you will tip me for the grueling and ungratifying effort of documenting and streamlining the assembly steps so people who aren’t me can figure it out by themselves, but if you want to get it without putting in your email (which I will do nothing with), just message me and I’ll send it to you directly).

>ZA ZINE assembly instructions

This one isn’t like your usual zine. Follow the steps carefully and soon a za will be beaming encouragingly at you.

1. Print out the zine. Make sure you use these settings:

   • two-sided ✓
   • orientation: landscape
   • auto-rotate ✓
   • scale: 100%
   • layout-> two-sided: short-edge binding

2. It should look like this, otherwise the back page is flipped the wrong way and it won’t assemble correctly:

   

3. Cut it into 4 pieces. If you’re cutting with scissors, I recommend folding it in half both ways first, then cutting along the folds.

   

   

4. Fold each piece in half. There’s a hint at the bottom corners above the page numbers which say “out” on the sides that should be folded facing out.

   

5. Arrange the pages in order, using the page numbers to help you. Align pages by the bottom, then staple in the middle of the fold, with the cover facing you (the pizza face should be staring at you)

   

6. Cut out the za shape. A trick I like is using a binder clip to keep the pages flat and flush while cutting. Cut on the INSIDE of the dotted lines! I don’t want to see any dotted lines on a za!

   

7. It’s done! enjoy your za zine \o/

   

When I could drive in basically any direction and wake up in one of dozens of geologically unique world-class climbing destinations with near self-sufficiency in terms of gear, camping, and cooking, it’s hard to convince myself that the logistical nightmare of an international climbing trip is worth it. It’s easy to forget when your social media is all people cheesing on skis or ropes in some far-flung destination, or even if you got rid of your online presence, your irl friends are always disappearing and coming back from travels before your eyes, and of course they’re going to tell you about it.

I’ve done these kinds of trips in the past, packing too many sports into checked luggage for mountaineering, climbing, canyoning, and backpacking. When I hear those highlight reels, what I’m thinking about is how annoying it actually is to tesselate ice axe and crampons with wetsuits and drybags, rent a car, find lodging and guidebooks, navigate unfamiliar languages, not be able to pull very hard when jetlagged, and the distainful/bewildered glares in response to “do you have anything vegetarian?”. And I’m not the only one who feels this way.

When Marco asked if I wanted to go to Fontainebleau, it was an immediate no. I thought it must have been a joke. We live within an hour drive of more than one lifetime of climbing, highly aspirational destinations for people around the world which we can lazily roll out to after sleeping in, and you want to fly away to a place famous for being hostile to foreigners??

Ok, reading between the lines, it seemed like it was Marco’s dream to visit the birthplace of bouldering, so I guess it wouldn’t kill me to help make his dream a reality. Where’s your sense of adventure, you spoiled and self-righteous Californian?

>“How was your trip??”

Actually it went pretty ok! Bouldering is the least gear-intensive, so I only had to pack climbing shoes and chalk. In the area there’s a whole culture around the climbing holiday, so lodging came with pad rental. I also had a week before the climbing trip to acclimate to the time zone, which was key. Going to a gym right after getting to Europe, I actually couldn’t convince my fingers to pull hard at all. It came back after a few days of recovery. Amazing, I used to step right off the plane into a europarty.

The sheer amount of climbing in Fontainebleau is mind-blowing, and the style is super different from what I’m used to (sharp overhanging crimps, flapper factory, crystals for feet). I will never again make fun of the “unrealistic” big volumes with little dimples and bulging pinch grip holds at the gym.

Fontainebleau is geochemically destined to be composed entirely of slopers and grovelly summit mantles. The style is exactly like the sloper gym climbs that I used to laugh at. Joke’s on me, I have accumulated a big debt of falling off of slopers to work through!

Luckily I’m still at the low-ego stage of being a boulderer, so I didn’t really care about grades, and had a blast trying lots of things below my max. Getting the hang of the style meant every day was full of fun body puzzles. It’s wild that a route which spits me out the first couple of tries and feels impossible will become effortless after working through it and finding the right body positioning! I know that’s a very bouldering thing to say, but it felt extra true in a place where the movement was so foreign to me.

(Note from 1 month later: I went home and was able to send my projects that had top-out slopers, so Fontainebleau sloper bootcamp was highly effective! I hadn’t thought about travel-climbing as an opportunity to collect new skills, but it was a fun and satisfying way to sharpen my weaknesses).

In the alpine and the high desert, you can find real stillness. In the forest, you’re never alone. Maybe because the style of this continent is to actually support parenthood, there’s entire sectors that are basically outdoor kindergartens of screaming, running mobs of children rampaging in unselfaware brush-crushing. I’ve never seen anything like it–I’m used to less kids and more dogs (which are much less susceptible to the crush of capitalism and thus better adapted to the States). We definitely found areas where there were no people at all, but without local context it’s hard to tell what you’re going to get before you get there. In the depopulated spots, the children are replace by screaming birds, which is somehow not as idyllic as you might imagine.

In general, deciding “where do we climb tomorrow” was challenging! I’m really glad we got the physical guide book. It’s hard enough to navigate the maze of rocks with it, even with the route numbers painted right on the rock (!!), I can’t imagine trying to rely on the uncacheable web maps on bleau.info. The book is in English, but interpreting the symbology and graphic design itself is a foreign language. Theoretically you can glean where the shade and sun is, so we spent a lot of time looking up the weather and studying the book. Marco had a strategy of looking up highly rated climbs online and popular youtube beta videos as a starting point for picking areas. I think as long as there’s climbs marked in your range, you can’t really go wrong. If you don’t like what you see, walk a minute up the trail and there’s a billion more routes.

Another interesting thing is that Font grades go way lower than v-grades. There’s so many Font grades below v0, which actually makes sense considering a Bishop v0 can be impossible for beginners. Part of what makes this place interesting is the history, but while bouldering was born in Fontainebleau, the climbing films are made in Bishop/Yosemite, so surprisingly a lot of USian climbers haven’t heard of Fontainebleau (even after this past Reel Rock??).

Aside from the heat wave, my biggest struggle was with food, and eating has always felt like a big component to my strength. I am always jealous of my friends who can climb a whole day on bars alone, or “forget” to eat lunch (how??), I’d fall over dead if I didn’t pack real food and consume it on schedule. At home I usually eat as many sandwiches as I want without a problem, but somehow the French diet of bread and cheese had me bloated and inflamed by the end of the trip. Mysteries!

Some people probably climb Fontainebleau to eat amazing French food on rest days, and it’s going to get me permanently banned from the country to put this on the public record, but I was not impressed. I think it’s because I’m vegetarian, and everything seems to be sprinkled with a fine dust of meat byproducts. Even the most innocuous-looking savory pastries have meat bits. It feels weird to say my favourite eating-out experience in France was Indian food. I also had the revelation that I prefer salty croissants, and all the croissants I had here were sweet (now I’m going to be double-banned).

In Bishop, you sometimes have to stop climbing because you’ve literally run out of skin, but the Fontainebleau sandstone is much more gentle, which just means you need some other indicator that it’s time for a rest day (such as surprise rain).

It’s just so moist. It can get hot in May so we had to be smart about chasing shade (which I’m used to), but you can’t avoid the humidity (which I’m not used to). If Florida had rocks, that’s how I imagine climbing there would feel. I live in the desert where I don’t really need to towel off after bathing, I just wipe the water off my body with my hands and I’m naturally desiccated by the time I’ve stepped from the shower to my clothes. The towel is really just for simulating the comforting hug of a tame bear to top off your cleansing experience.

Whereas in Fontainebleau, you put out the dishes to dry and the next morning they’re wetter than when you last saw them. The uncovered salt turns into one big clump. The shade-facing laundry hung up to dry is damp forever. I felt like physics itself was out of whack. A heat wave kicked in at the end of the trip and I basically spend 1.5 days laying on the ground unable to get up. I actually took off my pants on the last day and climbed in my underwear because it was just!! too!! hot!!

So there you have it, my international climbing trip as a skeptic: bouldering simplicity minimises airplane-equipment-shenanigans, it’s fun to get out of what you’re familiar with and be puzzled by a totally unfamiliar style of rock, holy shit I’m being consumed by a living kid-tornado, other times total solitude, food sucks.

Do I regret going? no. Will I go again? Probably not, unless it’s in a bigger group and a cooler time of year. Or maybe if I’m slowly traveling through the area and make a stop. I’d definitely not hop on a plane just for this. But you know me, I like to take the long way.

Bonus Material

Here’s some of my raw journals (I usually draw them in the morning about the day before) if you’re curious about the source content:

>Talking logistics

>Transportation

You can take the train 1 hour from Paris, and there’s certainly climbing spots you could get to by walking, but you need a car if you want to do a grand tour of all the forest has to offer. And if you’re going to come all the way from the States, it felt silly to be limited to only what could be accessed by foot. We rented a car from the airport.

Gaia (map app) was useful and has the trails and lots of climbing spots annotated.

>Lodging

We stayed in a bungalow, rented tent, then cabane in a glamping resort called Ile de Boulancourt. I don’t know if I’d necessarily recommend it, we were both allergic to the cabins, the owner yelled a lot (at me and at random children), they didn’t realise we were coming and didn’t respond to email. Maybe that’s just how it is here.

It seems like 2 is not a great group size for Fontainebleau: doesn’t scale well with hostel pricing, yet too small to rent out a nice gite. I guess it’s the kind of place you visit with your crew (or whole fam).

>Data

I used Airalo for mobile data, but be warned that the French plan was useless and I barely had any connectivity (the pan-Europe plan was much better).

>Rest day activities and Forest fun

Wake up campers, you aren’t in California anymore! You can’t rely on it to not rain for weeks at a time.

>Fontainebleau castle

Apparently this place is as big, magnificent, and popular with the nobles of old as Versailles, but infinitely less crowded? Checks out, considering how much the Versailles brand was totally overrepresented in my American high school education. The kings loved to recreate in the forest, just like us. Here’s a weird fountain they have dedicated to the hunt:

>Geology

Climbers know Fontainebleau for the rocks, but everyone else knows it for its pure sand which makes world-class glass! We drove past a massive pit in the ground tastefully hidden by a manicured tree screen, but you can catch a glimpse of the mine between the gaps. Apparently le Louvre is made from Fontainebleau glass.

I was really curious about the local geology, and had a hard time finding English-language explanations. I did find a bunch of blog posts from glass enthusiasts, and some geology papers, including this fun one where a geochemistry conference goes on a field trip to Fontainebleau. Maybe it’s possible to take a sand mine tour?? I think that’d be pretty awesome.

>Automatic soups dispenser

There’s a community prepared foods vending machine in front of the aquatic center in Milly-la-Forêt. Really cool! yum!

>Dog sleds

Too late I found this company that does dog sled tours in the forest. That’s right, the sleds are all-seasons, so there are summer carts that rage through the sand.

Happy new year! 🐯 新年快乐

In the current revision of my life, I find myself bouldering outdoors basically as much as my body can handle without actually imploding. Last month I made the 2-hour round-trip commute to Bishop 13 days out of 31:

Last season I gave bouldering a real try for the first time, and I managed to struggled up a couple v1’s between cold swollen toes, hip injury, and general fears being outside my rope-climbing comfort zone (I’m short, all the holds are far away and bad, I’m weak and only manage to climb with cardio and technique, I don’t want to fall and break my leg, a 5-minute approach is for bums and my true passion is hiking a bag of ropes and metal deep into the backcountry, etc).

It’s been 6 weeks into my second season, and I have already climbed six v3’s??? and am working v4-5. Exciting! Shocking?? This doesn’t make any sense considering I mostly climbed moderate alpine/trad all summer, popped a finger on the kilterboard at the start of October, and continued to not really climb until mid-December. Does training even mean anything?? who knows.

A plausible contributing factor: six weeks ago, my hip spontaneously collapsed and I could barely walk for a two weeks (labral tear relapse?). No longer was I distracted with all my other hobbies, such as trail running, XC skiing, downhill skiing, the hip-intensive descent to the Gorge, and walking through the grocery store or up the stairs. Somehow, I could still boulder. I can’t explain it.

So as the gears of time clicked into place at the start of 2022 our year of Luigi, my friends carried all the pads, my stuff, and sometimes me to the Happy, Sad, or Buttermilk boulders every weekend. I used hiking poles as crutches to limp around. By the time I navigated my new insurance to re-begin physical therapy, I was already climbing 2 grades harder than I had before my injury, yet comically living in constant fear of opening a car door while standing on the icy driveway, or turning my foot the wrong way while laying in bed.

Being totally focused on 1 thing is surprisingly nice. I’m still at the low-ego new-activity stage so I don’t feel bad if I don’t succeed, I just feel good to be out of the house and able to do anything that feels normal and empowering. And it’s a lot more fun now that I’m at a level where I can project with friends (I’ve also made friends closer to my level and size in the last year, and that’s made a big difference too).

Being injured in a way that isn’t legible to others leaves me feeling pathetic a lot of the time because I need to ask simple favours from people who probably think I’m just really lazy and bothering them. When I feel too prideful and try to attempt the task myself, I get hurt and end up setting my recovery back, but asking for stuff really sucks. While rehabilitating a functionally useless wrist/hand/elbow a couple of years ago, my doctor suggested wearing a wrist brace at work, partially as a signal to others so they don’t judge me when I ask for favors or exemptions (such as declining to take notes at a meeting or move heavy objects). I think about that a lot. Aside from walking around with a limp or sometimes spontaneously collapsing, I otherwise appear totally normal. Most days, I feel lucky that I can do anything at all.

>Bishop v3 Progression

Listing here in order of send, in case you were wondering which are the easiest v3’s (and v2’s) in Bishop ;D

1. 🥰 Pirate Booty v3 - first Bishop v3! Dec 2021
2. 🥲 Sun Spot v2 - first Bishop v2! Jan 2022
3. 🥰 Carrot Top v3 - sent in second session
4. 🥰 Monkey Hang v3 - sent in third session. Went back a 4th time and it felt low-effort with the right beta!
5. 🥰 Marty Lewis’s Ever-Changing Hairline v2 (flash)
6. 🐮 Funky Tut v3 - put a water bottle into the summit jug as a 3D tick, is that aid??
7. 🥰 Slap Happy v3 - I cut feet on every slap LOL but managed to stay on?? proud of this one. Jan 29, 2022.
8. 🥰 Impulse Control v3 (flash) - this can’t possibly be v3, I can’t flash v3??

>Bishop v1’s I climbed last season

For archival purposes, I combed through my whole journal for the easiest v1’s in Bishop (the v1’s I climbed last season, when I could climb no harder than v1).

1. 🐮 Slabby v1 on Ranger Rock (Dec 2020), my first v1 in Bishop!
2. 🐮 The Prow stand-start v1, Birthday Boulder (Jan 2021)
3. 🐮 Green Wall Arete v1
4. 🐮 Ay, Tut Boulder v1

…Followed by months of unsuccess attempting to climb my first v2.

>Active projects

Climb with me?? :D I usually go Sat-Sun, and a floating weekday afternoon (Wed or Th).

