Join Mike & I on Colorado’s Four Pass Loop for 3 days of hiking, backpacking & hammock camping.
For this multi-part adventure, we’ll be faced with two challenges.
Phase 1 (seen in the prior Pt 1 video): Driving on a substantial time crunch from the east coast to Colorado, without any hotels or road food purchases. This will not only keep the budget low, but will also save us a ton of time by not having to check-in/out, be tempted to sleep in, decide where/what to eat, stand in lines etc. Sleeping will be done in the car (while the other person drives) and all meals will be comprised of cooler-stored left-overs and pre-purchased beverages. The only stops allowed: bathroom breaks and gas pumps.
Phase 2 (covered in this video, Pt 2) will be a multi-day hike of the Four Pass Loop, within the Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness, located just outside of Aspen Colorado (about 3 hours west of Denver). We chose to do the loop in a counter-clockwise direction.
Join Sara, our dog Denali, & I for some Catskills hiking, trail cooking, backpacking, and hammock camping in upstate New York.
For this backpacking trip, we’ll be hiking and camping near Slide Mountain and the East Branch Neversink River in the Catskills, complete with a visit to the summit of Table Mountain and Peekamoose Moose Mountain. The mileage will be low, but the star of this trip isn’t the trails. It’s the food. Good old, classic trail cooking.
What’s on our backpacker’s menu? Well, Sara had a craving for some trail pizza in the middle of the woods somewhere, and I was up for the challenge. Were we successful? You’ll just have to come along and find out. Either way, it’s bound to be an adventure. 😉
Full GPS data for this, as well as all of my other trips, is available on the Trip Data page.
Pheonicia East Branch Trail Peekamoose Table Trail
Set up camp after second bridge (the double log one) at N41° 58.474′ W74° 25.734′
Continue up Peekamoose Table Trail towards summit of
Table Mt and Peekamoose Mountain
Lunch / Snack at summit and Return to camp on the East Branch Neversink River
Day 1 Mileage: 7.8 miles, including summit round trip (about 3 miles each way) Day 1 Gross Elevation Gain: 2,130′
Trails Used Day 2, in Order
Peekamoose Table Trail Pheonicia East Branch Trail Return to vehicle at Denning Rd Trailhead
Day 2 Mileage: 1.8 miles Day 2 Gross Elevation Gain:146′
Trip Total Mileage: 9.6 miles Trip Total Elevation Gain: 2,276
Trail Pizza Ingredients
Boboli Pizza Crust, Individual Size – 2 Pack
Boboli Pizza Sauce Individual Pack (comes in 3 pack box)
Cabot Mozzarella Cheese, Shredded – 8 oz package (2 cups volume)
Hormel Pepperoni, pre-sliced – 6 oz package (enough for 2 pizzas, plus snacking) Camp Cooking Gear Used for Pizza
A discussion on clothing choices for backpacking, hiking & camping trips.
In this video, I’ll go over each backpacking clothing item that I’ll be wearing for an upcoming backpacking trip, as well as spare and alternate clothing options that I’ll be packing for the hike.
These are pretty much the same clothes take I would take on just about any 3-season hiking trip.
Join Sara & I for 3 days of desert hiking, backpacking & camping in the Superstition Mountains. And who knows – maybe Sara will find the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine…
For this desert backpacking trip, we’ll be hiking a loop in the Superstition Wilderness, within the greater Tonto National Forest – about 60 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Not only was this a beautiful and scenic hike due to the stark desert surroundings and sharp, rugged peaks, but this particular region has added bonus – a rich history full of intrigue and lore right at home in your favorite spaghetti western flick. Some of these tales are indisputable facts. Others, are more debatable – the stuff of legends and mystery. The most notable and famous of those stories being that of Jacob Waltz, or as it’s commonly referred to, the mystery of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold.
As touched on in the video, the story of the Dutchman and the lost gold mine is much to deep to give justice to in the passing of a hiking video, so for those interested, I highly recommend taking the time to check out the various iterations of the story, theories, etc. For the sake of this post though, the basic idea goes like this – Jacob Waltz stumbled upon some gold in the Superstition Mountains. Whether it was an actual mine, or a hidden cache that was originally mined elsewhere, depends on which version of several accounts you choose to believe. In fact, even the fact that he came upon it accidentally is up for debate as well. Some iterations of the tale suggest that he was given the details of the hidden mine after saving the life of a man who belonged to a wealthy Mexican mining family. The name of that family, by the way, was Peralta – you know, like the trailhead we parked at. But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself and going down the rabbit hole. Hmm, maybe the gold was hidden in a burrow of sorts, and not an actual gold mine. No wait, I’ve got to stop this.
