Posts by gerrit
If the topographic map is to be believed, there are plenty of streams in Grasslands National Park, but apparently they are saline. Last and Ginn report that there is no other area in the world th...
I've recently bought a pair of PMR446 walkie-talkies with some 5–10 km range, operating at 446 MHz. We've happily used them in Sareks Nationalpark in Sweden. Now I'm moving to Canada, where this ...
Is it warmer to sleep in a car or in a tent? Suppose that our old internal-combustion-engine car breaks down in a remote place at -30°C, -40°C, or -50°C, and the engine won't run at all. Suppose ...
In Svalbard, the arctic archipelago administrated by Norway, anyone leaving Longyearbyen is required to carry a rifle for their own safey. For grizzly bears, Wikivoyage recommends that Bear repelle...
A U.S. wilderness area prohibits road-building and other forms of development. Are bridges on hiking trail permitted, or are all river crossings in wilderness areas necessarily unbridged?
When hiking in a rarely frequented area, trails may be very faint to the level of being essentially invisible. In such situations, it has happened more than once that I accidentally followed an an...
I've noticed that the vegetation in the subalpine forest is very different between the Alps, the Urals, Scandinavia, or the Canadian Rockies. In the latter, I didn't find any at all. In the Alps,...
For trip planning and navigation during my outdoors trip, I would like to load a track into my GPS (or GNSS) receiver. Where can I find websites that gather user-contributed GPS tracks?
In Norway, Sweden, and Finland, there are resident bears, but they rarely go near people, nobody practices the kind of bear safety that is necessary in parts of North America, and this does not lea...
It's really rather simple: All dogs in all public areas must be kept under control at all times. If your dog goes toward other people, it is not under control and must be kept on a leash, as other...
This is a function of latitude and season. Apart from that, it depends on local landscape, weather, and your own eyes. On a rainy day in a dense forest, it may already be quite dark at sunset. O...
Stay with the body until authorities arrive. If there are no other people around: call the police using your mobile phone (near civilisation) or satellite phone (far from civilisation). If you do...
If you want to reduce your visual impact on the other people in the area, choose a tent with colors that match the landscape you're going to camp in. Green in forest or other vegetated areas, brow...
I have phoned with the trail reservation office for Jasper National Park, and this is what they told me. The route has been decommisioned. This means that it is now considered wildland. Hiking a...
I am very happy with my starm-proof spirit stove (similar to this model, but older. When others are struggling to find a place outside the wind, I can cook wherever I like — provided I can lighten ...
I recently came back from a 17-day backcountry hike. At the start of the hike, my backpack was 28 kg. At the end of the hike it was around half of that or a little bit more. I'm fine hiking with...
We're heading to the Ardèche in France in spring, an area with hundreds if not thousands of campgrounds. Many of those are massive with lots of entertainment provided by facilities such as multipl...
What is a good time of year to see autumn colours in the higher areas of the Maritime and Cottian Alps, in particular yellow larches such as in this photo¹? I may have the opportunity to visit eit...
A mug outside the backpack is far easier to reach. In some areas, you will pass streams very often. During my first ever backpacking trip, with a group of Swedish people hiking Kaisepakte – Pessi...
I live in England and I like forests. Where do I find the largest protected forest in England? By protected I mean: no commercial logging (management logging is OK considering no forests without ...
Of course, there are many long-distance hiking trails without any available maps. As far as I'm aware, none of the European long-distance trails have dedicated end-to-end maps, unless you count Op...
An ultralight tent makes me feel unsafe. I have tried the ultralight Big Agnes Slater UL1+, and I was not happy with it. The fabric seems really fragile. In a small space, condensation is worse ...
The book Sierra de Grazalema: Complete Guidebook to the Natural Park includes a chapter on canyons, describing two routes: one Garganta Verde and one through the Garganta de las Buitreras. Both re...
The Swedish tent company Hilleberg has packing lists with masses on their website. Their itemized list includes a lower and upper range for a list of items, leading to a very large range of masses...
I was caught by a hailstorm the weekend before last. I was high above the tree line, the nearest trees were perhaps 20 km away, and several hours hiking from shelter. The hailstones were not huge...