🥰 Happy Boulders:

1. Bleached Bones v4
2. Cue Ball v4
3. Solarium v4
4. Beer Tumor v3
5. Son of Claudius Rufus v5
6. Mr Happy v5

🥲 Sad Boulders:

1. The Fang v4
2. Mothership v4

🐮 Buttermilks:

1. Green Wall Essential v2
2. Iron Man v4 aka “Half Dome Traverse”
3. Rail Problem on Roadside v3
4. The Prow sit on Birthday v2
5. Perfectly Chicken v5

Q: Do you want to climb at the Gorge?
A: I don’t think my hip can handle the descent right now ):

“The bouldering here is world-class. People come from all over to boulder in Bishop. I don’t think they come from all over to climb at the Gorge.” - Marco

Q: Do you want to climb at Pine Creek?
A: yeah! If it’s warm! I don’t want to be super cold if I could be beach vibes on the boulders instead:

It’s been years since I learned about WFR through a friend and became determined to do it, yet it is only now that I finally overcame the somewhat conflicting lifestyle implications of:

1. having two consecutive weeks of free time during a course offering (waitlists fill up months in advanced) to go to school when I could be climbing/backpacking/traveling instead, and

2. having a discretionary $1000+ laying around for tuition/etc.

I am now a Wilderness First Responder! It was awesome and if you’ve been thinking about it, you should definitely go for it!

>My educational experience at WFR

Two weeks ago, I drove down to Bishop and took the 80 hour certification course that crams a semester of material into 10 days(!!) It’s basically as intense as it sounds. Class is 8am to 5pm (9 hours), including two days with evening sessions, and one rest day. I knew all this going in, but it still felt even more brutal and whirlwind than I had imagined.

I hang out with nerds a lot so I am self-conscious about admiting that I did not thrive in and have no love for a classroom setting. I was actually pretty nervous about voluntarily inducing myself into a school-shaped experience! especially after some disasterous attempts at college.

But despite having an exam at the end, nothing else about WFR was like traditional school. I really liked being in a place where the other students all wanted to be there, and if passion isn’t enough, the $860 tuition ensured skin in the game.

Every morning I arrived full of coffee, and in the evening I left full of KNOWLEDGE. We built up to a full patient assessment system, drilled it until I caught my brain whispering questions to invisible patients as I fell asleep at night, and powered through physical trauma and medical topics. We learned to split broken stuff and package patient for transport in commercial equipment, and also whatever gear we had laying around based on the sport we were just doing.

For splint improv day, the instructors told us to bring some things we’d normally have on our wilderness excursions, so people showed up with skis, hiking poles, climbing cordalette, and even a pulaski(!) I learned that the foam frame and buckle cinches of my first-gen Patagonia Ascensionist climbing pack makes it a great ad-hoc splint base :') These are the true Dark Arts which we all hope will never need to be used.

The winter desert sun was alternatingly too cold and too hot, but we spent almost the entire lecture portion outdoors in our makeshift classroom of camp chairs and picnic blankets, which migrated between the sun and shade depending on the conditions. When we had to masked up and head inside to use the projector, I got really sleepy and fought to pay attention. Around the room I saw a lot of wilted necks, which quickly revitalised after moving back outside. The contrast was like night and day. It’s hard to believe I spent so many heavy years in one dank box of artificial lights after another, when moving air and real sun makes me feel 10 times more focused??

People take WFR for a wide variety of reasons, both recreational (climbers and backpackers who saw one too many accidents, outdoor group leaders, backcountry skiers, even someone who described themself as just a moderate dayhiker) and professional (National Parks Service employees who wanted to qualify for specific roles, aspiring ski patrollers, and people pursuing outdoor careers were paying their own tab—surprisingly no employer sponsorship).

I met a lot of dads but (to my knowledge) no moms. Many people were living out of their vehicles, and we were swapping van tours during breaks. There were young vagrants attached to nothing, older people on the verge of retirement, and people firmly established in adulthood but at a crossroads.

I stayed with some friends in Bishop and was super glad to save the daily two hour round trip commute to where I’m living in Mammoth. Students came from far and wide; fancy people rented airbnbs while car nomads were camped nearby at the Pit.

In the mornings, I woke up between 6 and 6:30am. I would savour my coffee, eat a big breakfast, hang out with the friends I was crashing with, and drive 10 minutes to the campus at White Mountain Research Center. I found myself super hungry ALL THE TIME and was eventually eating two sandwiches for lunch. I had forgotten how much energy learning took out of me! A couple days in I made an extra grocery run for fruit because I was having uncharacteristic sugar cravings, a side effect of focusing intensely that I find unintuitive. (I thought brains liked fat?)

There were textbook chapters assigned for each evening, but I was so beat, it was a legendary struggle to make it through any of it. I tried sitting under a bright lamp, but my eyes could not stay focused. I was eventually falling asleep before 9pm(!!)

In retrospect, I didn’t need to worry about studying in the evenings and should have just relaxed instead. The instructors and curriculum did a great job of maximally packing knowledge into our bodies! The instructors Dan and Viren were really engaging and had great stage presence, wild personal experience stories to go with the subject material, and their lecture style is overall highly memorable. We practiced multiple scenarios a day and review was built in so that I knew as much as I ever would by exam day. Out of nervousness I made one last attempt to study, and fell asleep with the book on my face as I did the other nights. The gesture was valiant but unnecessary. Everyone in the class passed the written test and the practical, which I think was destined if you made at least a moderate effort to pay attention to what the instructors said, and take part in the scenarios.

>Bonus fun fact: snakes on medical symbols

If you think of a well-known American medical symbol (some kind rod wrapped with repile), how many snakes do you envision on it?

One snake on a rod: that’s the symbol of Asclepius, Greek god associated with healing and medicine.

Two snakes on a winged staff: that’s the caduceus (kuh-doo-shuhs), a symbol of Hermes that has “ancient and consistent associations with trade, liars, thieves, eloquence, negotiation, alchemy, and wisdom” (Wikipedia).

There’s some modern confusion between the symbols, especially in American private medicine. When you hear those sirens coming for you, you better hope it’s one snake (Asclepius, healing) and not two (Hermes, prolific Olympian psychopomp and guide to the afterlife).

>My emotional experience at WFR

The pandemic era has been an uncertainty and exhaustion machine. You hear a lot of bad things happening everywhere. Big fires, floods and hurricanes, war, civil unrest, cracks in the fabric of society swallowing the people holding it together. I warded against immobilising helplessness with the COVID-safe workout plan: more climbing, more hiking, trying out trail running, skiing, and crosscountry skiing. My mind doesn’t have the mental energy to fester in unproductive negative thoughts if it’s already exhausted from cardio, but this strategy is at the expense of becoming detached from reality, and disconnected from emotional processing.

Taking WFR was an extremely grounding experience. It gave me a sense of confidence, frameworks to approach disasters, a shared vocabulary with other emergency personel, and many hours of practice exercising professional calm while interacting with distressed people. This is probably totally dilusional, but doing WFR felt like taking a sliver of control back from this chaotic world.

I have also slowly been coming unhinged. I think it’s appropriate to shield myself from the ups and downs of daily life, but at some point I have to face myself in a big-picture sense. I had always lived in cities to increase exposure to lots of different kinds of people. A serving of ambition, a serving of anarchy, a serving of hippie sentimentality and coporate pragmatism: keeping reminders of all that I can be at finger-tip’s reach. In March of 2020, I and the rest of the world exited that scene and dug into our holes for the long winter. But when normal life started trickling back, I did not return to the spring of human possibility and dynamism.

A lot of the human interactions I’ve had lately have been disappointing, misogynistic, or otherwise mind-numbingly boring (I recognise that while every human is a cosmos of unique hopes and dreams, sometimes the context of our interactions are hostile to revealing our inner complexities and instead thrust us into endless, inescapable, horrible small-talk). WFR functioned as a filtration system for interesting people, those who threw good sense out the window to spend 2 long and tough weeks in a desert learning wilderness medicine day and night.

Like in real life, I didn’t get along with everyone, and there were definitely personality clashes, but overwhelmingly it felt refreshing and energising to be around people inspecting and questioning their life, or pursuing an interest that will not directly result in improving their athleticism or increasing their salary, or bravely exploring a new career path. It kind of reminded me of my hitchhiking and couchsurfing days, where I often met people who didn’t have much, but were stoked to be alive and eager to do things and think wide thoughts. In Mammoth, I seem to be meeting the same person over and over again in an endless waking nightmare. I needed to break out of the cycle of being surrounded by people turning inward, or doing their lives as if it was a chore. This is crazy to me because I expect Mammoth to be full of weird vagrants and fun-loving travellers. I think I’ve burrowed too deeply into my hole and am suffocating inside it. I need to stop thinking and just go do something. Once I get moving, it will feel natural.

Merino wool is very important to me, a sweaty monster that struggles with temperature regulation, because it doesn’t feel terrible to sweat into yet also keeps you toasty on the other end of the climate spectrum. It’s a popular activewear material for its natural antimicrobial/antiodor properties, which it presumably inherits from its days of living on a sheep. I have found the hype to be real: camp out of a vehicle for a while and it becomes evident who is wearing synthetics (ripens quickly, like a banana), cotton (honorable mention), or merino (actual miracle fiber).

The downsides to merino are that it’s fragile, and heckin spendy (I guess it’s cheaper to make plastics than wait for sheep to grow), which is how I ended up hoarding a pair of mortally wounded merino leggings beyond its usefulness, unwilling to throw away the precious material that had dutifully warmed my legs in the backcountry for 6+ years.

I’d just been looking for merino fingerless gloves and buff earlier and was procrastinating on purchasing because $40+ for simple tubes garments seemed excessive. This inspired me to try sewing them myself :D

>Buff/hat no-sew

This was the easiest, there was no actual sewing involved after cutting off the leg segment! Turns out my leg width is also my neck width. I just had to darn a small hole.

Oh snap, accidental styling?? “Officier, I swear I was just trying to stay warm.”

>Fingerless gloves

This was tricker, because one of the leg segments had big rips to work around. The tubes ended up being straightforward to sew. For the thumbs, I just left holes. I’m considering adding thumb attachments in the future, although the nice thing about the simple tube is that I can use them as running mitts by folding them over my hands. And also, I’m lazy.

>Conclusion

A success! I’ve been wearing these new, un-holey accessories nonstop (maybe I should figure out how to use the so-called smart thermostat).

What should I do with the leftover fabric? There’s quite a bit but the shape is irregular, and I don’t have more cylindrical body parts left in need of coverage. Maybe I could double-layers the hand warmers, my hands are always freezing T_T

I host my website on Github Pages because it’s simple, I don’t need serverside stuff for a humble static website, I’m already in Github all day errday, and it was a top quality option when I set it up a billion technological years ago.

A feature of modern hosting platforms (e.g. Vercel) that I miss with GH Pages is getting automatic site previews on each PR, which is nice for showing other people your WIPs, or (if you’re lone-wolfing it) quickly checking if things are broken without bothering with your local dev server.

So I thought I’d clobber something together using Github Actions and taking advantage of the directory structure of static sites :D

>How it works

To publish my website, I use a github action to compile each commit to the main branch, then push that output to the gh-pages branch.

Adding a PR preview is similar: build the site on each commit to a pull request, and push the result to the /pull/{pr-number} folder on the gh-pages branch. This means the preview can be accessed at https://github.io/username/project/pull/{pr-number}. Seems simple enough, right?

>Walkthrough

The end result is found here (spoiler alert): https://github.com/daiyi/gh-pages-pr-previews.

>Create a new static site

For this tutorial I’m starting with a fresh Hugo site, but you can use whatever static site generator you fancy.

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# create new site
hugo new site gh-pages-pr-previews

# add theme
cd gh-pages-pr-previews
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/LukasJoswiak/etch.git themes/etch
echo theme = \"etch\" >> config.toml

# create a blog post
hugo new posts/pr-previews-for-gh-pages.md
echo 'I am making my website' >> content/posts/pr-previews-for-gh-pages.md

# check that it works at http://localhost:1313/
hugo server -D

>Host your site on github pages and automate deploy with github actions

Now it’s time to tell Github about it. Create a repo at https://github.com/new (I initialised it as blank). Then,

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# create first commit
git add .
git commit -m "create website"

# push to github
git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/gh-pages-pr-previews.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

# create a github actions workflow
mkdir -p .github/workflows
touch .github/workflows/gh-pages.yml

To automate publishing your site to gh pages on every commit to main, add the following to the .github/workflows/gh-pages.yml file then push the change to github (source here):

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# .github/workflows/gh-pages.yml
name: github pages

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main # deploy main. If your branch is `master`, you'll have to replace that throughout this file.

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Set domain
        run: echo "DOMAIN=www.daiyi.co" >> $GITHUB_ENV # TODO set your custom domain
        # If you're using the default github pages url, use this instead:
        # run: echo "DOMAIN=${{ github.actor }}.github.io" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      - name: Checkout website repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          submodules: true # fetch the theme
          # you need to set this as an environment env if your repo or any submodules (e.g the theme) is private:
          # token: ${{ secrets.PRIVATE_REPO_TOKEN }}

      - name: Setup Hugo
        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
        with:
          hugo-version: "0.88.1" # TODO set this to your hugo version

      - name: Set production base URL
        run: echo "BASE_URL=https://${{ env.DOMAIN }}/${{ github.event.repository.name }}/" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      - name: Build website
        run: hugo --baseURL "${{ env.BASE_URL }}"
        env:
          HUGO_ENV: production

      - name: Deploy
        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          publish_dir: ./public
          cname: ${{ env.DOMAIN }} # TODO you need to set this if you're using a custom domain. Otherwise you can remove it.

Once the file is in main, you should see the workflow running in the Actions tab: https://github.com/daiyi/gh-pages-pr-previews/actions.

When that’s done, activate github pages by going to Settings -> Pages and picking the gh-pages branch under “Source”. Click “Save”. Checking “Enforce HTTPS” is recommended.

The github pages site should be live! I am using a custom domain so mine is at https://daiyi.co/gh-pages-pr-previews/. The default should look like: https://daiyi.github.io/gh-pages-pr-previews/.