Okay, let me try this again. Somehow, Jacob knew where a bunch of gold was in these mountains, and he kept it a complete secret, despite rumors throughout the years that he knew about it’s location. People would try to follow him when he went into the mountains, but he always lost them, or at the least, waved a gun at them until they left. Finally, on his death bed in 1891, he confirmed the gold mine and gave some info on it’s whereabouts to two individuals. Apparently, it wasn’t quite enough info, because they never found it after years of searching. Word spread, many more people started searching, and they continue to search until this day. People have gone missing while searching, some have even had their skull found right on one of the trails we hiked on our loop, complete with two bullet holes and their body found separately 3/4 of a mile away (his name was Adolf Ruth, and he went into the Superstitions in search of the gold back in 1931) .
So what does all this have to do with our backpacking trip? Did we find some gold or something? Am I devoting my life to finding the Lost Dutchman’s Mine? Well no, but it makes hiking around out there pretty cool and Old Westy, if you ask me. At the very least, it gives you something to ponder as you hike along the cactus covered traverses, baked incessantly by a sun they just may have glinted off of Jacob Waltz’s prize back in the 1800’s.
But anyway, back to the hike we did. Here’s the details…
Route Overview – Hiking the Superstition Mountains – Sintax77
Season / Time of Year
Winter – January 20th to January 23, 2016.
Elevation Range
Minimum – 2,283′
Maximum – 3,550′
Full GPS track data and waypoints are available on the Trip Data page.
Trails Used Day 1 (in order of use) Peralta Trailhead Parking Lot, Dutchman Trail Set up camp in a relatively flat area along the trail, about .75 miles after crossing an intermittent stream. This particular stream actually had a decent flow at the time, but depending on recent conditions and time of year, it may not always be that way.
Day 1 Total Mileage: 2 miles Day 1 Total Elevation Gain: 344′
Day 1 Elevation Profile – Superstition Mountains Hike
Trails Used Day 2 (in order of use)
Continue on Dutchman Trail
Pass the intersection with Coffee Flat Trail to stay on Dutchman Trail, after which you’ll begin to rack up the bulk of your elevation gain for the day.
Leave the Dutchman Trail and head east on the Whiskey Springs Trail. Just before the upcoming trail intersection, the trail crosses LeBarge Creek (where we stocked up on water for the rest of the day)
At the intersection, turn left to head west on the Red Tanks Trail.
Red Tanks Trail ends at the intersection with Dutchman Trail.
Turn right to head north on Dutchman Trail.
Set up camp along Dutchman Trail.
Day 2 Total Mileage:10 miles Day 2 Total Elevation Gain:1,325′
Day 2 Elevation Profile – Superstition Mountains – Sintax77
Trails Used Day 3 (in order of use)
Continue on Dutchman Trail
At the intersection, continue straight (west) on Bull Pass Trail
Turn left to head south on Black Top Mesa Trail, towards the top of Black Top Mesa
Explore the mesa and hunt for the Spanish Hieroglyphs or maybe some of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold, etc.
Retrace your steps back down Black Top Mesa Trail.
At the bottom, turn right to head east on the unofficial Bull Pass Alternate Trail (not the same as the previous Bull Pass Trail).
At the intersection, turn right to head south on our recurring friend, Dutchman Trail.
At the intersection, depart the Dutchman Trail and take Terrapin Trail.
At the intersection, turn right to head south on Bluff Springs Trail.
Return to the Peralta Trailhead parking lot.
Day 3 Total Mileage: 15 miles (plus a couple miles of meandering about on Blacktop Mesa) Day 3 Total Elevation Gain:2,933 feet
Day 1 Elevation Profile – Superstition Mountains – Sintax77
Trip Grand Total Mileage: 27 Miles Trip Grand Total Elevation Gain: 4,662′
Highly recommended book for hikes in this area:
‘Hiker’s Guide to the Superstition Wilderness‘ by Jack Carlson and Elizabeth Stewart
This book appears to be out of print, but I managed to get a used copy and love it. It has detailed descriptions of all the trails, with some cool related history mixed in. It also contains plenty of solid maps and a bunch of suggested hikes.
Join Mike and I for for a “Train to Trail” Winter Camping, Backpacking, Campfire cooking, & Hiking adventure in Harpers Ferry, WV.
We tried something a bit different for fun on this winter camping trip – instead of driving, we decided to take an Amtrak train directly to the trailhead. This is actually and idea that Mike and I had been kicking around for a while now. The first challenge was finding an interesting trail that was actually close to a train station, without a need for secondary transportation or an excessive walk. After a bit of research, we determined that Harpers Ferry, West Virginia fit the criteria quite well. The train practically dumps you right on the Appalachian Trail. We booked our tickets, packed our bags, and hit the trail, er, I mean, train station.
