Posted on June 20, 2013
Dehydrated Broccolicious Soup with Rice
This is such a delicious soup and it will bring us much joy and needed vegetables after a long day of backpacking! The recipe was adapted from a Williams Sonoma recipe titled, Cream of Broccoli with Aged Cheddar. I changed a few things but it is hard to mess with perfection!
Posted on June 17, 2013
Breakfast cookie
Breakfast in the woods is the best: wake up with the birds singing, the sun rising, a warm cozy jacket on to ward off the morning chill and heat up some warm things in the pot! We have enjoyed most mornings of our young backpacking career this way, with a big bowl of hot oatmeal for breakfast.
Posted on June 9, 2013
Warner Springs to Eagle Rock
Mile 109 – 106 (3 miles)
We took a day hike today from the Warner Springs fire station south on the PCT to Eagle Rock, a magnificent rock formation in the middle of the desert which looks like, you guessed it, an eagle!
Posted on June 8, 2013
Ham General Class
Today I passed the test to upgrade my FCC Amateur Radio License from Technician class to General class. It was a pretty dense exam with such beautiful questions as:
What is the simplest combination of stages that implement a superheterodyne receiver? A. RF amplifier, detector, audio amplifier B. HF oscillator, pre-scaler, audio amplifier C. RF amplifier, mixer, IF discriminator D. HF oscillator, mixer, detector
… and many other gems covering electronics, radio propagation, regulations, and even some astronomy.
Posted on June 6, 2013
Backpack
Jess’s current backpack (an old Lowe Alpine Vision 40) weighs in at about 3.5 pounds. She likes it, but seriously who wants to carry 3.5 pounds before you even load it up? I just finished sewing her up a backpack from a Ray & Jenny Jardine kit (the same people who designed the tarp, net-tent and quilt). Finished weight: 9 oz! Almost 3 pounds saved.
Posted on June 2, 2013
Mini Watercolor Palette with Extend-a-Brush
Feeling a bit manic today, I made myself a miniature watercolor palette for out on the trail! I even made my own “extend-a-brush” and bound a little book of watercolor paper.
The palette box is made from a small tin which originally contained mints. It measures about 1.5 x 2 inches. I made the paint wells from the caps of several tubes of lip balm and cork grease, sawed in half and glued in. On the inside of the lid I decoupaged a piece of white paper to use as my mixing surface. All in all the palette weighs 0.9 ounces, empty. I wonder how much weight the paint will add (I have to wait until the glue dries to try).
Posted on May 30, 2013
GoreTex rain jacket for Gabriel
I just finished this GoreTex waterproof breathable jacket for Gabriel. It’s from Green Pepper pattern #149. The GoreTex is really sturdy material and large enough that he should be able to wear it for a couple of years yet! I started with this outdoors thread but that wouldn’t make a proper stitch so half-way through I changed to just normal thread.
Posted on May 27, 2013
Combs’ Peak / PCT
Mile 127 – 129 (2 miles)
Our friends invited us to come for a backpacking trip up in Sequoia National Park over the Memorial Day weekend. After calling the ranger station up there and hearing that it would likely be below freezing overnight we decided that we’d keep it local where the temperatures haven’t been so bad. Just north of Warner Springs the PCT goes through the Bucksnort Mountains in the Anza-Borrego Desert and the highest point of the range is Combs’ Peak. According to our guide-book, it’s a short easy walk to a saddle with good camping. We set off!
Posted on May 23, 2013
Warm pullover
This pullover is from the Thru-Hiker Kinsman Pullover kit, size large. I was very happy with how it came out because I used some new tools in the sewing room – a rotary cutter and some other junk. I really tried to be as precise as possible which made it work out a lot better than the yellow vest.
Posted on May 13, 2013
Tahquitz Peak Trail / PCT
Papa Rob was in town and we thought that would be a great excuse for a bit of a hike. We were going to try some desert hiking but the thought of being out in the heat all day long wasn’t very appealing and the San Jacinto Wilderness was calling us. So, we decided to head off to Idyllwild to climb Tahquitz Peak by way of the Devil’s Slide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.