If you look at your new site, you’ll see that there’s no posts, because your post was a draft :'D You can make it live by removing draft: true in /content/posts/pr-previews-for-gh-pages.md:

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 ---
 title: "Pr Previews for Gh Pages"
 date: 2021-11-03T12:45:17-07:00
-draft: true
 ---

 I am making my website

If you commit and push this change, you’ll see another github action kick off. It will take a minute for your site to reflect the new content, but if you keep refreshing the post will appear :D

>Automate static site previews on pull requests

Now we get to the finale. Modify the gh-pages.yml workflow to also compile the site on every commit to a pull request (file source here):

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diff --git a/.github/workflows/gh-pages.yml b/.github/workflows/gh-pages.yml

on:
   push:
     branches:
       - main # deploy main. If your branch is `master`, you'll have to replace that throughout this file.
+  pull_request: # This will publish a site preview on every pull request, and also run the build command to test if the site is broken.

 jobs:
   deploy:
     runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
+    env:
+      PR_PATH: pull/${{github.event.number}}
     steps:
+      - name: Comment on PR
+        uses: hasura/comment-progress@v2.2.0
+        if: github.ref != 'refs/heads/main'
+        with:
+          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
+          repository: ${{ github.repository }}
+          number: ${{ github.event.number }}
+          id: deploy-preview
+          message: "Starting deployment of preview ⏳..."
+
       - name: Set domain
         run: echo "DOMAIN=www.daiyi.co" >> $GITHUB_ENV # TODO set your custom domain
         # If you're using the default github pages url, use this instead:
         # run: echo "DOMAIN=${{ github.actor }}.github.io" >> $GITHUB_ENV

       - name: Checkout website repo
         uses: actions/checkout@v2
         with:
           submodules: true # fetch the theme
           # you need to set this as an environment env if your repo or any submodules (e.g the theme) is private:
           # token: ${{ secrets.PRIVATE_REPO_TOKEN }}

       - name: Setup Hugo
         uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
         with:
           hugo-version: "0.88.1" # TODO set this to your hugo version

       - name: Set production base URL
         run: echo "BASE_URL=https://${{ env.DOMAIN }}/${{ github.event.repository.name }}/" >> $GITHUB_ENV

       - name: Build website
         run: hugo --baseURL "${{ env.BASE_URL }}"
         env:
           HUGO_ENV: production

-      - name: Deploy
+      - name: Deploy if this is the `main` branch
         uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
+        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
         with:
           github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
           publish_dir: ./public
           cname: ${{ env.DOMAIN }} # TODO you need to set this if you're using a custom domain. Otherwise you can remove it.
+
+      - name: Set base URL for preview if PR
+        if: github.ref != 'refs/heads/main'
+        run: echo "BASE_URL=https://${{ env.DOMAIN }}/${{ github.event.repository.name }}/${{ env.PR_PATH}}/" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+
+      - name: Build PR preview website
+        if: github.ref != 'refs/heads/main'
+        run: hugo --baseURL "${{ env.BASE_URL }}"
+        env:
+          HUGO_ENV: staging
+
+      - name: Deploy to PR preview
+        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
+        if: github.ref != 'refs/heads/main'
+        with:
+          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
+          publish_dir: ./public
+          destination_dir: ${{ env.PR_PATH }} # TODO you need to set this if you're using a custom domain. Otherwise you can remove it.
+
+      - name: Update comment
+        uses: hasura/comment-progress@v2.2.0
+        if: github.ref != 'refs/heads/main'
+        with:
+          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
+          repository: ${{ github.repository }}
+          number: ${{ github.event.number }}
+          id: deploy-preview
+          message: "A preview of ${{ github.event.after }} is uploaded and can be seen here:\n\n ✨ ${{ env.BASE_URL }} ✨\n\nChanges may take a few minutes to propagate. Since this is a preview of production, content with `draft: true` will not be rendered. The source is here: https://github.com/${{ github.repository }}/tree/gh-pages/${{ env.PR_PATH }}/"

It’s nice to clean up after ourselves, so create a new github action file .github/workflows/pr-close.yml that deletes previews when PRs are closed (source here):

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# .github/workflows/pr-close.yml

name: delete preview on PR close
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [closed]

jobs:
  delete_preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    env:
      PR_PATH: pull/${{github.event.number}}
    steps:
      - name: make empty dir
        run: mkdir public

      - name: delete folder
        uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          publish_dir: ./public
          destination_dir: ${{ env.PR_PATH }}

      - name: Comment on PR
        uses: hasura/comment-progress@v2.2.0
        with:
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          repository: ${{ github.repository }}
          number: ${{ github.event.number }}
          id: deploy-preview
          message: "🪓 PR closed, deleted preview at https://github.com/${{ github.repository }}/tree/gh-pages/${{ env.PR_PATH }}/"

Let’s test this out on a PR :D

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git checkout -b pr-previews
git add .
git commit -m "workflows for PR previews + delete on PR close"
git push --set-upstream origin pr-previews

Go to github and open a pull request for that branch. A friendly robot will let you know they’re working on your request:

The comment will update with preview urls once the preview is ready:

Check out the link in the preview. It should contain a site that is exactly like the site at main, since we haven’t made changes to it. If everything looks good, merge that PR, upon which the robots will come in and clean up:

Here’s a demo of an open pull request where I add a new blog post:

The preview for that PR: https://daiyi.github.io/gh-pages-pr-previews/pull/2/.

And the source: https://github.com/daiyi/gh-pages-pr-previews/tree/gh-pages/pull/2/.

Nice! It works!

>Considerations

I haven’t thought too hard about if this is too jank for a Serious Website™, but it should be fine for low-key stuff like blogs, portfolios, or documentation.

The preview urls shouldn’t interfere with your site unless the /pull subdirectory is already occupied with a web page. And the preview pages also won’t appear on your production sitemap/rss feeds/other generated indeces since the static site generator doesn’t know about it while compiling the production version of the site. If you’re worried about that, it may be prudent to use ENV flags to conditionally toggle off production stuff in the PR preview sites, like web crawler indexing (noindex,nofollow, robots.txt, etc). In my example, I set HUGO_ENV: production for main and HUGO_ENV: staging for PRs. You can look into if your static site generator/theme supports that.

Also I am not compelled to spend the energy to become a workflow configuration language expert and I’m sure it could be written with more elegance, if that is a concept that can be applied to yaml files. Feel free to make a PR and show me how it should be done :D

Let me know if you use this strategy! I found someone else’s attempt at implementing this idea but thought I’d try my own hand at it (and also completing the “delete preview on PR close” feature). I’m curious if someone else out there wants to make PR previews for gh pages for some weird reason \o/

I found myself here because I use Kailh Choc switches on my One True Ergonomic Mechanical Keyboard, the Corne LP. The Choc switches have a unique shape like an American wall outlet and thus are only compatible with weird American plug-shaped keycaps. Choc keycaps seem to only come in black and white, which misses out on the fun customisation the rest of the mechanical keyboard world enjoys. MKUltra batch dyes Choc-compatible keycaps but it’s usually out of stock and the shades are more crayon-like than I’d prefer.

If you are reading this, you may have fallen into the same dark rabbithole of mechanical keyboard customization as I have, and if a primal urge haunts you to bring the non-commercially produced palette of your dreams into the light of reality then take solace: I have studied the reddit and discord lore, tried it for myself, and have distilled the wisdom from the internet and my own experience into this handy document.

Note that my process involved elaborate backflips to make a gradient from the three primary colours while trying to minimise waste and work around COVID supply chain issues. You may be able to skip some steps by buying more dyes.

An outline of the steps I took:

• Assemble the tools
• Make a plan
• Dye the keycaps
  • Preparation
  • Mix the colours
  • Put the caps into the dye
• Results

>Assemble the tools

I spent a couple of weeks passively accumulating these things. You could probably do it faster if you didn’t stubbornly aim to fish them out your house recycling bin like I did.

1. White PBT keycaps

   • Keycaps are made with plastic, either with ABS (lower melting point) or PBT (higher melting point). I used PBT here, I heard that ABS will deform in the boiling dye bath.
   • Note that finger oil or UV damage from older keycaps can cause irregularities. I used newish secondhand keycaps and it is only noticable up close.
   • If you’re buying new keycaps for this, might as well get extras in case you goof or want to experiment with colours. I did not have extras, so it was a measure thrice, cut once kind of deal.

2. iDye Poly, a plastic dye. Make sure to get the Poly version, the iDye Natural will not work on plastics.

   • I got the three primary colours Blue, Yellow, and Red because colour theory would lead me to believe that I could get all of the colours for the price of 3. Pigments, unlike digital pixels, cannot actually mix into literally every colour, so if you go with this approach be sure to know its limitations. For example, if you want pink caps, you may want to get a pink dye.
   • Support your local art supply store! Otherwise this is a good online source.
   • I have read in older tutorials that Rit Dyemore (another plastics dye) doesn’t work as well. Have not confirmed personally.

3. Small jars with lids, or ziplocks, for storing extra dye power.

   • iDye Poly comes as a powder in a dissolvable pouch meant to be tossed entirely into a buck to dye heaps of fabrics, so for a handful of keycaps you don’t need very much of it.
   • I find that containers much easier to use than plastic ziplock bags because they stay upright and are easy to pour from. If you use ziplock bags, you may need a plastic spoon to get small amounts of powder out.

4. Glass jars for mixing dye colours and dying, if you don’t want to ruin a cooking pot.

   • If you don’t care about ruining a cooking pot, note that you’ll have to thoroughly wash the pot between each dye colour, potentially with bleach (according to some sources). I used the glass jars tactic to avoid this hassle.

5. Small pot for boiling water.

   • it just needs to be big enough to fit a glass jar from step 4 above.
   • I boiled water in this pot, and placed the glass jars of dye into the boiling water to heat it. The dye does not contact the pot, so it continues to be food-safe.

6. Chopsticks or other way to fish the keycaps out of the dye. Maybe a plastic takeout spoon would work too. I saw internet advice that metal should be avoided as it may cause scratches.

7. Distilled, filtered, or otherwise non-shitty water

   • The tap water where I live is really gross in the winter and precipitates white flecks when boiled. The flecks will stick to your keycaps and cause weird discoloration.

8. Rags or paper towels for the inevitable mess

9. Gloves, if you don’t want your hands to get smelly and colourful

10. Non-food-safe container for rinsing. As to not sacrifice a pot forever you could use a yogurt container or paint water can or hair bleach bowl or anything you never plan to eat out of again.

11. Induction cooktop/hot plate (optional).

    • The hot dye smells bad so I took it outside. If you have a fume hood, that might be sufficient.

12. Stopwatch (optional). For science.

>Make a plan

If your keys are not interchangable, and you want to make a gradient with many colours, then you need a plan. For example, on my keyboard, all keys are interchangable except the 2 homing keys (keys with bumps so you know where to place your hands without looking) which are always at the F and J position (in QWERTY), and two 1.5u sized keys that always go at the thumbs:

I photoshopped some prototypes to get a feel for what colour scheme I liked (very rudimentary, I did this on my phone):

I traced my keyboard on paper and drew out the keys, using colored pens to mark which keys would be which colour group based on the prototype:

And then I PHYSICALY placed keycaps onto my drawing, making sure to put the special keys (homing keys and thumb keys) in their exact positions. Then I removed the keys by colour group, placing them physically together, and annotating which group they were in:

Most of this planning is probably overkill for most people, but because I didn’t have any extra keycaps and also was making a colour scheme where the homing keys needed to be in a specific position, I did not want to make any mistake. Use whatever strategy works for you!

>Dye the keycaps

>Preparation

From my hair dying experience I went into this first by putting on plastic gloves with towels ready.

1. Carefully cut the dye packets and poured them into the small containers (or ziplocks). I suggest you do this in a sink or bathtub because it could go catastrophically wrong. Make sure the containers are dry!
   
   

2. If your keycaps are used, wash them in soap. If they are new, maybe wash them anyway, who knows where they’ve been.
   

3. Fill the food-safe pot with water and set it aside to boil on the hotplate.

4. Fill the non-food-safe rinsing container with water and set it next to the boiling pot.

>Mix the colours

I mixed the colours in the glass jars one at a time, since I was learning on the fly.

1. Pour a small amount of water into the glass jar until it could cover all the keys you plan to dye at once, that’s all you need. I was dying 6 keys at time, so I used very little water.

2. Add a pinch of dye powder into the water (a metaphorical pinch. I would not actually touch the powder with my hands). If you want pastels, you need to REALLY dilute the colours. I mean really seriously dilute them. Because I was mixing in such small jars, I barely needed to use a dusting of powder. It’s better to dye the keys too light than too dark, because you can still fix your mistake. Imagine you’re putting habenero sauce or sichuan chilis into a soup. That’s right. You’re playing with fire.

3. Put the glass jar of dye into the pot of boiling water, wait a bit for it to heat up. Stir it with chopsticks. I didn’t want to ruin my cooking thermometer so I didn’t measure how hot the dye got, but I’m guessing it was nowhere near boiling since I didn’t scratch my keys like others reported when things got close to the limit. To complicate things further, I live at elevation so water boils at a lower temperature (92c/200f instead of 100c/212f), so I couldn’t get it as hot as yall can at sea level anyway. Luckily, none of this seemed to matter in the end. Do not leave glass jar unattended, the boiling water bubbles might flip it.
   

>Put the caps into the dye

1. When the dye seems warm enough or has been sitting in the boiling water for a while, drop your keys in. Be sure you have a plan on how you’re going to get the keys out first, and if you made a dying plan, double check that you’re dying the correct keys. Start the stopwatch. Check the colours progress of the keys every 30-60 seconds. I did this by picking one out with chopsticks and rinsing it in the other container to check its true shade, and tossing it back in if needed. If you’re going for pastels, you may want to check more often as to not overshoot. The keys I made took 2-4 minutes to get to the desired shade. One experimenter’s chart seems to show that colder temps for longer periods makes more pastel-like colours. In my experience the diluteness of the dye seemed to matter the most.

2. When the colour looks right, take all the keys out and dunk them in the rinsing container. I took them out with chopsticks individually, but you could also pour them out into a mesh drainer over the sink. I did not do this because I didn’t want to sacrifice the food-safety of a mesh drainer, and I didn’t want to dye my sink with hot dye. Do what feels right to you.
   

3. Once in the rinsing bowl, rub each key with gloved hand to get extra residue off. I’ve seen people running their keys under cold water, though the rinsing bowl worked fine for me. I noticed the keys get ever so slightly darker after being rinsed and sitting around to dry. Maybe it’s a trick of the light? If you want pastel keys, I would take them out of the dye when they’re slightly lighter than you want them.

4. Lightly dry keys with towel and place it on the corresponding positions on your dying plan paper. I liked doing this as I went through each colour so I could see the keys in context, in case I needed to darken the colours to get a better match.
   

5. Repeat with other key colour groups.

6. When you have all the keys dyed, inspect the gradient to see if there’s any corrections you want to make. You can only make keys darker at this point.

>Results

You did it! Make sure keycaps are completely dry before putting them back on the keyboard. Take a victorious photo. Take a selfie. Tell your friends about it.

Hot tip: wait until dyes are cooled before pouring down the drain. They’re more likely to stain when hot. I poured it down the bathtub drain because the hole is bigger.

Putting my face close to my newly dyed keys, I can definitely tell they are DIY. There are spots on the bottom or side of keycaps that don’t take colour at all or at the same rate as the rest of the surface, I am guessing it’s a relic from the manufacturing technique?

I also wish I had gotten a more sky blue rather than a dark blue, but that was the first colour I tried and now I know it was insufficiently dilute. The dyed keys look matte rather than shiny as ABS keys are, almost as if painted by watercolour, which is kind of neat if unorthodox.

Was it the best use of my time spending hours supervising a boiling pot? Maybe not. Was it relaxing as heck sitting in my front yard listening to podcasts? Heck yeah. Overall, the keyboard cuteness has increased. And it’s been a long time since I’ve let myself indulge in grotesquely unviable hobby ventures!