With 4 days and 3 nights off, we had a decent amount of time to play with on this trip. The challenge however, would be that we needed to plan an out and back trip that didn’t put us to far away from the train station on our final morning, rather than doing a loop like we normally prefer. Fortunately, we quickly realized that to be a perfect excuse to do a a laid back, more camping, less hiking kind of trip.
The plan? After leaving the train behind,we would hop on the Appalachian trail for a few miles – just long enough to feel the seclusion of the deep winter woods, and set up a base camp for the duration of the trip. Other than that, we really had no hard set plans, other than relaxing, having a good time, and brushing up on our campfire cooking skills. Did we succeed? I guess you’ll just have to watch and see…
Trails Used
Leave Harpers Ferry via Appalachian Trail South After around 3 miles, bushwack West to unofficial campsite.
Return via Appalachian Trail North
Join Sara and I as we take our puppy, Denali, on his very first backpacking trip.
For this adventure, we were joined by a brand new hiking partner – our 7 month old puppy dog, Denali. While Denali is no stranger to walking and hiking (we’ve tried to make that a regular part of his life since we adopted him at 2 months old), this will be his very first foray into an overnight backpacking trip. Or to put it in terms from his perspective; his first time sleeping out in the woods, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, nary a shred of carpet or plush dog bed to be seen.
Denali’s First Backpacking Trip Route Overview – Sintax77
Our chosen destination was a 14 mile loop comprised of several trails in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. I was made aware of this trip via the super-helpful website called “Hiking Upward”. For those of you hikers along the mid-Atlantic who haven’t heard of this site before, I highly suggest checking it out some time. Since this was a bit of a last minute trip, coupled with the fact that it was our pup’s first time backpacking, I wanted everything to go nice and smoothly, and their detailed trip reports were a welcomed asset.
The first half of this circuit was of the higher elevation variety, consisting primarily of a ridge walk along a the Neighbor Mountain Trail, as well as a section of the Appalachian Trail. Day two would be mostly along the Jeremy’s Run Trail. As the name would suggest, the Jeremy’s run trail closely follows the contours of Jeremy’s Run, a stream that we would traverse 14 times before returning to the metallic confines of our car. Below is an overview of our route, along with trailhead parking ocation and other points of interest. For those of you interested, I recorded full GPS track data during this backpacking trip. along with campsites and other notable POI’s which can be downloaded on my Trip Data page.
Trailhead and Parking: Jeremy’s Run Trailhead N38° 44.456′ W78° 18.716′ (by Elkwallow Picnic Gound and the Wayside Store)
Trails Used Day 1 (in order)
Starting from the Jeremy’s Run Trailhead,
Take the Appalachian Trail (south)
Turn right (west) on Neighbor Mountain Trail
At intersection, turn right (east) on Jeremy’s Run Trail
Set-up camp along Jeremy’s Run at N38° 42.629′ W78° 21.913′
Day 1 Total Mileage: 9 miles (This is the mileage to the actual campsite. My solo mileage for the day, including scouting and backtracking, totaled 13.5 miles) Day 1 Total Elevation Gain: 1,785′
Denali’s First Backpacking Trip Day 1 – Sintax77
Trails Used Day 2 (in order)
Continue on Jeremy’s Run Trail
At intersection, continue north on Appalachian Trail
back to the Jeremy’s Run Parking Trailhead and parking area.
Day 2 Total Mileage: 6 miles Day 2 Total Elevation Gain: 1,391′
Total Mileage for Trip: 15 miles Total Elevation Gain for Trip: 3,176′
(from dollar store, or whatever)
– rack used to hold pizza
(used as a plate / prepping dish / cutting board)
(zip-off shorts)
(quarter length)
shoes
shoes
(synthetic or merino wool)
. For the sake of this post though, the basic idea goes like this – Jacob Waltz stumbled upon some gold in the Superstition Mountains. Whether it was an actual mine, or a hidden cache that was originally mined elsewhere, depends on which version of several accounts you choose to believe. In fact, even the fact that he came upon it accidentally is up for debate as well. Some iterations of the tale suggest that he was given the details of the hidden mine after saving the life of a man who belonged to a wealthy Mexican mining family. The name of that family, by the way, was Peralta – you know, like the trailhead we parked at. But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself and going down the rabbit hole. Hmm, maybe the gold was hidden in a burrow of sorts, and not an actual gold mine. No wait, I’ve got to stop this.
(long version)
for water storage.
for eating our chili and queso appetizer
on top of a 
water filter configured in a gravity setup
‘ by Jack Carlson and Elizabeth Stewart
backpack
stove
with fancy lightshow
.
/ Plate
tanto blade pocket knife
