Getting started with Backpacking: A Guest Post for Anthrophisique.com

This is why you backpack. My view at the Lost Coast.
This is why you backpack. My view at the Lost Coast.

Chad over at Anthrophisique is a fellow Evernote Ambassador and online fitness coach. I just published a post over on his site with advice about making the leap from day hiker to backpacker. You know me – I could have rambled on for hours about this topic, but I tried to nail the most important things to think about when considering a first backpacking trip. Take a look and let me know what I missed and what tips would have helped you on your first trip!

In addition to that post, I’ve been busy with planning a bunch of upcoming trips. Naturally this includes my summer Sierra outings which should take me up a couple of new 14ers this year. The spring doesn’t look too shabby either, with some kayak camping, thoughts of Shasta in the works, crawling around caves, and some peak bagging weekends to get those legs ready for the big ones. Trip planning is always a fun experience for me so I am really enjoying the hours with my nose buried in maps. I’m getting a lot more use out of Hillmap lately, and hope that it can soon replace my old NG Topo! entirely.

P.S. Don’t forget the sticker giveaway!

25 Reasons Why I Am Awesome

Wearing turkey hats on desert summits is only *one* reason why I am awesome, and it didn’t even make the list!
Wearing turkey hats on desert summits is only *one* reason why I am awesome, and it didn’t even make the list!

This is traditionally the time of year for resolutions and goal-setting, thinking of things we want to accomplish before we turn the last page of the calendar. But a blog post that has been widely shared among my network over the past week has made me pause from my planning and goal setting to reflect on those things that I have already experienced and accomplished. It’s called the ”Reverse Bucket List“, and I decided to write one of my own.

The experience of writing this list out brought a lot of smiles and happy memories to mind, so I highly recommend that YOU write your own! You don’t have to have a blog, just write it down on a piece of paper. Take a few moments to reflect on your accomplishments and meaningful experiences. Remember, you aren’t defined by what you HAVEN’T done, you’re defined by the years you’ve already spent here on planet Earth.

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Visit to Evernote (aka my Backup Brain)

Giant Chalkboard in the Evernote Lobby
Giant Chalkboard in the Evernote Lobby

In the spirit of my recent post about the mapping tools that I use in my trip planning process, I’d like to do a few posts about how I go about preparing for a trip beyond the mapping component. I’ll be talking a lot about Evernote, the most useful application in my toolbox. This isn’t an outdoor application – it’s an *everything* application. It plays a central role in my trip prep, mostly because it plays a central role in how I run my life. If you’re not familiar with it, that’s okay – I’ll share plenty about it soon enough. (But you could go check it out).

Because of my die-hard dedication to this application that acts as my second brain (or backup brain, as I like to call it), I was invited to be a brand Ambassador. Basically, us ambassadors are simply enthusiastic users. There are small business ambassadors, productivity ambassadors, student ambassadors, crafting ambassadors, etc. Me? I’m the Outdoor Travel ambassador. We’re not paid, we’re not coached to say anything good (or bad) about the product, we simply exist to share our use cases and tips with the Evernote Community, much like we share knowledge about our specific areas of expertise through our own social media channels and blogs. In fact, I’m even an example in their newest iOS release…

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Calipidder.com redesign, updates, and fixes

Once a year or so I get the bug to redesign my site. I’m never 100% happy with how it looks, and one day I’ll find myself tinkering with something tiny, like the placement of a button, and end up completely changing the whole thing. That happened this week. I wanted to share some of the changes/updates/fixes around here, and also let you know that things might be a bit wonky while I work out the kinks and finish the redesign.

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Re-Entry Blues: Back from Arizona

Who knew that a few days in Sedona and Havasu Falls with Columbia Sportswear would be such an experience? There are so many thoughts and emotions whirling around in my head right now I’m not going to try and make sense of it quite yet; I need a few days to process. It was a perfect storm of location, gear, and people and you’ll be hearing about it all soon enough.

Columbia Sportswear's Omniten at Havasu. My new BFFs.
Columbia Sportswear's Omniten at Havasu. My new BFFs.

To the #omniten, #omnifriends, and especially #omniprime, thank you thank you thank you. I can’t wait for the day that our paths cross again.

René Daumal: Poem

Kirsten over at Green Girl sent me the most wonderful poem this week. It was written by the early-20th-century poet René Daumal and is titled simply Poem. I want to print this out and have it next to me at all times.

René Daumal: Poem

One cannot stay on the summit forever -
One has to come down again.
So why bother in the first place? Just this.
What is above knows what is below -
But what is below does not know what is above

One climb, one sees-
One descends and sees no longer
But one has seen!

There is an art of conducting one’s self in
The lower regions by the memory of
What one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see,
One does at least still know.

As also pointed out, Monsieur Daumal wrote a book entitled “Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing” which sounds … well … I don’t even know.