News / Conditions

Last weekend I completed a hike I have been wanting to do for a while across Anza Borrego Desert State Park in eastern San Diego County. This two-day hike took me across thirty-three miles of diverse desert landscape and was challenging and rewarding with some great solo hiking and amazing views.

Last Saturdays Spring Turkey Opener while not successful as a great time and an awesome way to spend some time with friends on the mountain. Unfortunately, while the turkeys are abundant down here they seem to have the dates on lock down and disappear from huntable land, if only we could hunt in neighborhoods, ha-ha. But a bad day hunting is better than a great day at work.

Last week was another great adventure, the week prior we were getting our snow camp on In Eager AZ and then in a span of a week we were back in the desert backpacking Joshua Tree

Survival Starts at Home: Tools, well there are a million and one ways to address this and I will start off with this one, make sure your tools are in good repair and ready to go. So much of what we do in the outdoors is seasonal and because of that a third of our gear can be shelved for the season at any given time. So, we should be aware that what we need to make sure we might need to keep our backcountry adventures safe and fun might need some periodic maintenance and a check out before we grab it and go.

Survival Starts at Home: Fire, well, well, well, fire is a touchy subject as I sit here writing this and California has some major wildfires going on. So, first off, its summer here its hot you probably don’t need a campfire, you might want one, but you probably don’t need one, it’s like me and my relationship with snickers bars.

Survival Starts at Home: Water, we spent an amazing week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and you can read about it HERE, but it was definitely a stark contrast from the water situation down here in SoCal.

Survival Starts at Home, Shelter; when we are talking “survival” we love to jump right into the worst case and learn the cool skills (which are important) but the true mark of a backcountry pro is not having to use those skills because of things that they can control.

Getting creative with your trails and hikes, this shelter in place and social distancing thing has got me thinking we need to be more creative with how we enjoy the outdoors and about getting back to the idea of exploring.

Coming back from 4XFAR (read about that here) we were driving through Anza Borrego Desert State Park (California’s larges state park) and figure instead of wasting the gas and a two-hour trip we would break it up and get a camp in.