Okay so. How did it go for you?? I’m curious to hear your experiences and see your results. Is there a good dying resourced I missed? A piece of reddit lore overlooked? Let me know in the comments below, or on discord or twitter or something.

The nice thing about saving the extra dye power is that now I can dye more keys in the future. [OMINOUS MUSIC, DISTANT SCREAMING]

After the last few years of insufficient costuming stoke, I was suddenly consumed by the Halloween Spirit after serendipitously finding a cardboard box exactly the length of Mica in the house recycling bin with 2 hours to go until sunset!

This was a project heavy in scissors and packaging tape. I covered the cardboard with cardstock to achieve the shiny white van chassis, and coloured accents with permanent marker. Lots of tape was used to hold the front hood and windshield curve in place. To secure the dingo, I masking-taped a bandana to the inside top of the cardboard and tied it around her torso.

The van’s infamous XL solar panels are modeled by a black packaging box I found in the recycling. The roof vent opens, just like real life :D

The bike racks I made by rolling up an inside-out bank statement envelope (also from the recycing!)

At first when I put her in the van, Mica got really stiff and didn’t want to walk. She was only convinced once I put on her harness and leash (usually an indication of good things, only partially a trick this time).

Then we were off to the town Halloween block party!

The party neighborhood was closed to cars, with tons of kids enjoying the trafficless haven. Mica is weary of kids, so she stuck really close to me, running the van repeatedly into my leg without proprioception of her new vastness. bonk. bonk. Van dog was a big hit with the adults and (to her dismay) also the kids. As her Halloween haul, Mica managed to score a chicken dog treat.

There was a lot of smoke lately, but it cleared up in time for a Sunday peak! This was going to be Mica’s longest hike yet, and daiyi’s second time up Paiute Pass Trail this season (1.5 weeks ago to climb Emerson). Long and good day out with friends.

• Trailhead: North Lake Hiker Parking (37.230580, -118.618835), or the overflow up the road. Many stern warnings against day parking at North Lake Campground.
• Route: Paiute Pass to East Ridge
• Total distance: 22.5 miles, 5,242 ft gain
  • 14.2 miles and 3,047 ft gain on trail
  • 8.4 miles and 2,155 ft gain cross-country
• Time car-to-car: 12 hours
• Good for dogs? Long but great terrain. Last 100 vertical feet is tricky routefinding for dogs

>Mica’s trip report

Hi, I’m Mica, I’m a dog. Today I hike my 12th SPS, which stands for Sierra Pup Summits ;D

Some shenanigans at the start of the day. As we drive to the trailhead my friend Spot texts us that their home got broken into by a human over night and they were 30 minutes late to meet us. The decision-making and communication were rushed, so we end up starting without them a bit past 8am, thinking they would be fast and catch.

We pull over after 1 hour 45 min at the beach at Paiute Lake, seeing if Spot and company would catch up.

After 30 minutes they hadn’t arrived, so we continue. The humans sound worried, but I knew Spot is great at hiking!

At Paiute Pass we have a big view of the trail, and Yelly spies a white dot that could be a dog. Soon Spot is here, with his people Lucas and Jaymie close behind!

The humans sound excited and relieved, and resolve to call each other to hash out specifics in the future. I don’t know how to use a phone, I’m a dog!

7 miles into the hike, Spot’s humans Jaymie and Lucas are ready to turn around. It’s been a rough morning for them with the break-in. We have a big group hug, I give Spot a goodbye lick, and we head northwest off the trail to start the big cross-country part of the day.

It’s super hot and my tongue is dragging on the floor. We pass by some streams on the map but they’re dry, because it’s late season. Luckily there’s a lot of little run-offs as we do the long, lumpy traverse of Humphreys Basin. I go for a swim every opportunity I can!

The humans find a running stream and fill up on water, treating with tablets. I can drink anything, I’m a dog!

Stephanie is satisfied with how far she’s come, so she finds a shady rock to camp out under while the rest of us continue. daiyi gives her a foam sitting pad they found on the ground earlier!

The first part of the slopes is sandy scree and small talus, which is easy for dogs. The last hundred feet of gain to the top gets trickier. It’s definitely possible for a dog, but keeping it class 2 is not always obvious. I’m lucky to have daiyi and Yelly working together to help me find the best way up.

It’s still hot! I’m panting up a storm and Yelly shares some of her funky tube water.

Our long day is only halfway done! The way down is much easier for me than the way up, because we drop on the slope earlier instead of following the ridge like we did on the way up. Soon we reunite with Stephanie, who looks very happily rested. Now we have 4 miles of cross-country back to the trail.

We’re all really feeling the small ups and downs on the remaining cross-country. Daiyi has had holes in their shoes for the last couple of hikes and it makes their soles sore. I’m a dog, I don’t wear shoes! My toe beans were definitely getting a little beat, I shed a bit of top skin and had some rubbing, but no lost toe nails or blisters :D

Just 7 miles of Paiute Pass trail left, which goes by much quicker. I’m getting tired, and sticking to the heels of my human friends.

Although I somehow still have energy to chase one last squirrel! I almost get it this time but it tricks me by standing very very still.

It’s much cooler now, but I still go for a swim in the ponds between Paiute Pass and Loch Leven.

Maybe starting an alpine route at 11:30am is not taking the Sierra seriously enough. I thought this climb/hike was just really fun.

• Trailhead: North Lake Hiker Parking (37.230580, -118.618835), or the overflow up the road. Many stern warnings against day parking at North Lake Campground.
• Route: Waterfall route (SE face, 5.5), descending the South Slope (class 2, class 3 at the top).
• Total distance: 8.5 miles, 4,122 ft gain. 7.5 hours car-to-car in a non-rushed pace.
  • Approach: 2.5mi trail + 0.2mi cross-country, 1900 ft gain. 1.5 hours with lunch. Hitched a ride from overflow parking.
  • Climb: 1 mile, 2,122 ft gain. 2 hours 40 min
  • Descent: 5 miles, 4,074 ft drop. 2 hours 45 min with swim. Walked a little extra to overflow parking.
• Good for dogs?: no, even the descent had a bit of class 3.

>Trip report

It was almost 10:30am when we left the house in Mammoth to check out conditions at the trailhead, ready to turn around at the car park if the smoke was bad. I could barely see Mt Tom or the White Mountains as we descended into Bishop, which felt like bad luck. But the air improved as we passed Aspendell, so we went for it!

We hitched a ride with a retired geologist in a truck (who stopped to converse with a geologist walking up the road with a hammer in hand) and started the approach at 11:30pm.

The air felt more clean as we went higher up! which made me feel optimistic about this excursion turning out better than holing up at home with the air purifiers.

>Waterfall route

We intended to solo then rope up whenever I felt uncomfortable, but in the end Marco hiked the half rope and handful of cams/nuts up in his pack, as “training weight” :')

I found the chimney quite comfy (my fingers are in 5.10 rock climbing shape, but I never solo anything), especially with all the hand cracks, chockstone jugs, and off-widths I could slot my butt into and rest in. Compared to Cathedral (5.6) and Tenaya (5.5) (which are admittedly very differently styled climbs from one another and difficult to compare), I would want to simul and not solo those, but I would solo Emerson again.

On the other hand, I have heard the chimney is slick with water early-season, and have heard of very bad epics and accidents on this route from beginner climbers. Let’s just say I’m glad I did this after I was comfortable well above the grade, acclimated, and trail-running and cross-country slogging all summer, which kept my experience solidly in the type 1 fun category.

I don’t own approach shoes, so I wore oversized climbing shoes the entire way to the summit. My partner did the whole thing in approach shoes (but he also climbs 5.10 trad in approach shoes 😱).

>Rockfall

The gully was definitely the loosest part of the climb. There’s no obvious route, aside from finding the most solid rock possible. We passed a party of 2, and scrambled up a different way than they did.

At one point I knocked off a small rock, which hit my hand as it tumbled down the slope. I didn’t yell “rock!” as quickly as I could have. That small rock triggered loose rocks to slide, which caused a large rock to glance off the shoulder of one of the other party, who was directly below us at this point. We yelled if everyone was ok, and it sounded like the person hit by the rock was upset and had a sore shoulder, but was otherwise able to continue. Pretty spooky.

If this climb were 10 miles further into the backcountry then I’d say the route is solid and safe for small parties that are communicating, but since it’s just an hour or two from the road, the chance of multiple parties is high, and that makes rockfall a serious issue ):

>Ridge

I arrived at the summit after 2 hours 40 min of climbing, as Marco ate some expired candy found in the summit register (?!). The hazy view was better towards the west and worse in the north (toward the direction of the Caldor Fire). I found both of Alicia’s signatures from this year.

>Descending the south slope

The trick with the descent is to keep left (skier’s left). I kept getting sucked out right, which cliffed out. Closer to the bottom, the left is a faster sandy use trail whereas the right is loose talus.

The entire time I was thinking about how some people take this slog both down and up the mountain. The climbing route was a much more pleasant way up :O

We hit the trail after 1 hour 15 of descending! So nice to not be slipping around anymore.

The walk out on trail is casual. I’m usually somewhat sensitive about smoke during cardio, but I was feeling great. We’re back in Bishop in time for dinner at Mountain Rambler, which my friends assure me doesn’t taste as amazing when you haven’t just climbed a big mountain :D

>Stats and overview

• Trailhead: Rush Creek (“Gem Lake Trail” on goog maps), across from Silver Lake Campground in June Lake. (37.783236, -119.127061)
• route: Northeast ridge (class 2-3). Sticking to the ridge is more class 3, going low around the ridge is more class 2. But I think ultimately some class 3 moves must be made.
• Total distance: 28 miles with 8,314 ft gain. 22.3 mi trail and 5.7 mi cross-country.
  • Hike in: 14 miles with 6,968 ft gain
  • Hike out: 14 miles with 1,374 ft gain. Lots of ups and downs on the trail :')
• Time car-to-car: 15 hr 15 min. With 1.5 hour swim/nap at Marie Lakes :D and 50 min on the summit (!)
• Good for dogs? Mica would not be able to climb the NE ridge. Secor says the north face is class 2, but I could not easily see that route and am glad I didn’t bring Mica because she’d probably trundle the heck out of that slope.

>Trip Report

After going up Castle Peak and friends two days before, I was feeling good about my hip and ready to join my first ever Sierra Challenge! Since hiking Mount Davis last year and catching a glimpse of the peaks past Ritter and Banner, I was keen to go to the more remote parts of the Sierra, and Rodgers was nestled nicely between the Ritter Range and Yosemite, two places I like a lot.

That morning was unexpectedly chilly (low 40s F?). In combination with walking briskly up the trail, and yarding on my hiking poles which cut the circulation from my hands, I had a couple minutes on the verge of screaming barfies. Painful! Maybe liner gloves next time.

I was suprised to learn that all these lakes above June are dammed!

I spent a brief couple of miliseconds crossing the JMT, where a ranger who saw me in my getup and said “have a nice run!”.

I passed a mule team at Rush Creek, the namesake of the trailhead, and one of the guides told me they had an entire kitchen packed up for their clients.

After 4 hours 15 min I was at the first Marie Lake, where the trail tapers off. Rafee said he’d be there at 10am, so I was glad to have half an hour to splash around the lake, lay in the sun to dry off, and eat my first lunch :D

At 10:30, half an hour past our meeting time, Rafee is nowhere to be seen. I’m low key wondering if he’d somehow passed me without either of us noticing. Then it’s 11am, an hour past our meeting time, and I’m wondering if Rafee is ok. I notice I have a tiny bit of cell signal, and I text my housemates that I was thinking about turning back because Rafee is missing. My housemate Yelly checks Rafee’s inreach tracks and tells me that he’s on his way, so I nap on a warm slab. Soon enough, Rafee arrives at the lake! He has a friend with him.

We circle the lake counterclockwise and head to upper Marie Lakes along a stream. With company, my stoke for a long dayhike returns and I’m feeling energised!

The next part is the most involved bit of backcountry. There’s some slab and talus slopes to a ridge, and eventually this sideways traversal of a loose scree and talus slope:

On the way up, I stick to the ridge, which is up to class 3 with cool exposure at times. This could be kept mostly class 2 and goes slightly faster by continuing to conture lower on the slopes instead, which is how I did it on the way down. Overall I felt that it’s a lot more straightforward and less tedius than other peaks. It’s not great for dogs, so I’m glad Mica didn’t come along this time.

I reach the summit around 13:30, where I realise there’s a lot more smoke than when I started this morning.

It’s hard to wrap my head around, but Yosemite Valley is somehow directly west of us, and I could see straight to Half Dome.

I chill at the top snacking and reading the summit register for a pretty long time, maybe 50 minutes, which is bold consider how much hiking there was left to do! There were only a handful of parties to sign this year, and the notebook had dates back to the 70s.

I felt like the descent to Marie Lakes went pretty quickly and uneventfully, except for one loose block I pulled out that hit my finger and made it bleed. Scrambling is no joke.

The conversation was getting kind of bro-y and I was longing for solitude, so I jogged ahead when we hit the trail. I descended into a dense smog.

There were a lot of small ups and downs along the lakes, which I’d forgotten about, and I really felt it while jogging out. I startled a resting backpacker at a log crossing, who was surprised dayhikers were still out so late, asking if I had a headlamp. I did have one! but the goal was not to use it (again) :P

Finally I reached the van at nearly 20:30, right as it got too dark to see the path. I was really nauseous and could barely sit up, my skin was flushed like I had a fever, and I felt hot and cold at the same time. My first thought was did I get COVID?? and then I suspected the 9 mile jog in bad air. I pulled my face close to the filtered van fans to breathe the good stuff.

I was actually barely holding it together those last couple of miles, but the thought of 5 pints of ice cream and leftover curry kept me going. Now I felt too sick to enjoy ice cream, but I heated up the curry and forced myself to eat. I was in no condition to drive, so I slept where I was parked, just a half hour from my house. The next morning I drove out at an equally smokey sunrise and was really shocked to see people on the streets running and cycling as if nothing was wrong. The smoke remained bad through that week, so this was my first and last Sierra Challenge for the year.

I haven’t spent much time around Truckee, except to climb/pick blackberries at the Emeralds, or crag at Donner Summit, so I made a stop on way home from Washington and Oregon (escaping the fire smoke up north) to finally do a hike in fresh air. Kind of grim, knowing what’s to come.

I devised this loop out of Donner Summit/Castle Pass Trailhead that hits two peaks and a lake, which was about 17 miles, 5000 ft of gain, and took me 8.5 hours with plenty of swimming and sitting around enjoying the view :D Castle Peak itself took me 1.3 hours to summit.

>Trip report

The dirt road to the trailhead was a bit spooky for me, even though I had the 4x4 high clearance van, so I parked in a pullout 1.1 miles before the actual trailhead.

I had a bit of dirt road walking before arriving at Castle Pass.

At the pass, the vert begins, with a solid use trail the entire way. It’s steep and sandy, but not so bad and overall pretty frontcountry. As a testament to that, I saw a parent going up carrying a toddler in a backpack.

After gaining the summit ridge, there’s some fun slabs and use trail traversing past the little castles to the biggest castle, on the eastmost side of the ridge.