We gathered at 7:30am and Jess whipped up a huge breakfast of oatmeal and eggs. We packed our bags and off we went! Driving up we had amazing views of the hills as we climbed, but it was when we reached town that we really got a taste of what was to come. Idyllwild is such a beautiful little place. We visited the ranger station and picked up our permits for the stay. They said that we had perfect weather – 65 degrees during the day with overnight lows of 45 deg. We were excited!
The trail to the peak starts at Humber Park, and since it was a Saturday and such fine weather it was really crowded. We ended up parking the car about half a mile down the road – and what seemed like 500 feet below the trail-head! We had to slowly make our way up the steep road to the trailhead.
But that was nothing! The Devil’s Slide Trail is quite a tough climb, gaining 1620 feet of altitude in 2.4 miles. Coupled with the altitude and our heavy packs, we really moved slowly and took a long time to get to the top! It was a beautiful, scenic climb though and the views of nearby Suicide Rock as it gradually went from looming above us to sitting below were worth all the effort.
This time of year the PCT is busy with thru-hikers. We met many thru-hikers on their way from Mexico to Canada, including Crazy Knees, Captain Kristy, Rainmaker, Shark Rider and Two Hat. Every one of them stopped for a minute to tell us about their trip so far and have a quick chat. These guys are really inspiring!
We passed Saddle Junction, crossed the PCT and headed into Tahquitz Valley where we found a beautiful open meadow with a tiny stream running through it. There were patches of snow and a small group of deer went quietly by. We set up our camp a few hundred feet from the trail in a little rocky area underneath some huge pine trees. In a stroke of energy, Jess had sewed some fleece to some left over sleeping quilt fabric (breathable syl-nylon) and made us each camp pillows (pink for her, blue for me). The air was still and cool and Gabriel serenaded us with harmonica, prompting an impromptu concert with Papa Rob joining in on the claps, and me on the ones and twos.
Jess heated up and rehydrated a veggie curry she’d made last year and we ate it all up – delicious! We took a little walk to the meadow and back to watch the sun set over the trees, and head back to bed. Overnight the temperature did indeed get to 45 degrees. I was warm and very comfortable, feeling very happy with myself. Gabriel slept like a log after his hard day of hiking. Jess, on the other hand, was very cold and didn’t sleep too well. She said she couldn’t stop the cold air getting in her back under the quilt. It seems that I was hogging the quilt and she wasn’t able to get the draft stoppers under her! Oops, sorry Jess!
Since there were no mosquitos to speak of we didn’t bother to put up the net-tent and just slept under the tarp. We had tons of space and it was great watching the light change all around us by looking under the edges at the tree-bases.
We woke up, had a cup of green tea and some oatmeal and headed out for our day. Since we’d only made about 2 miles per hour the previous day we were pleasantly surprised to be traveling at near 3.5 miles per hour today. This was probably a combination of our packs containing less water, the less steep terrain and maybe us being a bit acclimated to the 8,000 foot altitude.
Turning on to the PCT we felt a surge of energy – this magical trail! After reaching a saddle we turned off to the Tahquitz Peak Lookout trail and climbed up, having to dodge a big pile of snow on the edge of the mountain. To say the view from the lookout was epic or awesome really would not be doing it justice. Words can’t describe it.
We headed back and made fantastic time down the hill, past rocky cliffs, through forests and next to tiny mountain springs. Gabriel had a little nap on board his daddy’s back and so we continued while he was content, arriving back at Humber Park about 11am.
Returning to the trailhead we saw a familiar face, a thru-hiker we’d met the day before in exactly the same place! She had gone into town to run some errands. She had flown in from South Africa specifically in order to thru-hike the PCT and was having an absolute blast. We had a good chat and eventually the subject turned to food. We gave her some dehydrated tuna casserole – my mum’s recipe and an all-time favorite – and off she went, next stop Big Bear! Good luck!
Posted on April 28, 2013
Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off 2013
Since we weren’t thru hiking the PCT this year, we decided we may as well attend the ADZPCTKO (“Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off”) to see where it all begins. So after a hearty breakfast of homemade whole wheat pancakes (made by mua) we piled ourselves in the car heavy weight style and drove out to Lake Morena.
Posted on March 15, 2013
Vest
I just finished making a vest from the Thru-Hiker Minima Vest kit. It worked out quite well: it’s very warm and snug, and the material is highly breathable as well as water resistant.