The scramble to the top was a cool ramp full of big blocky jugs sticking out. It took me about 1 hour 20 to reach the summit of Castle Peak from where I parked partway up the road!

I hung out on top for quite a while, honestly marveling at the novelty of blue skies. Heading down, I encountered another solo hiker who was also contemplating going to Basin Peak, but spooked by the exposure of the connecting ridge and the red flag winds. I was actually glad for the wind, since I started hiking in the middle of the day and it would have been otherwise extremely hot. Also, the ridge looked so pastoral and cute. I munched on dried mangos and headed towards Basin.

Descending from Basin Peak and towards my next objective of swimming in a lake, I spied something surprising in the distance.

Ok, scrapping the plan for Devils Oven Lake, I continued onward to check out Warren Lake

Warren Lake is REALLY nice. Secluded, with backcountry camp sites, and I heard there’s good fishing. Perhaps the lack of visitors is due to the steep 1000-foot drop over 1 mile to get down to the lake. The fun part is climbing back out after :P

After climbing out of Warren Lake, I was totally sweaty and sticky as I was when I had started. Now I looped back towards where I parked, taking Warren Lake Trail. Luckily it was late in the day, so I got some relief from the heat in the shadow of the Castle-Basin ridge.

Crossing over the last pass of the day, I took a small detour to Frog Lake lookout. Ominous smoke in the distance (I’m guessing from Dixie Fire).

The rest of the hike was pretty downhill! It was already dark by the time I passed the Donner Pass rest stop (kind of funny that the trail cuts so close to the highway).

Our roadtrip vibes this time was different: we wanted to go with the flow, see what we could see, and let serendipity take the wheel. It was a heat wave, so the cooling rivers, waterfalls, and lakes were much more appealing than my usual desire to be on a rock or peak.

>Did you know you can just drive into a watermelon patch?

True to our mission of spontaneity, I was already detouring off the 5 just 1.5 hours out of the Bay Area to follow a series of watermelon emoji signs, which is not what you do if you want to get to Seattle as fast as possible.

In a big open lot, the person at the kiosk waved me onto a truck scale (!!) and weighted the van, then gave verbal instructions on how to get to the watermelon patch, which you drive your entire car into! There was a little Prius there, and a gloved person furiously tossing melons into the trunk, clearly an expert. It was nearly 100f with a dry breeze. This is a class of fruit I never considered recreationally harvesting.

We googled “how to pick a watermelon”, walked around the patch in flip flops, and selected one (1) juicy boy.

Back at the truck scale, the kiosk person was shocked that a vehicle of such massive watermelon capacity only weighted one (1) watermelon more than before. She said it was common for Bay Area folk to load up and resell at farmer’s markets.

We’re supposed to rinse these real good before eating, so we bathed it in a nearby rest stop. It was actually the most flavourful and juicy watermelon I have ever tasted, and all grocery store watermelon since have turned to ash in my mouth, so be aware of the consequences if you want to pick your own watermelon.

>Fire comes early to NorCal

As a seasoned Californian, I’m well aware of the phenomenon where fire season doesn’t exist until oh fuck oh fuck your personal sky zone goes dark with smoke. The Dixie fire had been going on for a week and a half already but we were surprised to descend into a thick smog at Shasta Lake, the forested hills barely visible along the winding highway. We woke up at Lake Siskiyou in a plume, the famous views of Mount Shasta casually wiped from the sky.

That didn’t put us in the mood to paddle like we’d planned, but it was hot and we drove out east towards McCloud, hoping to be enticed to splash around under waterfalls. It was still hazy at the trailhead, but the stoke was rising. I packed sourdough avocado sandwiches, and we made the quick stroll down to Upper McCloud Falls, skied down the steep dirt slope, and took a VERY cold snow-melt dip! My butt went numb as I swam to the other side of the pool but it felt AMAZING. We scrambled around to the base of the falls where it was powerfully loud, felt the air rushing out, observed the hanging garden of greens clinging to the cracks and ledges in the basalt wall. Sat on a rock and ate a sandwich.

Heading back through McCloud to get back on the 5 North, we stopped in town for coffee. It was unexpectedly empty, and the barista was surprised we didn’t know about the world-famous 74th Annual Lumberjack Fiesta that was going on down the street at Hoo Hoo Park.

>A three-watersport day in Central Oregon

It was approaching 100f on the highway. The fire smoke was thickening, and the AC was working hard. Fun mini game: Mercedes makes a “safety feature” that automatically switches off internal air circulation, so I had to catch the sharp inhalation sound of the van trying to take a big gulp of smoke air and mash the internal circulation button every dozen of minutes.

I kept driving until the air cleared up, so we were already in the Deschutes in Central Oregon that night. We caught up on our respective PT exercises before bed, so I was doing crabwalks with a resistance band to the sound of screaming ducks and water birds.

Waking up early, I started driving up the scenic loop through the Deschutes, turning off at a sign for Osprey Point Interpretive Site. We were excited for opportunistic birdwatching and I wanted to see an osprey, but were defeated by a sudden and impenetrable wall of mosquitos that slapped us in a solid wave by the water. Right, this is Oregon. Nursing our bites and wounds, we try again at Lava Lake and found it significantly less bugful.

It quietly rained a bit while we were paddling on the water, which for a Californian was a mystical experience. By the afternoon it was hot again, and we were feeling a swim. Oregon is like a waterpark and there are infinite lakes, but I thought it’d be nice to find a smaller one that didn’t have a road sticking out of it. We did a little trek out to Blow Lake. That water was so clear! and there was shockingly no one else there. Even more surprising, it was apoparently late-season enough that there were no mosquitos. We had the whole lake to ourselves. It felt amazing. I sat on a rock and dried off in the sun. I want to live this day every week.

Heading to town, we rolled into Bend with enough time to do a float! I didn’t want to mess around with the bus shuttle with COVID, so I made my own shuttle: I dropped the paddleboard and my sister off at the south end of the float (Riverbend Park), parked the car in the middle (Bend Whitewater Park), and jogged back to my sister (less than a mile, which took 10 minutes). I don’t have a photo I want to share but it was as nice as I had remembered from my last float in 2019, there’s a reason it’s a classic (:

>Smith Rock

This is the first time I’ve been out to Smith Rock and didn’t climb. It was actually pouring rain that morning in Bend, so we drove north after eating an Ocean Roll at Sparrow Bakery, which was covered in unapologetically desperate hiring flyers like every food business in 2021. It was still raining on and off as we hiked the Misery Ridge in Smith, which was made actually pleasant by the cold breeze. Rounding the river, I saw some folks toproping on moderate routes, so perhaps the locals are less shy about wet rock than me.

>Mt Hood

Continuing north, the road carves up Utah-like tablelands and then the forest thickens. I spy Mt Hood, and I realise this might be the first time I looked at it on purpose, and somehow all the other times it must have been too dark or I was asleep in the passenger seat. It’s a pretty striking volcano! We find a camp spot at Trillium Lake with a view of the big boy.

Watching Mt Hood while eating a pasta dinner, we see some ospreys flying by, completing our failed Osprey Point sidequest from earlier. A neighboring van traveller was excited to see us with crash pads, but we were just using it in couch mode to picnic on :^)

We went forth onto Hood itself, and from Timberline Lodge, we hike a bit north on the PCT. I was in running shorts and a tank top. People geared up in goggles, buff, and waterproof pants booted past me with skis and snowboards on their shoulders. There was a line to descend the dirty patch of ice sitting on the slopes in late July. Surreal AF.

The hike down to Zigzag river was nice, but there was an increasing amount of flies that wanted to land and hang out on my body and I found that to be a uniquely unpleasant experience! I didn’t even know it was possible to have an emotional reaction to flies overload, maybe it’s a Pacific Northwest thing?

Heading north again, I turned off the highway at the town of Mt Hood when I saw a farmer’s market sign. We scored a hand pie, heirloom tomatoes, cherries, and peaches.

We drove through Hood River, still days away from learning that it’s a meca for windsurfing, heading west along the Columbia River Gorge. There’s some interesting geological stuff going on here, it is a hotspot for waterfalls. Before leaving Oregon, we wanted to check out one more. We took an evening hike to Devil’s Punchbowl as the sun was setting, but it was VERY hot. An older person on a bike rolled by picking up trash with a little claw as I got ready in the parking lot. She said she was the host of the campgrounds up the street. We couldn’t figure out how to get inside the punchbowl, just looked at it from above, then went for a very glorious swim/bath in the river at Lower Punchbowl.

I was too tired to find a van bivvy so we went to those nearby campgrounds, where I cooked a soba dinner while my sister counted out $15 of camping fee in mostly quarters (had spent our paper cash at the farmer’s market!)

The next day we were already going all the way to Seattle. When I drove back home through Oregon the following week, I couldn’t see Mt Hood through the fire smoke, and it was too smoggy in Bend to bag a volcano. We were lucky to have had our trip the week before.

Boulderers often gaze upon Basin while pebble wrestling in the lowlands of Buttermilk Country. Finally, we send the big mountain itself, which is easy class 2 sand slopes from the back. Great for dogs!

• trailhead: Horton Lakes (37.31134, -118.61807), more or less depending on how capable your car is
• route: West slope, class 2
• total distance: 14.75 mi
• elevation gain: 6,112 ft
• time car-to-car: 10 hours 50 min
• tough for dogs?: no (if you go up the correct slope)

>Mica’s Trip Report

Hi I’m Mica, I’m a dog. I love to wake up in the morning and jump into Alicia’s adventure Subi! The two of us and daiyi jostle down the rough Buttermilk Road and start hiking late by usual standards, 8:30am, which was a tactical error since the first 4.5 miles to Horton Lake are on an exposed and hot old mining road.

Daiyi overheated and had to lay down on the trail twice. I’m a dog, all I had to do was jump into water whenever I saw any!

At Horton Lake, we contour around the left side and go cross-country up the river basin.

After a bit of scrambling, we get to the first of two small tarns. It’s a low snow year, but water is still running under the talus! The humans fill up on water and I jump right in. It’s cold and sweet, delicious alpine juice.

It’s just a bit further to the second tarn. Here we start turning left, aiming for the west slopes of Basin.

The slopes look improbable, but it goes. The humans use their prosthetic paws (hiking poles) to make it up the sandy terrain. There’s a bit of scrambling to the top of the ridge.

Nooo! we strayed too far right (south) and ended up taking the wrong slope up to a false summit. Getting down to the saddle had a couple of class 3 moves that were tough for dogs who can’t hold jugs. I was stressed out and had to get a couple lifts.

We lounge for half an hour, naming far-away peaks and eating snack and enjoying the breeze. Soon it’s time to head back down.

Back at Horton Lake, I jump in for a swim and am surprised when everyone joins me! Finally the humans understand what I’ve been doing all day.

Near the trailhead almost at the car, Alicia sees a snake in an aspen! There’s snakes in the Sierra?? Later we find out it’s probably a Great Basin Gopher Snake, which is not poisonous. Whew.

We get back to the car before sunset and head into Bishop for a big dinner! Well, I had some kibble and napped in the trunk while the humans got burgers. What a great day! That was my 11th SPS.

The crux of this peak is Laurel Lakes Road, a spoopy high-clearance dirt road with large washouts that’s class 1 for dogs but class 4 for cars. There’s also not much tree cover or water, so I got an early start on an overcast day, and the clouds made the views dramatic. The cross-country is tame, though steep and exposed at times, and solidly class 2 that’s friendly for dingos!

EDIT: Laurel Lakes Road is closed as of July 24, 2021. Details here.

• trailhead: Laurel Lakes Road
• route: northeast ridge, class 2
• total distance: 14.6 miles (23.5 km). Only 5.5mi if you drive all the way up Laurel Lakes Rd
• elevation gain: 5,588 ft (1,700 m)
• time car-to-car: 6.5 hours.
• tough for dogs?: nope!

Note for humans: poles were useful on the steep parts.

>A Note on Road Conditions

EDIT: Laurel Lakes road is closed as of July 24, 2021, so expect a 14.6 mile hike. Check road conditions here.

Recent heavy rain has washed out Laurel Lakes Road 28E201 south of Sherwin Creek Road near Mammoth Lakes. This road is impassible and the public is asked to refrain driving on the road until repairs are made.

So that you are emotionally prepared, know that you might have to start your hike more than 4 miles before the trailhead listed on hiking websites. There are 9 miles round-trip of washed out driving to and from the true trailhead (9,895’) of Bloody Mountain. This isn’t an ordinary dirt road, it’s real 4x4/high clearance with 3-foot chasms and requires a capable vehicle and capable driver. My housemates did it with their truck in August 2020 and said it was an hour each way. We opted instead to walk from the very start of the road (7,320’), which took 1.5 hours each way. Between 2 hour of internally screaming in a car, or 3 hours of uneventful walking, I thought the extra hour of walking was fine :'D

>Mica’s trip report

Hi, I’m Mica, I’m a dog. I was very excited to do this long ridge walk on a nice cloudy day!

After jogging past some chasms earlier on in Laurel Lakes Road, we strolled up pebbly dirt road for another hour before turning off onto the actual Bloody Mountain trail.

Then there’s some switchbacks and winding around up to Bloody-Laurel Col, where we turn right off the trail and straight up the ridge!

At first the ridge is a bit loose and steep, but it gets more solid.

As you can see you get more than three miles of this barren volcanic talus ridgeline which lacks any shade, water, or squirrels. So I imagine you cook like bacon on a sunny, windless day.

The clouds made the views dramatic, but we didn’t stay long at the top as a few rain drops fell as a reminder that there were afternoon thunderstorms in the forecast.

We scurried back down the ridge without resting, getting back to the car at 12:25pm after 6.5 hours of hiking. It didn’t pour rain until we already drove home and ate big lunches. That was my 10th SPS summit!

My human friends love to climb Crystal Crag (10,383ft) after work, and it’s such an iconic feature of the Lakes Basin. So it was just a matter of time before I made a summit attempt myself! The easiest way up is the descent trail of the climb, but class 3 below the summit proved too tough for a dog with no thumb-grabbers and I turned around 100 feet from the top.

• trailhead: Lake George
• route: West face, class 3
• distance: 4.5 mi (7.3 km)
• elevation gain: 1640 ft (500 m)
• moving time: 3hr 10min (1hr to base, 40min climbing up, 40min climbing down, 50min to car)
• tough for dogs?: yes 😔

The hike starts on the Crystal Lake trail from Lake George. It’s very popular with dogs and humans so parking can be tricky on summer weekdays, tough on summer weekends, and impossible on holiday weekends (plan accordingly).

After 35 minutes of switchbacks, I jumped in to Crystal Lake to cool off!

After Crystal Lake, you go left onto some use trails. Climbers keep going left to the base of North Arete (5.6/5.8), but dingos cut across right over a bit of talus to the base of the west side of the peak, which is the descent for the climb.

Some parts of the west face can be loose, and sometimes there’s a LOT of climbers coming down, so a helmet is not a bad idea.

I needed some spotting to get off the ground, but then there was some dingo-friendly terrain.

We managed to get to the saddle before it got rough for dogs. Going up from the saddle became class 3 real fast. This is where I stopped, just 100ft under the summit:

Descending proved to be a trial. It can be spooky going down face-first, so I was hesitant at times. It was getting stressful for everyone involved so for the first time I got put into the backpack (as rehersed at home) to enjoy the ride for the trickiest bits of descent.

We made it to the ground safely! and the clouds cleared up as we strolled back to the car. Will I ever learn to climb class 3? Will I grow thumbs and be allowed into Yosemite? Tune in next time.

What a fun half-day! Compared to many Sierra peaks, this one is easy yet scenic. And friendly for dingos! Highly recommended!

• trailhead: Saddlebag Lake
• route: Southwest Slope, class 2
• total distance: 10 miles (16km)
• elevation gain: 3000ft (915m)
• total time car-to-car: 5 hours
• tough for dogs?: nope!

Hot tip for shoe wearers: trail gaitors came in handy for surfing down the sand slopes on the descent.

After waking up with a spontaneous urge to tag a peak, we drove an hour to Saddlebag Lake Campground and had a luxuriously late 11am start:

After an hour of brisk trotting, the trail gets a little scrambly as it leaves Greenstone Lake and makes its way up to the first of the Conness Lakes:

Then I finally saw snow!

I went right up the snow but it was easy to walk around for humans with less capable paws. A couple minutes later we were at the first Conness Lake:

Continuing on the highest Conness Lake, we encountered our first big patch of snow. I ran right across the sloshy sun cups, but the human beta was to scramble around the left side:

Once at the last Conness Lake, it's time to go up on sandy scree slopes. It's steep at times but there's a million use trails so you can't go wrong. A party of two coming down as we started up passed with a mysterious message: "the fight begins...". So ominous! Was there going to be a band of armed marmots blocking the path? At 2 hours 20 min into the total hike, we got to the ridge having eluded the prophesied fight.

The rest was an easy 20 minute walk to the summit on compact sand.

Hiking back from the summit took about 2 hours. The sandy slope makes a quick descent!

Just a minute from the parking lot, I saw a big coyote and I chased it!! I dropped the chase when I heard a scream from my human companion. This is the second coyote I’ve seen at Saddlebag this season, so other dingos beware!

Here I am totally passed out in the front yard, instead of my normal squirrel-hunting self.

How did I get here??

This was a really long and tiring hike (20 mile, 6100ft vertical gain) and I was huffing and puffing since I don’t have many sweat glands! I found shade when I could, but snow is my favourite way to stay cool. There was very little snow last winter, so I’m enjoying the remaining patches while I still can!

This peak is mostly friendly for dogs, although I did get overambitious and took a whip off a big slab boulder and fell onto my back. Mysteriously, I seemed totally undeterred and continued just fine.

The summer is just beginning so I’m still getting my alpine legs on. I will grow stronger as the season continues, but for now you’ll find me in my resting donut form.

For archeological purposes, here’s the live Twitter thread of drawing progress throughout the day.

>Route Overview

The day starts with a distressingly gentle 9-mile hike on a superhighway trail from Agnew Meadows to Thousand Island Lake, followed by intermittent use trails up a grassy slope along a stream (last water refill unless you want to descend to Lake Catherine) then talus to North Glacier Pass, and finally infinite class 2 talus forever to the summit. From North Glacier Pass there are 3.5-4 miles roundtrip of talus (depending on if you take the ridge or go around it), which is almost too much talus. There’s the kind of boulder field you can gleefully bounce across, and this was not it. Nonetheless, we thought it was a pretty average Sierra summit slog (disclaimer: the party consisted of three suffer-seeking individuals calibrated for long days of cardio/physical pain. An ordinary person would potentially resent this hike). The total was 27+ miles, 14 hours car-to-car. It’s all about the journey, right? Thousand Island Lake alone could make the day, that place is magical, and Lake Catherine was so blue.

For the adventurous, it looks like there’s a more direct route from the east, but we found very little information on it aside from these unannotated tracks from a reputedly hardcore peakbagger, and a sentence on Summit Post about its 4th class nature. From the top it looked loose, with snow patches, so we begrudgingly descended the way we came.

>So how was your day?

My buddy Phil had dutifully taken a COVID test and driven in from the city to embark on a 3-day backpacking trip with me, but the smoke from the Bay Area lightning fires arrived at Mammoth the same day he and his little Vanagon did, so we resigned ourselves to a lost weekend. Miraculously the smoke looked like it was clearing Friday night, and we managed to salvage our holiday by jumping aboard Yelly’s Saturday dayhike. Mica’s foot was still swollen, so she had to stay behind ):

We arrived to the Agnew Meadows parking lot at 6:30am, where there was already no parking! probably because the shuttle wasn’t running this year due to COVID.

The first 8 miles were a mellow stroll in the woods that flew by with pleasant company and conversation. We spotted a bear and cubs at the bottom of the valley, and then a frazzled NPC who had gotten separated from his family in the dark last night and had camped alone. He was extremely enthusiastic about a pool he had found that we had to go swim in right that minute (we declined the side-quest).

As we neared Thousand Island Lake, we got our first glimpse of Banner Peak:

There was a curtain of haze in the air, but the mountain was definitely visible!

As we descended to Thousand Island Lake, the ridge to the summit came into view, although we weren’t sure which one it would be at the time:

We left the lake at the west end of Thousand Island and started up the slope. Intermittent use trails follow the Middle Fork San Joaquin River until the river peels off west to its snowfield origins, while we continued south-ish up the gully.

At the pass we saw Lake Catherine, it had the bluest water. The wind got pretty intense here and was intense for the next mile.

From here we had the option of going straight up and along the ridge, or skirting around. We tried going up directly, but we stopped after 300 vertical feet because it was terrible and loose, and we starting traversing left and up instead. The next mile of talus sucked. Somehow I had expected there to be sand on the backside of the ridge (maybe because I climbed Conness recently), but it was ENTIRELY talus.

Then we crested a local maxima and could finally see Mount Davis. We scooted down this snow patch into the gully below, which had easier terrain.

I pulled something on the top of my right foot, which hurt with a shooting pain when my foot was angled up ): I actually considered stopping here because of that and the uninspiring terrain, but Yelly was feeling optimistic. Shockingly, the talus was less terrible from here, and two more soft low-angled snow traversals helped cover distance.

We’re at the top! It’s 13:50. I inhaled a burrito. We updated Leo (who had been waiting for hours at Thousand Island Lake to meet us for the hike back) on the realities of our dramatically over-optimistic schedule, and he headed out without us.

We played the peak identification game, and it was getting hazier with incoming smoke even as we sat there. I was amazed at how close Lyell looked, and felt inspired to climb it :D

After the ritual summit selfies, we started down.

>Time to Descend

We took a slightly different way down, I descended a chute and went further west, where I was met with gentle slab (which could be scary with the wrong shoes). I had decided to wear my new Altras (King MT 2) on this hike, and I found the rubber to be sufficiently sticky (noticably not as good as actual approach shoes, but better than any other trailrunner I’ve had).

There was a woop of joy when we reached the meadow at the end of the talus. We refilled water for the last time before hitting the extremely crowded shores of Thousand Island Lake, now swelling with Saturday evening backpackers and their cute pups. I stepped over a tent stake driven literally into the middle of the trail (??).

We passed a pair of rangers with shovels, which they said was for burying human poop. Do people…not do that??

The islands in the lake had a sunset glow. Me and Phil dunked our sticky bodies into the water, it was as glorious as I’d dreamed of all day.

The smoke got noticably worse on the hike back, by the last couple miles I felt like I was going to crash a BBQ at any minute. Our spirits remained mysteriously high, even when we started hallucinating bears. Night fell, but we were rich in headlamps and made it to the truck without incident at 20:45. When we got home 20 minutes later, Marco had dinner ready!

That was a long day and I’m happy to say that we didn’t scare Phil off from hiking with us :D

Thanks to yelly and phil for supplimentary photos \o/

Hi I’m Mica, I am a dog.

Just me and my BFF Yelly went together for a Sunday stroll up a peak: Mount Warren, 12,332 ft. Having started up the mountain and turned around 4 years ago because it was so boring, Yelly warned me that it would be a boring day. But if there’s anything a dog is good at, it is finding a way to not be bored.

When Yelly got into the adventure truck that morning I jumped right into the copilot seat, because I know this machine to be a magical portal to interesting places. We headed towards Tuolumne but stopped before we got there. I have still never been to Yosemite, I wonder why no one will bring me?

There were plenty of trees at the start of the hike for squirrels to live in, I kept my nose peeled for juicy rodents. Yelly called me a lot in the beginning, but after a while we relaxed into a routine of me going out to scout and Yelly reliably following my lead.

We passed through some delicious mountain water streams. Yelly kept splashing me!

Soon the tall grass came to an end and we entered the talus zone.

Yelly stopped us for breaks occasionally, like humans tend to do. Dogs don’t really take breaks, but I would occasionally keep her company (especially since it meant I would recieve food).

The talus field seemed to go forever into the distance, perhaps the entire mountain was a pile of talus. The sun was hot, and Yelly offered me a lot of water, even when I wasn’t thirsty. When I didn’t drink, she dumped the water on my back!

Finally the talus gully brought us to a delightful detour: snow! watermelon flavoured this time. I love snow, it is the ideal playground to dig and wriggle in with little consequence, although I have basically an infinite pain tolerance anyway.

I would be happy to play in the snow all day, but we had to continue to the summit. I found the register! This is my third SPS. There was a big view of Mono Lake below, and Yosemite which I can look at but not walk on(?)

We relaxed at the summit as Yelly ate snacks and video called Leo, and I checked out the solar-paneled weather station that had seen better days.

The clouds rolled in for our descent, and Yelly finally stopped splashing me with water. I ran ahead but checked back occasionally to see that she was still following me. That was a great day!

Thanks to yelly for the photos. I’m a dog, I can’t use cameras.

Alicia and I both kind of fell off the emotional and physical training wagon when the pandemic hit and aren’t at peak strength, so we picked something more leggy with a focus on having fun. And it was really fun! I’m actually glad I procrastinated on doing this climb until I was OP for the grade (5.6) so we were able to simul/solo it in a timely style rather than laboriously pitching out the entire thing. Highly recommend this strategy and this route, it is a classic for a reason \o/

• Gear: mostly single rack (including offset aliens, alicia’s favs), not enough slings, 40m skinny rope (from a double). We folded the 40 in half and used it as a 20m double for simuling. So light!
• Approach: 4hr, 6am start
• Climb: 3.5hr
• Descent: 2.5hr
• car-to-car: 11hr

When I was looking for approach beta from Saddlebag Lake, both supertopo and Croft’s tracks went straight up the east ridge, but my speedy housemate Leo and Alicia had both previously approached by the southern ridge. We went with that. I thought it was a mostly straightforward (no snow this year) with easy terrain, although my baseline for comparison is Bear Creek Spire from the previous week. The funny thing about this approach is that you hike up until you’re NEARLY at the summit, and then go through a notch and drop all the way down to the bottom of the west ridge. We messed that part up and accidentally continued towards the summit. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who are pretty capable at routefinding that this approach tripped them up, and I could see why one of the guidebook’s approach beta includes “go with someone who has done it before”.

Once we started climbing I didn’t really take photos because we were on the move constantly! I don’t think photos could capture the really cool exposure and breath-sucking knife’s-edge anyway, you have to go see for yourself :D We simuled the first bit, soloed for a while, then roped up for the last pitch as I got lightheaded from forgetting to snack up. Alicia continually checked in on how I was doing since I was the less experienced of us, she didn’t want to pressure me past my risk tolerance. That’s a good alpine partner!

Halfway up the wind kicked in and the clouds condensed in that sudden lurch as it happens in the Sierra, as NOAA’s 10% forecast of afternoon thunderstorms manifested as reality. We felt droplets as we signed the summit register and started down the trail to distance ourselves from the incredibly lightning-vulnerable peak before eating our lunch burritos.

Of course with my luck this summer, the hail came down and was whipped across my face and neck by the wind. I didn’t bother getting my windshell out (I didn’t bring a rainshell), trotting down the ridge slopes while hiding in my sunshirt hood. The sandy trail smelled like wet pavement. The sun taunted us from the adjacent valley.

The rest of the hike was on-and-off showers as we descended back into the green valley, and we were back at the car at 17:00 and home before 18:00. Though we’ve been in the same covid circle since march, Alicia had just traveled and was self-quarantining, so we masked up to carpool. The sun was out in Mammoth, Mica licked my toes at the door, and Yelly made a delicious dinner. I felt like the luckiest person ☀️

Edited: 2020-08-10

Gear: single rack to 2’, large nuts, a duck, many slings, 60m alpine rope.

Here is a map of our approach. It isn’t a gps track, I drew it with digital marker, so it’s useless trying to follow it to the pixel, but I thought it was pretty straightforward to determine irl. We followed Croft’s approach of leaving the main trail at Gem Lakes, which seemed easy enough, although I did see Peakbagger tracks that left earlier at Long Lake.

We left the house in Mammoth at 4:10, starting off the Mosquito Flat trailhead at the end of Rock Creek at 5:10 as the light came in and made my sleepy mind’s eye feel like I was walking in a claymation.

Though crampons & ice axe are usually necessary this time of year, last season was a blessed (or cursed, depending on your inclinations) mediocre snow year, so we were treated to a minimalistic alpine experience with less gear and shockingly nonexistance mosquitos (spoken as the person who is always first to be bitten). You can see the climb from close to the trailhead, so if in doubt take a look with your eyes (maybe the day before if you’re getting a pre-dawn start), or better yet, get a friend peakbagging in the area to snap a photo for you (thanks Yelly!)

After crossing the river downstream of Gem Lakes you would be led to believe by Croft’s approach map that you must bypass a “Restoration Area: Use Existing Trail” sign and proceed to stomp on sensitive wetland,

but if you walk a couple hundred feet further there’s now a luxurious and guilt-free developed trail that leads right and up to the biggest Gem Lake before dissolving into a talus slope.

As we ascended into the talus, we realised it is the friendly kind you can do a confident jog over.

We made our way up to Dade Lake as the morning brightened in earnest, although neither of us snapped a photo because we were concerned with refilling water, dropped our packs, and hiking on at top speed. The alpine lake was clear and quiet, its shores dotted with the bright tents of campers just waking up. Meanwhile, I was so hungry that I ate my lunch tamale, even though it was still 8am.

The last .3 miles were the worst, I am usually a decently paced hiker but I got hit in the face with altitude symptoms (despite having been fine when I was at 12k+ recently) and tried to find my way up the increasingly rotten and steep talus while looking through a straw with ears ringing. We were at the base and climbing around 9:30.

Luckily the altitude felt better once I started climbing, while Marco continued to be completely unaffected because his body is a flawless machine. As I was fumbling around with sunscreen on the second pitch, he short-fixed himself and continued running up the rock in a mission to pass the one other party on the route.

We simuled the 3rd and 4th pitches (class 4) with a duck in the middle.

In the summer the route gets full sun, though a nice breeze kept it pleasant enough for sun shirts. We did encounter some shade at the top of the 5.8 (5th) pitch (which neither of us did as a chimney…?) which convinced Marco to put on his puffy.

Marco climbed so fast that I had few opportunities to eat bars because my hands were constantly belaying! After that was more easy 5th to the ridge then summit, including a neat tunnel-through:

The party we had passed earlier decided to solo to the summit, while I wanted to continue simuling, so they passed us here. From here we went up and along the ridge, dropping to the right when it got steep then up again.

We summitted around 2pm. (4.5 hours of climbing)

Marco got signal and texted our housemates! From a bundle of slings, I did a 30m rap on another party’s rope (marco tossed it then downclimbed) and then we split a lunch burrito. There was a short traverse then sandy class 2 slog down the back side of the ridge.

The trick to the descent is to not go through the lowest notch, keep hiking up and poke your head over the ridge occasionally until you see a class 3 route that veers north and down until you hit the approach trail again.

From there the decent was uneventful. Marco filled up water in the stream feeding Dade Lake, and we boulder-hopped back to Gem Lakes. We passed an older couple setting up camp, enthusiastically asking us how the climb went as they were going to attempt it the next day. I hope I smile that big when thinking about climbing when I’m their age.

We rejoined the trail at a spooky Sunday twilight hour when it was completely devoid of the usual tourist cluster–it was as quiet as when we had approached at butt oclock this morning, though my fears that we had wandered into a barren alternate sandbox universe was debunked when we got closer to the trailhead and overtook some fishers (who asked if they could catch a lift in our backpacks).

We caught up with Vanna at the trailhead at 19:25 and were home before dark! Cathie pulled up on the driveway to deliver her wedding invitation right as I was stumbling out of the van, and then we made mac and cheese while falling asleep, just in time for work the next day.

After that entire day I’m still wondering where the eponymous “Bear Creek” is. Let me know if you find it. \o/

Edited: 2020-08-06

We pulled up to the trailhead at 5:20am, with the morning light already arriving. The first couple of miles are pretty gentle, an unnotable sandy path.

We encountered a log bridge river crossing, which I confidently traversed without any help, to the surprise of the human pack.

I was so excited to be playing with my friend Piton and his cousin Kami visiting from the city! They’re small but fast.

We leaped through meadows, terrorizing alpine chipmunks and sipping in streams. The skyline was dominated by contrasting creamy granite slabs, and red-streaked volcanic scree.

I got so hot from running that I sat in a river crossing to cool off.

After passing a billion interesting lakes left and right, the human pack made their first and last stop at Little McGee to fill up their water bags. We scrambled down the talus to the water, and daiyi picked me up and dunked me in the chilly alpine lake!! Supposedly it’s because they knew it would be my last opportunity to cool off before the ascent to the pass and then the peak. I rolled on my back in the dirt to regain dignity and dryness.

The terrain took a shift from soft dirt to red scree switchbacks until McGee Pass. I gazed into the next valley over, mentally calculating how many alpine chipmunks must be in there.

Suddenly, a new friend joins the party as we head for the summit. He walked really quickly to catch us, which is impressive for a human, although I am definitely faster.

I encounter a surprise: snow! (Somehow the humans completely ignored this fun detour to roll around, prance, and dig).

We arrive at the summit in time for lunch. Daiyi inhales a summit burrito without even sharing.

We had passed a couple backpackers heading down, but had the summit to ourselves.

As the clouds roll in, I become a donut and take a powernap.

The breeze picks up, so the humans start down the mountain with the afternoon t-storm forecast in mind.

Here’s Little McGee on the way up, and then how it looked on the way back, ominous clouds and silver water:

By the time we hit the lake, I felt the first drop of water, and when we reached treeline we heard thunder! The hail started falling so fast that it hurt and we hid behind a tree for a couple minutes before the humans started to trailrun (which was my strategy all along).

After a couple of miles, we outran the rain.

The final miles were longer and flatter than I remember. I even ceded my customary position at the head of the pack and heeled behind daiyi. We finally got back to the truck around 4pm. I was a tired dingo and became a donut on the asphalt as the humans did their post-hike stretches and drank their protein juices.

Back home, Leo made dinner for everyone (I had kibble and peanut butter). I passed my bean check, no bloody toes even with all the scree, just a couple of hot spots, which makes sense considering my 10.5 hours of continuous trotting.

My second SPS peak completed, I collapsed into power-saving mode for the next 2 days, behaving like a normal dog for once.

Thanks to yelly, rafee, daiyi, and sadie for the photos ✨

Edited: 2020-07-22

No pudeo escribir mi blog, porque soy una perra. Mi CTO daiyi traduce la historia de mi primera aventura de peak bagging.
– Mica

✨

The summit of San Joaquin Mountain is situated so you can see both the dramatic granite of the Sierra valleys and hanging glacial lakes to the west, and also the volcanic red and white sand slopes to the east. The first 2.5 miles were on a OHV dirt road through a forest (also a popular mountain biking route), and the use trail after that is simple to follow because you just stay on the ridgeline the entire time. Easy for dogs like me.

The trail starts from Minaret Summit, a quick 10 minute drive from our house, which is why we pulled up late morning at 10am after a luxurious breakfast and coffee (I had kibble and water). The humans were strangely avoiding their computers this week, which ordinarily means spending every free moment climbing rock, but daiyi sprained a finger a couple days ago so we stuck to the ground this time.

During the forest trail, I ran laps around the humans and investigated the local wildlife!

While trail planning, daiyi had misread the map thinking that the end of the OHV road was the end of the hike, so we only packed for 5 miles of water. Actually we were only halfway there! and at Deadman Pass is where the shadeless sand and scree slopes began. Luckily, I am a dog, so I didn’t get sand in my shoe like the humans did. Sandals not recommended.

You can see the Minarets and Ritter and Banner on the opposing side of the valley for most of the ridge-top hike, they seemed to get closer and closer the entire time until you felt certain you would run right into them.

There was no water or snow except for a tiny patch on the side of the ridge, but I still found a couple mosquitos to snap at while the humans were stopped to eat their lunch burritos and plucots. The sun was out in full force, the sky was an uninterrupted blue. I was a hot dingo!

I sat down in the shade whenever I found the opportunity, but the humans kept us moving.

We reached the summit around 2pm.

While the humans pointed their phones into the air and signed the summit register, I took a powernap in Marco’s shade.

I can’t read, but this is what they drew:

Wait, we have to turn around?? Is this why the humans weren’t running circles the whole time like I was?

Here’s a view of the endless sandy ridge on the hike down:

That was my biggest day yet, but it’s only the beginning!

Edited: 2020-07-20

Everyone eventually comes to Berlin, many will eventualy leave.

Malwine was telling me about Berlin syndrome where people who live there don’t get too attached because they know their friends will eventualy go.

I spent a summer hanging out with clojure folks, drinking turkish coffee, and thinking about what I wanted to do with my time. Feeling free from a perscribed schedule to ride my bicycle and swim in the lakes outside the city, but missing something still. Picking up a lot of books, and trying to learn languages, calling home and catching up with friends far away, enjoying the dense german bread. Trying to unclench from a constant feeling of loss and guilt, and not being enough.

(I moved back to California in 2018.)

(It’s February 2020 now as I find this in my neglected blog drafts. I can’t remember what I had tried to say before and what it meant to me, so I am looking at old photos and text journals and reading notes to pick up the pieces.)

(How can I forget the name of the park I lived next to and ran a triangle in so many mornings? the ubahn I took to the coworking space for clojurebridge meetings?)

>20170727

This morning I woke up an hour before my alarm and THE SKY WAS BLUE. It was supposed to rain the entire week so I immediately threw my stuff into my pack and went on an hour-long bike ride!

>20170714

Saskia talks a lot about mind/body balance, and it’s different words for one of my top concerns, except I say it like “I like cities, but I also need mountains”. The cities are full of people and jobs and programming communities and structure; the mountains is where I can move and breathe and be alone.

>20170811 F

things Dave sent me to read:

1. Kafka’s “before the law” & companion

2. the opressiveness of structurelessness.

>20170805

Everything that’s excellent about me and that makes me happy I owe to being happy and having free time! Drawing as a kid, learning graphic design tools then a tablet with online tutorials, learning CSS and html then programming.

Today I put on my bathing suit and spend a couple hours fixing my bike. I unscrewed everything and now I see how the pieces go together. Not even feeling guilty for “wasting time” because I have enough of it! living slow = learning, exploring, creativity, expression.

>20170831

I ran 5k today! It is my first 5k. […] But I did it! From now on all my runs will be 5k, which is “a short run” a la Noah Tye. I’ll run every other day. (:

>20170821

“Emotional hurt is the price one has to pay in order to be independent. In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time cuts away at me from the inside. I think in my own way I’m aware of this danger – probably through experience – and that’s why I’ve had to constantly keep my body in motion, in some cases pushing myself to the limit, in order to heal the loneliness I feel inside and put it in perspective. Not so much as an intentional act, but as an instinctive reaction. […] it’s like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent.”

– Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”

– Voltaire, Candide

>20170909

omfg curse John Furrow for getting me into Big Black Delta, I’ve been listening to Trágame Tierra, then BBD back to back to back to back all summer.

I baked a lot because baking has always felt like a waste of time, and wasting time lavishly made me feel powerful and in control.

(German quark cheese cake is really good, but you should just buy it at the store.)

>20170829

[…] (and all-time low for facebook/instagram though […] I’d gotten to the point last year where facebook was for seeing my friends’ mountain photos, and now those just make me sad)

>20170814 M

I shouldn’t call my life boring, because it’s definitely not boring. It has the flavor of unremarkable that settles after solving all the problems. Maybe it’s because I’ve never not lived teetering on the brink of madness. I think I literally don’t know how to chill.

>20170912

“I’d rather make money and spend it than make less money and try to figure out how to be tricky with it.” —dennis heihoff

"No relation of a dream can convey that dream sensation. That commingling of absurdity, surprise and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt. That notion of being captured by the incredible, which is the very essense of dreams.

It is impossible. It is impossible to convey the life sensation of any epic of one’s existence. That which makes its truth, its meaning, its subtle and penetrating essense. It is impossible.

We live as we dream, alone."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Edited: 2020-02-27

I made this cute comic because I’ve been writing a lot of clojure(/script) and people have been asking me about it so I’ve been introducing it a lot, and also holy crap a friend gifted me a graphics tablet over the weekend and I am finally reunited with digital art aaah :D :D :D

For those following along at home on shitty internet connections or screen readers or are struggling to parse my funky handwriting, I’ve transcribed the comic below!

>introducing clojure! (and clojurescript)

(clojure says ♥, and clojurescript says ♥_BANG_ because alas, it has gone through the transpiler).

>clojure is a dialect of lisp.

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3
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5

{ :name                "lisp"
  :birth               1958
  :age                 59
  :typing              [:strong :dynamic]
  :favourite-ice-cream "vanilla"}

Cool thing I learned: lisp was the first (non-assembly) self-hosted language (it compiled itself!!)

1
2
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{ :name                "clojure"
  :birth               2007
  :age                 10
  :typing              [:strong :dynamic]
  :favourite-ice-cream "raspberry cheesecake"}

(here I drew a lisp family tree, except the tree is an octopus)

>clojure is a hosted language.

This means it is a symbiote living on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). Clojure can talk to its host with interop. That means it can use its host’s libraries :D

(here I drew clojure as a mushroom, also a symbiote, whispering sweet interops into the ear of the JVM).

Clojure can target many things! We call it clojurescript when it targets javascript. That means we can write clojure programs that work in the browser :D

(here I drew clojurescript also as a mushroom, lookin pretty chill on its host, javascript, console.log-ing, as one does.)

(I can’t believe I just spent my evening drawing clojure as various mushrooms…)

>choosing a text editor to use with clojure seems to be something people think deeply about.

Lots of people like emacs.

I use Atom.

As long as you’ve got something automatically minding your parens (e.g. parinfer or paredit) it’s probably fine. (here I drew a thumbs up, except the thumb is a face, and the face is saying “nice.”)

(extra note: if you decide to use emacs, don’t try to configure it from scratch like I did the first three times I tried to use emacs. go borrow someone else’s configuration!)

>why would anyone use clojure??

• JVM
  • lots of mature libraries from java
  • JVM abstracts away hardware & OS
• concurrency
  • clojure was designed for concurrency!
• lisp
  • lisps are fun to write :D
  • functional programming is an interesting way to think
  • everything is data in clojure, which is a pattern really suited for some tasks
  • macros are powerful and fun!
• community ♥
  • people are super friendly
  • you can directly talk with a lot of library maintainers and helpful folks in #clojurians slack channel
  • cozy local communities, such as in Berlin (:
  • ClojureBridge!!

>what are the problems?

• it takes a while for your brain to adjust if you are coming from some languages.
• the toolset and build process was a lot to take in at once (I’m still learning it…)
• it’ll probably be a while before you’re comfortable enough to harness the full power of the language.
• it’s really hard to make fan art because there are no animals or puns ):

It’s okay! Just go have fun!

Also I’m super excited because Euroclojure is this week and it’s in Berlin! aaahh see you there?? (if you manage to find me and give me paper I’ll draw you hosting clojure as a mushroom, because I haven’t drawn enough mushrooms this week).

I spent the last two months “traveling” in the Balkans (to be detailed in a separate post!)

If you know me, you know I travel in a pretty dumb way that is not exactly relaxing. My reading habits were a lot more erratic than when I was in a winter coma in Brooklyn; the cracks of idle time I’d been training myself to spend on books instead of flipping through social stuff on my phone got redelegated to things like staring at OSM, sending couchsurfing emails, and trying to figure out how to pronounce stuff in Serbian.

>Wikipedia!

Oh, and reading cached Wikipedia pages of local/regional history/geology! which was such a great idea, it was the first trip I’ve done something like that and I would definitely recommend it.

In fact it was such a good exercise that I went back and cached the Wikipedia pages for places I’m quite familiar with. Notable selection: list of hills in SF, geology of the Yosemite area, California water wars. (also I found this … and here’s a classic). (This wikidive is starting to inspire a roadtrip). (GREAT now I’m homesick for California :U )

And here’s the actual books I managed to read in my two months of tramping!

>Savage Theories – Pola Oloixarac (2008)

genre  postmodern magical realism?
tldr;  weird as hell, 10/10 would recommend

Pola Oloixarac is like Argentinian DFW-lite. The entire time my brain was casually like “what the fuck is this shit” yet also strangely enjoying it. If you like David Foster Wallace/postmodern lit, you’ll know what I mean. If you don’t, you might not like this book, it is weird as hell. Try it! It’s a smashing and violent smorgasbord of the Buenos Aires alternative scene, evolution theories/philosophy, Argentinian history, and idk, how weird people can be.

>The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1985)

genre  speculative fiction, dystopian
tldr;  good but (unpopular opinion?) like contemporary-junk-food-fic-good, e.i. Hunger Games

This was my first Margaret Atwood book!

I picked this up last winter because a lot of noise was made around the TV adaptation, and just got around to actually reading it.

My favourite part was seeing hints of the underlying 80’s feminist attitudes. I am such a fan of the meta-context of social-commentary-fic along with the context in the fics themselves! but maybe that’s just me being young and not having yet experienced much history myself. I like to imagine future kids reading fic from nowadays and being fascinated by contemporary SJW attitudes, ha.

The epilogue was a bit awkward, I thought it took away from the uncertainty and wispy dystopian feel of the story by contextualising it too much. I’d suggest not reading it and pretending it doesn’t exist :D Also check out the wikipedia page after, it has some interesting info.

>Letters to a Young Muslim – Omar Saif Ghobash (2017)

genre  non-fic, semi-autobiographical, culture, Islam
tldr;  would recommend!

This was notably my first audio book ever. I “read” it on the bus from London to Edinburgh, because the air conditioning was drying out my contacts and I had to keep my eyes closed. This experience has relaxed my suspicion of audiobooks, or maybe this was just the perfect candidate: it’s written in second person, literally letters from the author to his sons, and narrated by the author himself, which made for a really good listen.

He talks a lot about his own life, a slice into the middle east for someone (me) who has very little context into what that’s like. At first I was like ugh, this book would be so different if he had daughters to write to, but then he addresses that too! I really really like how he urges his kids & country to recontextualise their culture in the modern globalised world, to express themselves in productive ways, take responsibility for the good and bad things of their culture, and to create contemporary and relatable art and media. His optimistic and practical attitude was really heartening. And he communicates these thoughts really well (I can’t do it justice with a summary), like I almost want to take his ideas, generalise them a bit, and send them to my parents.

>Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany (1966)

genre  OG sci-fi, micro space opera
tldr;  groundbreaking sci-fi for its time, and aged well :D

Don’t read plot summaries for this! because it was really interesting to work out what the story was getting at about language and how it shapes thoughts, especially keeping in mind this was written in the 60’s. Apparently this story influenced a lot of sci-fi down the line, so reading this was a bit of a temporal pilgrimage in my favourite genre (:

>The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton (1908)

genre  “metaphysical thriller”; police and anarchists being silly
tldr;  It was fun!

Following A Tree Grows In Brooklyn while living in Brooklyn, I’ve been keen to read books set in the places I’m traveling to. While in London I’d remembered that Ilana had recommended The Man Who Was Thursday back when I saw her last December. It’s not really the type of book I usually read but I found myself enjoying it!

It involves turn of the century shenanigans of classically serious institutions (police? anarchists??) who were trying super hard to take things seriously, but things kept going spectacularly wrong in absurd twists. It seemed to be some sort of meta-satire, a short and fun read, different tone/mood that what I usually go for but I’d recommend it!

>Borges: A Personal Anthology – Jorge Luis Borges (1961)

genre  short stories, mostly set in Argentina
tldr;  very dreamy and I found it hard to focus while reading them, but they tend to be pretty good, yet oddly not completely satisfying, but I think this is the point.

On the second floor, on the top story, the house seemed to be infinite and growing. The house is not this large, he thought. It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the years, my ignorance, the solitude.

These are the topics Wikipedia says Borges writes about: dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. This is a pretty rad aesthetic. I found it to be pretty accurate in this collection of short stories by Borges assembled by Borges, an early writer of magical realism.

Because of the magical realism and short stories, I couldn’t help but compare this to García Márquez’s Strange Pilgrims which I read the month before. I don’t know why, but I found García Márquez’s world a lot more satisfying, like nice popping sounds and things fitting into things type of satisfying. While I also liked these stories by Borges, they felt a lot more ethereal. Or maybe it was me, having been on the road for a while, projecting my losing of my sense of self (to be revisited in a future blog post :P) onto the stories. Definitely worth a read either way!

(Unforunately I accidentally returned the kindle library book before I got to save my bookmarks/notes so I can’t recommend the titles of my favourite stories.) But there’s a quote that accurately describes my feels sometimes that I’d had the forethought to have screenshotted:

In the days and nights which followed the operation he came to realise that he had merely been, up until then, in a suburb of hell.

>A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide – Samantha Power (2002)

genre  non-fic, history, foreign policy
tldr;  quite long and well-researched, if you’re interested in this topic this is the book to read

"From now on no government may kill off a large block of its own subjects or citizens of any country with impunity.”

I mentioned I’d been reading a lot of Wikipedia history pages, so I caught up on a lot of Balkan history (and refreshed on WWI/WWII history, which is a topic of focus in a lot of European museums). I’d grown up with my mom heavily criticising our liberal American history classes for glossing over the Japanese occupation of China (which heavily affected her life), and to my horror and embarassement there seems to be an entire stack of more genocides I’d failed to learn very much about in school.

It’s cool, I’ve gone about fixing this. The first part of the book is about the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust leading up to this guy Raphael Lemkin devoting his life to outlawing genocide (he invented the word so people could wrap their brains around the idea) and how resistant world leaders were to ratifying this. It sucks that it has to be this way, but I can understand why. Like, what are we supposed to do?? You (a major world power) can’t not intervene because that is horrific, but intervening also causes all sorts of unintended destructive perturbation (I heard a lot of first hand accounts of this while traveling in the Balkans last month). Genocide is the titular “problem from hell” because you’re fucked either way.

The book is good, maybe even too good. It’s quite long, very well researched, many shocking primary sources (e.i. I can’t believe a person in this century believed this thing and said these words about human beings), and not exactly the kind of subject matter you can binge. I haven’t finished it.

Anyway. Heavy shit for the summer. I’ll probably skip to the second part that goes over historical accounts of genocide in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo (or skim on wikipedia) because I’m halfway through and it hasn’t recommended any actionable items, and there’s no happy endings, so I guess I’m just here for the history.

>Kindred – Octavia Bulter (1979)

genre  extremely soft sci-fi, basically sci-fi brie, maybe sci-fi cream cheese
tldr;  enjoyable pop fiction

It feels like pop fiction so I read it quickly, but it’s interesting to note that it was written in the 70s (the civil rights movement was in the 50s-60s). It’s about an American black woman who uncontrollably flickers between her present-day 70s to (oh no) a plantation in the Antebellum South. My first Octavia Butler book, and I’d take recommendations for similar authors \o/

>Essays – Ralph Waldo Emerson (mid-1800s)

genre  essays
tldr;  aahh…

Ok so I love nature and my life is basically man vs nature, so I expected to like reading Ralph Waldo Emerson. Turns out this writing is SUPER HARD TO READ, or maybe I’ve slowly become illiterate over the years since I’ve left high school. I shamefully prefer Wikipedia summaries of this beliefs and ideas over his actual writing. (Then again, I end up feeling similarly to most philosophers I’ve attempted to read). I made it about halfway through On Self-Reliance, but maybe it was because of insufficient coffee! We’ll try again next month \o/

>Whewww.

Embarrassingly I don’t think I read a single book while I was in Croatia (the last two weeks of my trip).

It’s June! Holy shit. Where is the year going?? As of a week ago I’m back in steady-state city-life and finding myself super pleased with this thing where I’m not checking the mine map for mines or memorising the names of the small towns between where I am and where I need to be or crash-coursing the Cyrillic alphabet (twice, after realising the neighboring country uses it slightly different). It’s kind of nice to sit down at a COMPUTER and type at a KEYBOARD.

I know, my dear readers are mostly office potatoes jealously eyeing my life of wild abandon but the point of all that was to remind me about the virtues of having a solid career :P And it worked! I’ll be sitting in offices all summer and I’m pretty excited about it, which was not an attitude I could see myself having last year when I was doing exactly that. I’ve got the sleeping on benches and camping in snow all out of my system and am pleased to rejoin society and partake in regular showers and non-disposable friendships.

Anyway, say hi if you’re in Berlin, I don’t have the budget to eat out but we can enjoy the LOVELY, PREDICTABLE, SUNNY BERLIN WEATHER with a park/canal/river stroll or you can come over and I can test my vegetarian cooking on you :D :D :D

And to conclude, a toast to a temporary end to my travels, here’s some thoughts from Borges on mortality:

There is a nearby street forbidden to my step,
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
There is a door I have shut until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library
There are some I shall never reopen.

(Limits, Borges)

Three months later and I’m taking down my wall tapestries again, leaving the climbing gym where I’ve made friends with the regulars characters and routesetters, the cafes I work at often enough that they recognise my mannerisms but not enough that they remember my name, my tiny job, my tiny bike.

I came to New York with high hopes of learning fun computery things at recurse center and ice climbing upstate – I was rejected from rc, and found myself in the shortest and most indecisive, un-ice-forming conditions of northeast winter season in recent memory.

I did manage a lot of computery things on my own, was super lucky to have met excellent people who went out of their way to include me in their lives, and did some maintenance work on the fear and anxiety I occasionally accumulate around intellectual vulnerability and feeling competent if I’m not vigilant. I read a lot of books.

I think it was an ok way to spend some time.

In December I was in San Diego tessellating my objects into two checked bags, thinking I’d go live in New York for a long time. Metal and rope are bad at compressing so most of it was climbing and backpacking stuff by volume, but I did manage a few nice books too (:

I’m leaving having touched none of my gear, which I’m a tiny bit sad about. I marathoned the five-hour public transit daytrips up the Hudson every weekend the first month in a vague attempt at being in mountains before giving in to the cityfolk winter vegetable aesthetic.

I met Kat, another in the increasingly large fraction of my friends who have trucks and vans that they live out of, who hosted a gathering of mountain folks in a lovely cabin in the woods.

Kat knew the Hudson River Valley and took me around in her truck, and I felt that I was first coming to understand New York through an outskirter’s perspective. We hiked some Hudson classics that the internet had warned me would be swarming with humans, but we found enchantingly lonely in the winter.

We ran into some friendly cave folks who taught us some caving basics! Ugh cavers are so cool. It was pretty rad fiddling with cave gear coming from a climbing background, comparing notes of all the similar but slightly different, specially adapted gadgets.

Kat left for her cave job in Oregon and I fell into a New York City winter coma.

Housing in Brooklyn is somewhat affordable in a way that is unreal to a recent San Francisco/Bay alumn. My flatmates and neighbors are all friends with each other and form a loose family of sorts, with proper killswitches for introvert personal-time needs. Commonspaces are lovely with plants and kitchens are stocked and the house is warm and smells like cooking. This is what I’m going to miss most about here.

I don’t understand why simple habits take a different shape around each place. You’d think a urgency for caffeine would overcome physical continuity, but in this iteration of home, the aeropress and handgrinder I’d been so excited about and had used every day in Berlin lay untouched in the cabinet.

I live close to the subway, but a round trip costs a pint of nice ice cream (even in winter I compare the emotional value of my spendings against ice cream). I agonised over bleeding money from public transit and torturing my eyeballs from riding high speeds at freezing, but after going down a brief wormhole about vintage frames I nabbed a deal on craigslist.

BIKES ARE THE BEST.

So much ambient anxiety about my life choices dissipated after I regained wheeled status \o/ I need a hammerspace bike to explore the world with.

A friend I’ll miss along with my human friends, this little red aluminum bicycle that happens to be the same age as me, my adventure twin.

I’d originally been planning to travel in south america during the nothern hemisphere’s winter months, but after the election in November I felt so guilty for being in a selfish phase of my life that I decided to go to New York instead, to put my skills to work against something that felt so big and ominous and uncertain and terrible. We went to meetups and rallies and marches and talks and hackathons. I don’t think I accomplished anything in particular. I feel pretty ineffective in general.

In the end I spent most of my time being selfish anyway. After two weeks of deeply inspecting and making web tools and demos and builds for the first time I feel like I’m on the verge of not being a poser when I tell people I’m a frontend engineer. I think I’m starting to understand one reason people like school: it’s a place where learning doesn’t feel weirdly self-indulgent. It is a context for guilt-free exploration, where the world waits patiently as you take and take and build the potential to give back. Stay in school, kids.

Time is going by too quickly for how much novelty I’m desperately shoveling into my human experience. Many things are happening, and a lot of them don’t feel real. It hasn’t registered that I’m going to be in Romania in a week and a half, not because it’s particularly shocking, but because it seems reasonable enough that it doesn’t require a second thought.

I was obsessive about spending my time as efficiently as possible when I set out on this nomadic year, but by now much of my anxieties over efficiency have been replaced by I need nature asap and but I also need my computer because my brain is marinating in computery things!! I’m feeling the multitude of narratives that is me fighting for dominance, and of the many things humans are good at multitasking is critically low on the list. This is something my brother says, and it’s been on my mind a lot. But how do I pick one thing when everything is interesting?

These days I keep going back and forth between being really excited to be on the road again and seeing friends and reading and learning and chasing opportunities, and being exhausted from being excited about things.

I spent a week walking the Via Alpina trail in Switzerland from late September to early October 2016. I inevitably collect cool thoughts and cool photos when I hike for 8 hours a day and have always wanted to write a trip report, but motivation/time is eaten when I rejoin society and work/school. I have neither of those responsibilities right now! Posts will be serialised under Via Alpina.

>when you go to a fancy modern country to sleep on the side of the road

I love that the alps are super accessible (grandmas and dogs and babies all over the places, rails running out of every town to the top of every pass), and people go there specifically to enjoy the European charm and convenience of mountain cabins/huts. So of course I ignored all the modern comforts the country had to offer, wild camping and hitchhiking instead. I took one train, two hours from Zurich to my arbitrarily selected trailhead in Engelberg, which was a fresh and smooth experience that, like all the other Swiss things, put the quality of their counterparts in other countries to shame, but also used all my food budget for the month. It was lovely for being the only train I pay for my entire stay in Europe.

The trail was really developed and full of cows and people, so we got pretty creative about finding places to sleep! (Ominous foreshadowing music)

>Contradictions

• I’m on a fairly tight budget, but Switzerland is notoriously expensive.
• I like packing ultralight but I was flying to a wedding right and needed nice clothes ✨

Even with cautionary tales of $20 McD from friends who visited earlier in the summer, I was unable to handle how crazy Switzerland prices were, even with my recent past life in the luxurious San Francisco tech startup reality sphere. We brought our food in from Germany, an excellent country with reasonable grocery bills and an appreciation for tasty dehydrated meals (in the US you have to go to a sport store for that).

>Here are some ways I prepared for the trip, because I sometimes get questions about how I travel \o/

Basically I like to collect a ton of info so I can put off deciding on specifics for as long as possible. This is the kind of thinking that both leads me to sleeping on the side of the road but also in a secluded magical fairy wonderland (both happened).

• activity workshop .net, an oddly-named website which provided kickass gps maps and elevation reliefs and info about the towns along the Swiss via alpina.
• OSM-AND and Maps.me android apps, which I used to read gps coordinates/trails from above. Both superior to google maps for (my style of) travel because of
  • excellent offline support
  • easy bookmarking/note-taking that exports to standard formats
  • you can search for bathrooms omg
  • more data for hiking trail/natural features (eg mountain peaks)

• I also highly recommend the OSM-AND topo plugin for a super awesome hiking experience :D
• Hitchwiki – a wiki and map contributed by hitchhikers for hitchhikers!
• Pocket, which I used to offline cache aforementioned resources.